NOISE

How Our Media-Saturated Culture Dominates

Lives and Dismantles Families

by Teresa Tomeo

Ascension Press, 2007

186 pages, $12.99

To order: (800) 376- 0520

ascensionpress.com

Now that summer is in full bloom, lots of parents are loosening school-year restrictions on TV, the computer and music players. Those moms and dads would do well to read Noise before giving kids the green light on all the electronics.

This book, the first by veteran broadcast journalist Teresa Tomeo, serves as a “state-of-the-media” address. Chapter by chapter, she walks us through the various forms of media and the effects they are having on our families and on society at large. The conclusions she draws are well reasoned — and frightening.

When it comes to television, she notes that nothing is sacred anymore. The days of the family hour on network television are long gone. Instead, our screens have become full of graphic acts of violence and sexual content. Many radio stations are no better, as shock jocks try to one-up each other in the ratings game with their latest sexual stunt or raunchy promotion. Toss in the Internet and video games, both of which often go unmonitored in far too many children’s bedrooms, and it’s not difficult to see why school shootings, eating disorders and sexual promiscuity seem to be so prevalent these days among our nation’s youth.

So what are we to do? Smash our television, throw out our computers and retreat with our families to a remote cabin in the woods? No.

“We simply have to engage the media and the culture to make sure the truth is proclaimed,” Tomeo writes. “How do we do this? By being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to issues concerning the faithful.”

Tomeo suggests such things as keeping computers in a central location in the home so that secrecy doesn’t have a chance.  Other recommendations include reading the lyrics to your kids’ music — virtually all are available online — and, of course, strongly supporting family-friendly media.

Tomeo has 20 years of media experience to draw from and she’ has done her homework, too. Each chapter is full of startling statistics. While Tomeo’s move from the mainstream media to work in Catholic radio is to be applauded, I would have liked to have known her thoughts about faithful Catholics who choose to work in the secular media. What’s the right balance between the demands of their faith and the expectations of their employer?

In his 2004 World Communications Day message, Pope John Paul II took as his theme media and the family. He stated that the extraordinary growth of the communications media presents both “a risk and a richness” to families. John Paul called upon parents to “train their offspring in the moderate, critical, watchful and prudent use of the media in the home.” They might start by turning down the noise — and picking up Tomeo’s Noise.

 

Eddie O’Neill writes from

Green Bay, Wisconsin.