Annotated Bibliography: How Is Tv Bad or Good? Essay

How is TV bad/good? Do you learn from watching TV? What shows are best to watch? These are just some of the questions that this annotated bibliography will answer for you and help you decide whether TV is good or bad. This bibliography can be used by anyone who wants to decide if watching TV is good or bad, either for their children, or themselves. Johnson, Steven. â€Å"Watching TV Makes You Smarter.† They Say / I Say With Readings. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 277-294. Print. The argument in Johnsons article is that media has had to get more cognitively challenging to keep pulling the attention of viewers. He explains how he believes watching television can help make you a smarter person because it makes you use inferences, track relationships, and makes the reader think by tracking multiple threads. He uses examples from several television shows and series that may be affecting our brain activity. He makes many good persuasive points in his argument that TV isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but too much of anything is never a good thing. Peacocke, Antonia. â€Å"Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.† They Say / I Say With Readings. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 299-311. Print. Antonia Peacocke describes the difficulty that the television show â€Å"Family Guy† has went through, having been cancelled twice. She describes how the jokes in â€Å"Family Guy† have a more insightful meaning. Peacocke talks about her own struggle with the shows seemingly offensive humor but then how she realizes the underlying â€Å"satire† of the jokes. She sees some of the steps taken due to the fact that the content of some of the jokes are not for younger audiences. She ends her article explaining that she feels that there is more to the jokes on Family Guy than the offensive rudeness that people like to point out, but she still finds that people still need to realize that some jokes do go too far. Stevens, Dana. â€Å"Thinking Outside The Idiot Box.† They Say / I Say With Readings. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 295-298. Print. Stevens explains in this article that turning off the TV until Sunday will not make you any dumber. She talks about how children are â€Å"fresh meat† for marketing industries and shows like â€Å"Teletubbies†, encourage and teach children the basics of â€Å"vegging† out. She is pointing out that shows on TV do not necessarily always do a person good but quite the opposite. She also demonstrates her frustration that many people think that TV is fine especially when it pertains to a nature show. She describes a recent visit to the airport and there w ere a number of people watching a TV that portrayed animals. It made her realize that watching animal shows are fine, but wonders why people think this when in all reality it could be a violent animal show. She is insisting that there are many people who are offended by many things and each person needs to be sensitive to what they play on their TVs. Zinser, Jason. â€Å"The Good The Bad The Daily Show.† They Say / I Say With Readings. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 363-379. Print. Zinser sees â€Å"The Daily Show† as a combined form of entertainment that is both beneficial and damaging to society. Beneficial, in that, the show sparks viewer interest in current events, particularly for younger viewers who might not watch so-called real news. Damaging, in that, the show relies on â€Å"deception and dilution† for its platform.