 "Photo: Andrea Lai")
Eleven-year-old Alex Kinese, an aspiring broadcast journalist, had never heard of C-SPAN and was not interested in politics before entering the cable network's 45-foot-long production studio on a bus, complete with eight cameras and three flat-screen monitors, on the UT campus Wednesday.
On C-SPAN's Campaign 2008 tour bus, along with his fellow students, Kinese learned about political media coverage. They participated in directing a mock production of a live broadcast and watched an archive video of a Bill Clinton interview that was shot and produced on the same bus in 1995 - one year before the middle school students were born.
Students, like Kinese, who attended the Texas Student Television Summer Camp at the Jesse H. Jones Communication building, boarded the bus when it arrived at UT as part of the television network's "Road to the White House" tour.
Vanessa Castaneda, a broadcast journalism senior and counselor at the day camp, said she took her group of students to the tour bus so they could see how television shows are produced live on the road.
"It's important to get middle schoolers involved in politics so they can make informed decisions when they are old enough to vote," Castaneda said. "It's an opportunity to get a taste of being behind the scenes of C-SPAN."
In its nearly year-long tour, the bus will visit every state capital to increase interest in C-SPAN and promote political education, said Heath Neiderer, a C-SPAN marketing representative.
The bus has visited 43 states since January, Neiderer said.
On Wednesday, C-SPAN's Washington Journal news program interviewed Betty Sue Flowers, director of the LBJ Library and Museum, via Skype aboard the bus before driving across campus to the communication center. The bus will broadcast live this weekend from the Austin Convention Center for the Netroots Nation political bloggers' convention, which is expected to attract 3,000 progressive bloggers from across the country.
"We hope to improve media literacy, to educate people about the importance of politics and to show how the media shoots and edits an event," Neiderer said.
Government professor Bruce Buchanan said C-SPAN's educational demonstration will not impact the presidential election directly but will contribute to politics indirectly.
"Obviously, 11-year-olds will not be voting in the election," Buchanan said. "But this is an illustration of outreach efforts to promote the health of the political arena."
Time Warner Cable sponsored the bus tour in Austin to increase awareness about the political campaign, said Roger Heaney, a company spokesman. The cable company chooses the bus's travel and event location destinations in Texas, Heaney said.
"The bus tour is perfect for communication students, because it allows students to see how the political process works from the inside and to see how C-SPAN serves the community," Heaney said.
Be the first to comment on this article!