The Media Education Foundation produces & distributes films to inspire critical thinking about the social, political, & cultural impact of American mass media.
Northampton, MA
Joined July 2009
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As the midterms enter their final stretch, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric once associated with the far-right fringes has moved into the mainstream of American politics, with elected officials, political candidates, and media commentators openly trafficking in racist and dehumanizing attacks.
We’ve compiled eight MEF films that examine how anti-Muslim and anti-Arab fears have been manufactured and weaponized for decades to sell wars, divide Americans, suppress dissent, and obscure connections between Islamophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of hatred. From The Encampments, which documents the repression of Palestinian and Jewish students united in protest against Israel's genocidal violence in Gaza, to Healing from Hate, which examines how white-supremacist violence is motivated by antisemitism and Islamophobia alike, these films give educators powerful tools to help students recognize the politics of fear, question the narratives behind these tactics, and understand whose interests they serve.
Read our full blog post here to get the whole story and license the films: bit.ly/4ipgKxI
ALT This image displays eight book and documentary covers arranged in a grid. Titles include "The Encampments," "Healing from Hate," "Constructing the Terrorist Threat," "The Occupation of the American Mind," "Edward Said On Orientalism," "Edward Said: The Clash of Civilizations" "Reel Bad Arabs," and "The Cure for Hate." Each cover features distinct typography and imagery related to its themes.
About 6,000 women enter menopause every day, yet the subject has long received far less sustained journalistic attention than its impact would suggest.
Earlier this year, the acclaimed independent news outlet @19thnews launched a dedicated menopause project whose reporting connects women’s midlife health to workplace policy, insurance coverage, medical research, racial inequality, aging, and access to care.
Our new release Breaking the News tells the launch story of @19thnews, a newsroom that treats gender not as a niche subject, but as something that cuts across politics, economics, health care, race, work, sexuality, and power, with an explicit commitment to women and LGBTQ+ people too often overlooked by mainstream journalism.
Read more: bit.ly/3WaUxMG
For most of Hollywood’s history, men have held disproportionate power over how women’s bodies, sexuality, and desire are portrayed on screen. The result has been a century of images and stories shaped far more by dominant ideas about women’s sexuality than by women’s own experiences and perspectives.
Our bestselling documentary Body Parts brings this largely untold history into view.
Learn more about the film and how to stream it: bit.ly/4hVDmXZs: bit.ly/4hVDmXZ
ALT Body Parts Film Poster
On October 6, longtime MEF collaborator Jackson Katz, a global leader in the gender violence prevention field, joined CBS Mornings hosts Norah O’Donnell, Gayle King, and Nate Burleson for a wide-ranging conversation about the Cornell sexual assault case and the larger questions it’s raised about consent, male peer cultures, bystander intervention, institutional responsibility, and prevention.
If you’re interested in digging deeper into the insights Katz shared on CBS Mornings, our bestselling film The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at Its Roots, made in collaboration with Katz, offers a sustained exploration of his pioneering work.
⏯️ Watch the full CBS Mornings conversation here: bit.ly/4yyS2Rz
📺 Stream The Bystander Moment on the MEF Platform today: bit.ly/4jpi3z3
ALT Jackson Katz sits with Cheryl Ziegler across from Norah O'Donnell, Gayle King, and Nate Burleson on the CBS Morning Show. A banner at the bottom of the screen says "how to talk to kids about consent & peer pressure".
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian graduate student who became one of the public faces of the 2024 Columbia protests opposing U.S. support for Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, is back in the news.
Just last month, pro-Israel activists in Massachusetts successfully pressured a theater operator to withdraw from a sold-out event for Khalil’s memoir, No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention.
In that same stretch, Khalil and other pro-Palestinian students were also in the news after filing a lawsuit accusing Columbia of anti-Palestinian discrimination, retaliation, and failure to protect students from doxxing and harassment.
As Khalil and the Columbia encampments return to the center of a public fight over the meaning of pro-Palestinian speech and protest, our film The Encampments gives students a chance to make up their own minds about whether political and media attacks on Khalil and the protests square with what actually happened on the ground.
Full blog post:
ALT A person stands in front of a large crowd giving a speech on Columbia's campus. Some attendees hold signs, and a Palestinian flag is visible.
Twenty years ago, MEF had the honor of becoming the educational distributor of Byron Hurt's groundbreaking documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes. Combining cultural criticism with personal inquiry, it brought together celebrated artists like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes with leading scholars, critics, aspiring rappers, and fans. The result was a landmark examination of masculinity, race, gender, media, and corporate power.
20 years and a succession of acclaimed films later, we’re proud to celebrate the film that began our relationship with @byronhurt, and the extraordinary body of work that’s followed. Read the full tribute on our blog and bring Hurt's films to your classroom today: bit.ly/47lGDtr
ALT Close-up of a contemplative face with the text above: "As Seen on PBS, A Film by Byron Hurt." Below, the text reads: "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes.
Newsrooms are shrinking. Ownership is concentrating. Nonprofit outlets are trying to build new models. And questions about funding, representation, editorial independence, and public trust are becoming harder to separate from the basic work of reporting the news.
Our new release Breaking the News takes viewers inside one newsroom trying to navigate this rapidly shifting terrain and build itself up from the ground up in real time. Breaking the News is available in multiple formats on our new streaming platform: bit.ly/4rY6YXW
Indigenous Peoples’ Day, coming up on Oct. 12, gives educators an opportunity to celebrate Native histories, cultures, and resistance. It’s also a chance to help students think critically about dehumanizing media narratives and stereotypes that have reduced Native people to mascots, caricatures, costumes, and cultural symbols for generations.
From now through the end of October, we're offering 15% off our films More than a Word and Behind the Shield with code INDIGENOUS26. View a clip from Behind the Shield below and learn more about the two films on our blog here: bit.ly/4ydntRo
The shocking allegations in the Cornell case raise urgent questions about peer cultures, bystander silence, institutional responsibility, and what it takes to prevent sexual violence. Our film The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots, features the work of @jacksontkatz who takes those questions directly into the cultural arenas where attitudes about masculinity, sex, power, and violence are formed and reinforced, from media and pornography to sports and peer groups.
Neither sexual violence nor silence occurs in a cultural vacuum. Every campus in the country needs to be asking what more it can do on to cultivate leadership on these issues and prevent sexual violence before it happens. The Bystander Moment is one resource to help your campus get started.
Read the full blog post here: bit.ly/4rLjN7S
ALT A stone building with steep gabled roofs surrounded by bare trees on Cornell Campus. The central section has an archway entrance and connects two symmetrical wings.
This year, Media Literacy Week (Oct. 26–30) comes at a moment when concerns about who controls our information ecosystem are becoming harder to ignore. Media ownership is becoming more and more concentrated. A shrinking number of media and technology companies, many controlled by billionaires, now wield massive power over what people see, hear, and talk about. And free speech and press freedoms are under accelerating attack.
These are issues MEF has been examining for decades. Our films look not only at media content, but at the systems, structures, and interests that shape it, including corporate ownership, advertising, surveillance-based business models, algorithms, and the political and cultural forces that influence what gets produced, distributed, and seen.
We’ve selected 12 films for Media Literacy Week that help students connect media content to the larger economic, political, and cultural forces behind it. See the list on our blog here: bit.ly/4z0To8A
Each October, Domestic Violence Awareness Month calls attention to the devastating toll of domestic abuse and the urgent need to support survivors. But it also raises another crucial question: What can we do to help prevent gender violence before it happens?
That question is at the heart of The Bystander Moment, featuring leading gender violence prevention educator Jackson Katz.
This October, we’re offering 15% off The Bystander Moment and all titles in our Gender Violence Prevention Collection with the code DVAM2026.
Learn how to license the film here: bit.ly/4z22mm1
It's National Hazing Awareness Week, which invites campuses to confront hazing not simply as a series of dangerous incidents, but as a broader cultural problem. Byron Hurt’s acclaimed documentary HAZING explores the deeper forces that allow hazing to persist — including entrenched ideas about strength, belonging, and leadership. Learn more about National Hazing Awareness Week and how to access the full film on our blog: bit.ly/46IvYbV
#NationalHazingAwarenessWeek #antihazing #culturalawareness #byronhurt
Within days of each other, thousands of miles apart, two firestorms have erupted over what can be said about Gaza.
In Israel, the documentary NAZA went from a 25-minute standing ovation and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival to threats against the Israeli filmmakers who made it. In the United States, the rapper @Macklemore went from opening for Ed Sheeran to being dropped from Sheeran's U.S. tour after being accused of antisemitism.
In both cases, the response to speaking out about Gaza moved quickly from disagreement to vilification and punishment. MEF has been documenting this pattern for decades, in films ranging from our early collaborations with Edward Said to our recent release The Encampments, which Macklemore executive produced. Read the full blog post with links to license each film here: bit.ly/471KoE6
#macklemore #naza
As anti-Latino rhetoric, racial profiling, and hostility toward immigrants continue to rise, there’s an urgent need to help students understand the cultural forces that have helped fuel this climate of fear and resentment.
This National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), we’re offering 15% off Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun’s acclaimed documentary Latinos Beyond Reel with the coupon code HERITAGE26. Learn more here: bit.ly/4xYg2OR
In anticipation of tomorrow’s 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, U.S. media outlets have been airing deeply moving commemorations. Stories about the 2,977 lives lost. The heroic sacrifices of first responders. And the kindness, compassion, and generosity so many Americans displayed in the face of the horrors that unfolded.
As powerful as these commemorations have been in helping us remember the human toll of that day, they’ve been equally powerful in helping us forget the human costs of America’s response.
We've examined how news and entertainment media have helped normalize, promote, and even glamorize U.S. militarism and endless war since 9/11 for years. Check the 🔗 below for a full blog post on the subject and a selection of MEF films that ask us to reckon not only with what happened that day, but with what was done — and continues to be done — in its name.
All videos and films are all available for classroom use in multiple formats on our new streaming platform:
Full blog post: bit.ly/4h5tQjn
Ten years ago this month, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence against Black Americans. While the gesture was quiet, it set off a full-scale political and cultural firestorm that exposed deep fault lines in American attitudes toward race, patriotism, militarism, and dissent.
Kaepernick never played another NFL game. Many speculated that he had been effectively blackballed by the league.
This extraordinary history — and the NFL’s emergence as a multibillion-dollar media empire that wields enormous cultural influence — are at the heart of our film Behind the Shield: The Power & Politics of the NFL, featuring acclaimed Nation journalist Dave Zirin. Learn how to watch the full length film: mediaed.org/10-years-after-k…
Three years ago, most people had never encountered an AI-generated deepfake nude of someone they knew. But over just the past year, AI image tools were used to "undress" real women and girls faster than any safeguard could contain. One analyst from Wired documented more than 15,000 sexualized images generated in a single two-hour stretch.
While the technology behind all this might be new, the fundamental questions it raises have run through a century of Hollywood filmmaking: Who has the right to make an image of a woman's body? Who profits from it? And how much say should the woman herself have in any of it?
For educators wondering how to connect that Hollywood history to what students are seeing on their feeds now, our bestselling documentary Body Parts is an eye-opening place to start. Learn more here: bit.ly/3UEZ3Cg
ALT A person is sitting at a desk with two computer monitors in front, both displaying video editing software. The screen on the left shows a close-up of a person's face and editing timeline, while the screen on the right shows a person looking downward. A grid pattern is visible on another screen above. The setting appears to be a workspace or studio.
A major new brain injury study published by @bmj_latest and reported earlier this week by @nytimes found that at least one in four former NFL players may develop CTE, the degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head, and the true rate could be much higher.
This isn’t only a medical story. It’s a cultural one—about the values we attach to manhood, violence, toughness, and sacrifice, and about the extraordinary power of the NFL to transform those values into a multibillion-dollar entertainment spectacle.
As this essential finding places football’s human toll back in the spotlight, our bestselling film Behind the Shield: The Power & Politics of the NFL, gives educators a broader cultural lens on the story.
Featuring and based on the work of acclaimed journalist Dave Zirin, Behind the Shield draws on NFL films, advertising, news coverage, and decades of archival footage to examine a football mythology built around toughness, sacrifice, playing through pain, and physical domination. Widening its lens beyond myths of manhood and CTE, Zirin interrogates how the NFL has used its enormous cultural reach to sell ideas about U.S. militarism and war, corporate and oligarchic power, women and gender, patriotism, race, and dissent.
Seen in that context, the new CTE findings raise a question that goes far beyond player safety: What does the violence inherent in America’s most popular, pervasive, and profitable sports brand tell us about ourselves as a nation?
Visit the MEF Platform to license the full film: bit.ly/4y4mJhY
Note: this clip describes suicide.
We are steeped in a media culture built around speed, spectacle, constant stimulation, and an escalating war for our attention. MEF films help students turn watching into inquiry. Learn more about our documentaries + how to bring them to your classroom here: bit.ly/4wa8dE3
The fall semester is almost here: as you finalize syllabi, update course materials, and plan campus and orientation programming, we wanted to highlight 10 MEF bestsellers, new releases, and featured films that are especially well suited to give students clear, compelling ways to examine how media shape public understanding, reflect and reinforce cultural and ideological assumptions, and influence debates about identity, power, democracy, inequality, and public life. Read more about each film here: bit.ly/46bAVcV
ALT A collage of ten documentary film posters. Titles include: "Breaking the News," "Body Parts," "The Bystander Moment," "Hazing", "The Invisible Doctrine," "The Black Atlantic," "The Encampments," "Theaters of War," "Television Event," and "The Illusionists."