The National Communication Association (NCA), a Washington, DC non-profit organization, created the most prominent national standards on media literacy from the communications field.

NCA’s first set of national learning standards on language arts and media literacy were developed in 1998 with the help of educators, academics, and media literacy advocates. Standards on media literacy within this document are numbered 16-19, and among them, standards 18 and 19 discuss the political economy of communications. Standard 18 states, “[m]edia literate communicators demonstrate knowledge and understanding that media content is produced within social and cultural contexts.” So “media communicators

- identify the production contexts of media content and products.
- identify the social and cultural constraints on the production of media.
- identify the social and cultural agencies that regulate media content and products.
- evaluate the ideas and aesthetics in media content and products.
- demonstrate how media content and products are produced within social and
cultural contexts.
- demonstrate how social and cultural regulations affect media content and products.
- are motivated to examine the relationships among media content and products and
the larger social and cultural contexts of their production.”

Standard 19 says, “[m]edia literate communicators demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the commercial nature of media.” It states, “media literate communicators

- explain how media organizations operate.
- identify the social and cultural agencies that regulate media organizations.
- compare media organizations to other social and cultural organizations.
- demonstrate the relationships between media organizations and media distribution
practices.
- are motivated to analyze the historical and current ways in which media organizations
operate in relationship to democratic processes.”

These standards have a clear political economic component. They promote education about media organizations, telecommunications regulations, and even the history of how those media organizations developed.

Unfortunately, these standards were poorly promoted from the very beginning. NCA mailed out a copy of the standards to state boards of education and local school districts after their publication in 1998, but has not pushed for their adoption since that time.

NCA recently updated its standards in collaboration with The College Board — but these new standards no longer emphasize the importance of media structures. Neither of the three major learning standards on media literacy discussed in the document (”Understanding the Nature of Media,” “Understanding, Interpreting, Analyzing, and Evaluating Media Communication,” and “Composing and Producing Media Communication”) talk about issues of media ownership or the political/business side of creating media messages. I spoke with a few individuals who participated in the creation of these new standards, and they are unsure why the structural focus has been dropped.

[Citations: National Communication Association, K-12 Speaking, Listening, and Media Literacy: Standards and Competency Statements (Washington, DC: National Communication Association, 1998); The College Board, College Board Standards for College Success: English Language Arts (New York: The College Board, 2006).]