Politicians and commentators are having fun attacking media studies. But maybe they're the ones who need to go back to school.

By Ian Dunt

It happens at least once a year: someone takes a stab at media studies.

Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, was in the papers having the time of his life earlier this week. His announcement that the Tories would scrap league tables and replace them with a points-based system was coupled with the idea that subjects like media studies would receive fewer points than more traditional disciplines like physics. There is a certain irony in a man spending most of the last year decrying ministerial involvement in the class room and then announcing that school courses should be valued according to his own prejudices, but this was evidently lost on him.

He announced it with relish because he knew there will always be a willing audience for beating up media studies. The campaign against the discipline is one of the most irritating, Neanderthal arguments in the debate on British education. It appeals to traditionalists and conservatives, it appeals to those unable to keep up with developments in the world around them.

Similar concerns were voiced when English Literature, now a paradigm of a 'proper' subject, was first taught. They are now as distant as the authors whose novels were first studied. And yet both disciplines do the same thing. They evaluate source material. They critique it. They offer assessments as to its meaning and its effect.

The only difference is that one of the source materials is considered to be worthy, while the other is considered unworthy.

Most people in the media, by the way, are supportive of this interpretation, believing their output unworthy of study. The very fact they believe this is one of the reasons media studies matters so much. This casual disregard for why some might analyse news reports or television soap-operas represents a very specific worldview: that the media just reflects society, it doesn't shape it. Journalists are huge devotees to this idea, because it removes them from the realm of responsibility, a place most of them are genetically adverse to. It can be summed up as: 'Wasn't me guv. I just report it.'

In actual fact, the media creates the world as well as representing it, in a weird, tail-eating cycle of denial and rationalisation. The Daily Mail publishes negative stories about immigrants practically every day. Some of them are true, some of them really aren't. You'd be crazy to think these stories have no impact on the people who read them. Consumed on a daily basis, they eventually colour a person's worldview.

Soap operas do have this effect more than anything else on TV. With church attendance in Britain now so rare the Church of England might as well display artists' impressions of it in museums, soaps inform their readers, in a very real way, of moral choices and the approach they should take to social dilemmas. In them, you will find quite open moral lessons on sex change, unemployment, abortion and race, among a million other issues. It is usually plain which stance the programme is taking, by the evilness or otherwise of the character and the way the scenario is constructed. It's not just soaps either. High production dramas like 24 offer clear-cut political judgments: namely, that it is OK to torture if a bomb is about to go off.

Adverts and Hollywood movies do the same. Take movie stars: I grew up with Arnie and Stallone in the 80s. They were real men: huge, aggressive, violent and stupid. Then as I grew older, the men I was supposed to look like changed. Suddenly David Beckham, a fairy compared to Stallone and his sort, became a byword for sexy. Others came with him: Keanu Reeves and Orlando Bloom to name just two. Now it's hard to find anyone who looks as beefed-up as the 80s stars did. Even those taking on similar roles, like Hugh Jackman in Wolverine, don't let their body get that big. This has an effect on us. We adapt to what the media tells us is attractive. It affects our bodies, by encouraging us to replicate what we see on movie screens, or glossy photoshoots. Even if we don't end up going to the gym, it affects the way we feel about our bodies, and ourselves.

We have both anecdotal and scientific evidence of major changes happening in the sexual activities of young people because of the increased prevalence of pornography. With websites streaming porn for free, teenagers - and even younger children- are watching videos their parents would be appalled at. Surveys of young girls have noted an increase in new, and usually visual, sexual activity being requested by the boys they know. Some of it is just different, some of it has traces of violence and humiliation. This isn't an abstract debate. This is day-to-day reality. It's happening to our kids.

Without studying the media, you just won't get it. It's simply impossible to understand what's going on in the world unless you take media output into account. In terms of social importance, it puts William Shakespeare in the shade. Personally, I quite like Shakespeare. I don't exactly read it on my day off, but when I'm dragged to see a play of his, I usually end up thinking: 'Fair enough. You're a clever bugger.' Nevertheless, I'd not upset that pupils are studying the media they are most bombarded with - the adverts and fashion magazines and newspapers - rather than beautiful books they don't naturally come into contact with.

The value of analysing source material is only partly explained by its qualities. Certainly, if something is beautiful it deserves our time. But its relevance and effect on the world are also good reasons to study it. And on this media studies beats English Literature hands-down.

Even on an assessment of beauty, its students have nothing be ashamed about. The people who hate media studies so much come from a world in which TV drama and movies will never equal Dickens and Wordsworth. They can, and they often do. The films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, for instance, have taught me as much about Britain as any book I've read. The American series The Wire (apologies for the obvious examples) is as complete a critique of capitalism as any Arthur Miller play. Perhaps it's time for media studies' critics to start experimenting with new ways to spend their evenings.