Mass media Quotes

“Mass culture”

“Social media”

“Mainstream media”

“Alternative media”

“The media are slavishly subservient to the entertainment desires of their audience.”

“Wikipedia: Mass media”

“Widespread media coverage on any potential danger may bring about considerable increase in perceived fear.”

“Wikicommons: Mass media”

“Western media’s idealization of an ultra-thin female body type has long been viewed as an important sociocultural risk factor for eating disorders.”

“The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation in their own right : even if they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muck-raking, their very reporting of certain facts can be sufficient to generate anxiety, indignation or panic.”

“The incredibly sinister role of the press, the cinema, the radio, has consisted in passing that original reality through a pair of flattening rollers to substitute for it a superimposed pattern of ideas an images with no real roots in the deep being of the subject of this experiment.”

“The advertising industry almost exclusively underwrites mass media in the United States. Newspapers obtain 75 to 80 percent of their revenue from advertisers, general circulation magazines about half (Jhally 1990). All revenue for broadcasts such as television and radio programming come from advertising. Clearly, advertising is the economic lifeblood of the media (Kilbourne 1989).”

“If the media are flawed and provide poor service, the responsibility lies with the people behind and within them. If the media have become one of the most troubling features of contemporary society, it is because those working in the media are giving poor testimony to their own humanity. In other words, if the media are in decline, it is because people are in decline. If the media have lost their sense of truth, it is because we have lost ours.”

“Remember that CNN, Time Warner, Disney, NBC, Fox News, and the rest are part of the same ideological system, serve the same clientele, and are owned by the same relatively tiny group of people whose interest is to keep things as they are. Memory is an inhibition, a possible threat to their hegemony, just as it is very dangerous for a critic to keep making connections between supposedly un- or nonpolitical institutions like the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and on the other hand, base commercial interests.”

“Republicans became increasingly mistrustful of the media in 2016 when Trump was campaigning for president and was sharply critical of the media's coverage of him. Between 2015 and 2016, Republican trust in the mass media fell 18 points to its historical low of 14%, where it remained in 2017. Following a seven-point boost last year, it has returned to 15%. For their part, Democrats have consistently been more trusting of the media than Republicans but rallied around the press and became even more trusting when Trump took office in 2017.”

“A primary issue with the media’s inaccurate depiction of crime and the criminal justice system is that it socially constructs people’s perceptions about the nature of crime and how the criminal justice system works...One particular concern specific to fictional crime dramas, often referred to as the ‘CSI Effect,’ postulates viewers develop expectations for police and courtroom settings regarding the collection, evaluation, and presentation of physical evidence, including DNA evidence (Dowler, Fleming, & Muzzatti, 2006;Goodman-Delahunty & Tait,2006).”

“Gallup first measured trust in the mass media in a 1972 survey when 68% of Americans said they trusted it. Similar levels were recorded in 1974 (69%) and 1976 (72%), but two decades later, when Gallup next asked the question, trust had fallen to 53%.
Although overall trust was at the majority level until 2004, no more than 21% of Americans dating back to 1972 ever said they had the greatest level of trust. Currently, 13% have a great deal of trust, 28% a fair amount, 30% not very much and 28% none at all.”

“Conservatives will never win (the American culture war) if they imagine themselves as combatants atop defensive battlements, hurling abuse on the mass media. We need to involve ourselves in the creation of pop culture, and thereby help change how that category is defined. That project starts by creating good content, whether in the form of books, films, TV, music or magazines. If politics is downstream from culture, and culture is largely shaped by entertainment, why are most influential conservatives ignoring the latter? We delude ourselves if we think everything we say or do has to go straight to politics.”

“The democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived. Leaders of the media claim that their new choices rest on unbiased professional and objective criteria, and they have support for this contention in the intellectual community. If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to “manage” public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality.”

“[C]onsider duties to persons in need, but at a great distance. Prior to the advent of mass media of communication, the duties of many Christians to such persons were considerably different than they are now. Today to the advent of mass media of communication, the duties of many Christians to such persons were considerably different than they are now. Today, because all moderately prosperous Christians in the West are capable of knowing about, for example, starvation or AIDS in Africa, and are also capable of providing aid, many of those Christians, perhaps the great majority, will have some obligation to contribute to the aid of such suffering Africans. Their plight now is practically relevant to Christians in the West in a way that it simply was not two hundred years ago.”