unanimous response. The students could not for a moment 
accept the suggestion that the press or any other public 
means of communication could be used with base intent. They 
felt that this would be akin to polluting the air or the water 
supply, and they didn’t feel that their friends and relatives 
employed in these media would sink to such corruption. Failure 
in perception occurs precisely in giving attention to the 
program “content” of our media while ignoring the form, 
whether it be radio or print or the English language itself. There 
have been countless Newton Minows (formerly head of the 
Federal Communications Commission) to talk about the 
Wasteland of the Media, men who know nothing about the form 
of any medium whatever. They imagine that a more earnest 
tone and a more austere theme would pull up the level of the 
book, the press, the movie, and TV. They are wrong to a 
farcical degree. They have only to try out their theory for fifty