Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06914_Field_TCUM T479.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 987b | 16 lines

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