Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07166_Field_TCUM T731.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 911b | 15 lines

program “content” have talked nonsense about “TV violence.”
The spokesmen of censorious views are typically semiliterate
book-oriented individuals who have no competence in the
grammars of newspaper, or radio, or of film, but who look
askew and askance at all non-book media. The simplest
question about any psychic aspect, even of the book medium,
throws these people into a panic of uncertainty. Vehemence of
projection of a single isolated attitude they mistake for moral
vigilance. Once these censors became aware that in all cases
“the medium is the message” or the basic source of effects,
they would turn to suppression of media as such, instead of
seeking “content” control. Their current assumption that
content or programming is the factor that influences outlook
and action is derived from the book medium, with its sharp
cleavage between form and content.