Sublime

Mass Media and Mass Men

In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours.

“Terrorism,” said the rental. “We prefer not to use that term,” said Lowbeer, studying her candle flame with something that looked to Netherton to be regret, “if only because terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state.” She looked up at him. “Someone has made an attempt on your life. It may also have been intended to intimidate any asso

Weaver warns about “the insolence of material success,” the “technification of the world,” the obliteration of distinctions that make living “strenuously, or romantically” possible. “Presentism,” the effort to begin each day, as Allen Tate put it, as if there were no yesterday, has robbed man of his history and therefore his identity as a moral age

In 1980, only about 25 percent of U.S. citizens trusted the government to do the right thing anymore. According to Grose, that’s when the boundaries separating media figures, politicians, and spiritual authorities dissolved for good.

I can’t help but remember the 1998 film The Truman Show. It’s a dark comedy about an orphan, Truman Burbank, unwittingly raised by a corporation in a simulated reality broadcast as a TV show around the world. Everyone is aware of the ruse except Truman, played by Jim Carrey.

Wells was best known as a journalist for exposing the lies behind the justification for lynching. Negroes charged with recklessly eyeballing a White woman, or worse, were often people who had found prosperity and respect despite the constraints of Jim Crow. The lynchings put them back in their place. Wells nearly met a similar fate, but escaped as

Stevens’s distinction between interpersonal, or one-to-one, communication and mass, or one-to-many, communication was not new. He was reiterating a venerable legal and ethical principle that, throughout the twentieth century, served as the cornerstone of media governance and shaped the structure and operations of the communication industry.