Gitlin admits to being a stickler for grammar and then turns to give a
lengthy reason why "the media" shouldn’t be referred to as a
singular entity. What the author doesn’t seem to realize in
intellectualizing the media is that’s it’s already a plural noun.
Gitlin offers a short history of how society got to the point where it’s
supersaturated with a torrent of information coming at it at incredible
speed. He says, "The most important truth about the communications we
live among is not that they deceive (which they do); or that they broadcast
a limiting ideology (which they do); or emphasize sex and violence (which
they do); or convey diminished images of the good, the true, and the normal
(which they do); or corrode the quality of art (which they also do); or
reduce language (which they surely do), but that with all their lies, skews,
and shallow pleasures, they surround and seep into our way of life with a
promise of feeling-always there, speeding forward, flashing out of large
screens and small, gushing forth in living rooms, or sliding back into the
background of life, but always beckoning, always coursing onward."
He complains that the masses have never been able to afford to go to the
theater, but as a professor of journalism and culture at New York
University, it’s a sure bet that he’s a regular attender. It ‘s also
obvious that he abhors network television and feels more at home tuned to
PBS.
It’s one thing for intellectuals (i.e. those that think themselves
smarter than the rest of society and let everyone know it) to preach how
things should be from the comfort of their Ivory Towers. It’s another for
them to actually do something about it (which they almost never do).
In this book, Gitlin proports to be a a 21st -Century Marshall
McLuhan. But unlike McLuhan, he rambles on endlessly about the "media
torrent" while unleashing a torrent of intellectual garbage on his
readers.
Those who devour the banter on National Public Radio
will love Todd Gitlin’s book, Media Unlimited. In this 240-plus-page
volume, Gitlin manages to tell his readers what they already know–that the
media is overwhelming them.