If George Washington could return to the country he fathered 200 years ago, he would certainly ask what had happened to all the horses. He would be surprised to see they had nearly all been replaced by millions of horseless carriages, racing at unbelievable speeds, on a vast grid of highways connecting cities and their soaring skyscrapers, all lighted at night not with candles but with millions of electric bulbs glowing magically forever. He would find an unbelievable, fairy-tale world, different from anything he had known.

Certainly, Washington would be most impressed by change itself. His own world had changed little for many hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years before him. The speed of change would be difficult for him to comprehend, and it sometimes is even hard for us to understand and to accept. In the space of only 200 years, almost everything, even the basic facts of life, have been transformed in nearly every way. Time has a completely different meaning in this speeded-up life; everything is faster. Distance is not the same as Washington knew it, either; everything is shorter, nearer. Food is no longer the stuff you grow in your garden or shoot with your gun; it comes in packages, processed in some distant factory. Many people never even think that milk comes from cows or that french fries are potatoes that were grown in the ground.

Many of the old truths that Washington believed in would be shattered for him now: his ideas about stars and planets, of endless frontiers, of jungles filled with exotic animals, of kings in royal splendor and savages in leopard skins, and of the nature of illnesses, the human mind, even of the substance of matter itself. He would find newspapers with stories about things that had happened in China or Europe or Africa only hours ago; live and instantaneous television pictures of scenes and events that his generation had never experienced; pictures of the surface of Mars, or of Earth from outer space, or of bacteria in a glass of water; telephone conversations with friends or family thousands of miles away; an almost endless cache of data on computer screens with the touch Of just a few buttons and key words. All of what we take for granted at the end of the twentieth century would stun him into total disbelief. In short, it would have been impossible for him to imagine today's mass media.

Certainly, the first president of the United States would be awed by the power of these new media to change ideas about the world, perceptions, and even life itself. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of a new millennium, there can be little doubt about mass media's impact on the way the world works. Consider a few examples: The communist world collapsed, and mass media played a key role. In the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the American government seemed to be as much concerned with influencing the media as with fighting the enemy. Our politicians have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on television advertising; they are no longer judged by their ideas or leadership but by their ability to project a telegenic image. Athletes no longer seem as engaged in sportsman-like competition as they are in competing for huge salaries as mass entertainers. The 0. J. Simpson trials and the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, have shown us that celebrities often command the world's media attention more than real issues of life and death for the planet.

Most of us have had some direct experience with the impact of media on our lives, and we have witnessed their power in molding institutions and shaping events. What is still debatable, however, is whether that power is being used for good or for ill. In this discussion there are many sides-and that is what this book is all about.

Without question, the mass media in America are unique. Americans have the most mass media, spend the most time on them, and fulfill most of the mass media appetites of the world. Yet we have not necessarily become the best-informed citizens of the world, nor the most literate. In many ways, we are no longer even the most successful.

Television in America has become the most powerful of all mass media, which is why it gets more emphasis in this book. Simply put, we spend more time on television and are more concerned about its impact than all the other media together.

A sociological description of mass media in the United States can help to explain much of why they do what they do. We may like or dislike media, but unless we understand the rationales for their content and formats, we will be less able to criticize them constructively and to work for improvements.

We should begin by defining our terms. Basically, we divide mass media into two categories: print or newspapers, magazines, and books; and electronic or radio, television, sound recordings, motion pictures, and the Internet. These instruments must be able to carry messages quickly to audiences so large that they cannot be gathered together in any one place at any one time. Thus, mass audiences are apt to be diverse, heterogeneous, and multicultural. Mass communicators themselves are not people with whom these audiences have personal contact; they are remote and anonymous. The messages of mass communication are usually transient and impermanent as well. For radio and television, they are here one moment, gone the next, The messages of newspapers last only a day, and magazines only a week or a month. Books and films last a bit longer, but in an age of mass media, even they are displaced quickly.'

At the end of the twentieth century, about 1,550 daily newspapers are being published in the United States, down from about 2,600 at their peak earlier in the twentieth century. About 7,500 weekly newspapers that provide news about a local community are being published, a fairly stable number for the past few decades. Tens of thousands of other, special interest weeklies are published by religious, industrial, organizational, or institutional groups to further their own purposes. About 11,000 consumer magazines are published on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis (and a few even daily); these are publications available to the general public, either on the newsstand or through the mail. Thousands of others are published for special interests, on a regular or irregular basis. About 40,000 different book titles are published each year, and even if some are produced in only a few thousand copies, the total copies of books printed in the United States each year is in the hundreds of millions.

In the late 1990s in the United States, about 5,000 AM and 5,000 FM stations are broadcasting in local communities, as are about 1,550 commercial and 350 educational television stations. The sound recording industry is more centralized; only about 250 labels (or companies) are now responsible for 90 percent of all cassette, CD, video and disk sound recordings, and altogether, they produce about 1, 14 billion pieces of recorded music a year, including music videos. The motion picture industry is the most concentrated of all; seven major production companies produce half of the 421 new, and 50 of the reissued, feature films per year in America.

Government plays a unique role in American mass media. Unlike that in most other countries, the U.S. government does not own or operate any mass media that are readily available for public consumption within the country. (One exception is Voice of America, the federal government's international radio station, which is broadcast only in shortwave and aimed at foreign countries. Another exception is Stars and Stripes, a daily newspaper published with government funds for personnel on military bases who theoretically might not have access to privately published newspapers.) Also unlike that in many other countries, the American government rarely provides financial subsidy to mass media. (One exception has been government support for public broadcasting, to ensure that some educational programming will get on the air-waves.)

The American philosophy about government's relationship to mass media comes primarily from the tradition that government should not compete with private industry, and that citizens should get their information from private sources, to help ensure that government cannot manipulate information to suit its own purposes or to increase its own power. The philosophy about government control of mass media comes from the First Amendment to the Constitution, which says that "Congress shall make no laws abridging freedom of speech or of the press." (The primary exception are regulations governing broadcasting, but even these restrictions say relatively little about broadcast content.)

Thus, American government plays a minor role in legal control of the media. There are few laws and few institutional supports.

In any discussion of mass media, we must include advertising, which isn't a medium itself but is so inextricably woven into the fabric of most mass media that it cannot be ignored. By advertising we mean the purchase of time or space in print and electronic media to present a specific message. Advertisers are not employed by any medium, but since they provide critical financial support, they play a key role in the mass communication process.

Increasingly, public relations has become an essential part of mass media as well. Public relations people also are not employees of any medium; rather, they serve the special interests of those outside the mass media. They seek to influence the content of mass media by packaging news and information, by shaping personalities to fit media formats, and by creating or staging events to capture the attention of the media. Their goal is to achieve a particular mass message and (the public relations people would hope) a particular audience response. It is no longer possible to understand mass media without understanding public relations.

We must understand that mass media in the United States are market-driven. They are private businesses, usually established to make a profit; to do so, they must provide a commodity that people want. To sell advertising time or space, any medium must have an audience that advertisers want to reach. If the medium does not attract a large enough audience to bring in enough money from subscriptions or advertising sales to cover its costs and make a profit, it will most likely go out of business unless its owners can cover its losses with profits from other businesses.

Instruments of mass communication are relatively new to human history. Some, like electronic media, were inventions of the twentieth century. Print media, though invented earlier, were essentially reinvented in the last 100 years to reach a mass audience. Advertising developed much earlier, but in the twentieth century, it has became a massive and, to some extent, scientific industry. Public relations is the quintessential twentieth-century profession, perhaps the very symbol of our age; in fact, much of today's news has it origins in, or is somehow affected by, public relations efforts.

The impact of mass media is a fitting subject as we start a new century. For much of the 1900s, scholars argued about the real power of mass media. Now, most concede that mass media have powerful effects, even though questions remain about the precise nature of their impact or the actual cause- and-effect relationship.

Do the media make things happen, or do they merely report what has happened? Do they make us act? Do they influence our opinions? Do they merely reflect our actions, thoughts, and feelings? Obviously, there are many variables for scientists to consider when trying to answer these questions. In the mid 1950s, many social scientists believed that mass media had limited effects, that they affected each individual differently. Two leading social scientists, Bernard Berelson and Morris Janowitz, concluded their examination of these questions with the following statement:

The effects of communication are many and diverse. They may be shortrange or long-run. They may be manifest or latent. They may be strong or weak. They may derive from any number of aspects of the communication content. They may be considered as psychological or political or economic or sociological. They may operate upon opinions, values, information levels, skills, taste, or overt behavior

Berelson and Janowitz didn't mean that it was useless to be concerned about the impact of mass media. They meant that every conclusion had to be qualified. They meant that one must be exceedingly careful in making generalizations and assigning blame. They believed that the effects of mass media must be measured and predicted on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration all the variables in each situation.

The carefully guarded conclusions of Berelson and Janowitz, however, were stated at the middle of the twentieth century, before television had become such a powerful force. In the mid-1950s television was still primarily a limited adult activity. Most people's values had already been shaped by other forces namely, family, religion, teachers, and print media. By the end of the twentieth century, social scientists were ready to assign a more direct and powerful impact to television.

Most important, perhaps, has been the work of George Gerbner, whose "cultivation analysis" is based on the theory that television, as the dominant medium, has a cumulative effect, ultimately creating the culture in which we live. Today, according to Gerbner, it is television-not parents, teachers, or religious leaders-that establishes the values of young children, the ethics they will hold for their lifetime. Television tells the stories on which our society is based. Gerbner writes:

Television is the overall socializing process superimposed on all the other processes. By the time children can speak (let alone go to school and perhaps learn to read) they will have absorbed thousands of hours of living in a highly compelling world. They see everything represented: all the social types, situations, art and science. Our children learn-and we ourselves learn and maintain-certain assumptions about life that bear the imprint of this most early and continued ritual. In our age, it is television mythology we grow up in and grow up with.... Those who tell stories hold power in society. Today television tells most of the stories to most of the people most of the time.

Many scientific studies have confirmed that for the news and information we need about ourselves, our communities, and our world, we now turn more often to mass media, especially television, than to our families, friends, neighbors, religious organizations, or social institutions.

This book examines some of the current issues from several different perspectives. Some authors presented here vigorously support and defend the media. Others are opposed and critical. Still others try to take a balanced approach. The issues are changing, and so is the world. It is a much different place today than it was only a few years ago, in 1985 and 1988, when the first and second editions of this book were published, or since the third edition was published in 1995. Since then, the Soviet empire has collapsed, the Iron Curtain has come down, the Berlin Wall has been demolished, and communism (which prevailed throughout much of the world in 1988) has been discredited as a viable political and economic system.

Other issues have also changed. We're not so concerned about the rights of citizens to have access to the mass media for their own views as we once were-though we probably should be-nor are we as concerned about business and the media, or religion and the media, which were covered in earlier editions. Other issues, however, such as responsibility, ethics, violence, sex, politics, government, war, minorities, gender, age, culture, and technology, remain important.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the average American spent a few minutes each day reading a daily newspaper, a few minutes more reading magazines, maybe less than an hour reading a book-and no time at all watching movies or television, listening to radio or recordings, or surfing the World Wide Web, none of which existed as a public medium. By the end of the twentieth century, Americans are spending more than half their leisure time-activities other than eating, sleeping, or working-on mass media, and the majority of that time is spent watching television. Today, the numbers are 3,400 hours a year on media, or about 40% of our total time, more than we spent sleeping (2,900 hours, 33 %) or working (2000 hours, 23 V, or all the other things we do (only 460 hours, 5 %).

In America today, young people spend more time in front of the television than they do in class. By the time an average American graduates from high school, he or she will have spent about 12,000 hours in class and about 19,000 hours watching the tube.

The mass media themselves have changed, not just for former communists or citizens of the developing world but even for Americans. In fact, the media seem to be in a state of constant evolution, which sometimes is as baffling for us as if we had been dropped here like George Washington from the eighteenth century. Only fifty years ago, in the 1940s, most people in this world had never seen a television set. Only thirty years ago, in the 1960s, most had never seen color pictures on a TV screen. Only twenty years ago, in the 1980s, most could only receive a half-dozen different TV channels. Only ten years ago, in the late 1980s, most had never heard of the Internet, and only a few years ago, in the mid-1990s only a small percentage of people were communicating online. Since 1995, an entirely new mass medium-the internet-has emerged as a force in the world, and the changing media themselves have become a major issue.

The process of change for American media has been particularly explosive in the last decade- and- a-half of the twentieth century. In 1995, Robert Mac Neill former co-anchor of the MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour on public television told an audience at the tenth anniversary of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York:

About ten years ago our known media universe exploded with a big bang and everything flew into fragments that have since been coalescing into new galaxies: the old and new television networks, satellite and cable companies, movie and publishing empires, record companies and video rental chains, home shopping and telephone companies, are all still colliding and merging, or shattering and reconverging differently. We are probably still at too young a stage in the birth of this new media universe to know which will come to rest as fixed stars and which will burn out, but the heavens are still trembling at their nativity, shareholders and employees from shock, and more detached observers from anxiety about what the new constellations will mean.

To understand the changing media at the end of the twentieth century, it is important to analyze the anatomy of the "big bang" that MacNeil so poetically describes. Perhaps the best place to start is with history: America was expected to be a diverse society, and the mass media were supposed to represent and ensure that diversity. In fact, however, the mass media at the end of the twentieth century have become less diverse, less competitive, and more standardized despite more television channels to watch, more radio stations to listen to, and more printed material to read.

Media critic Richard Harwood points out that the "Golden Age" for diversity in the American press was the period from 1880 to 1930. During that time, some 2,600 dailies were published, and every major city had a half dozen or more competing papers. At one time, New York City had 30 dailies, with many different ideological and political persuasions. More than 1,000 foreign -language papers, including 160 dailies, were published in 24 different languages. In addition, the black press included 500 different periodicals and millions of readers.

By the end of the twentieth century, only a handful of cities had competing dailies, and few independently owned newspapers remained. Nearly all daily papers in the United States had become politically "independent "-or "neutered," as Harwood characterizes them-with bland or conformist political convictions, or none at all. The ethnic press had declined to 236 papers and "lost much of its distinctiveness," Harwood writes, and the shrinking black press has been "enfeebled."

While newspapers are more profitable than ever today, they also are more efficient. They can operate with fewer employees, meaning that even within the newsroom, fewer voices are being heard. According to a study by the Freedom Forum, the newsroom labor force of 53,700 in the mid-1990s is expected to decline to 50,000 by the year 2001, even as the U.S. population continues to increase.

Radio and television have never been nonconformist, extremist, or highly partisan. They have always broadcast middle-of-the-road programming that would reach the largest possible audience, The Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that broadcasting give all sides equal time and opportunity, in fact discouraged stations from taking a strong stand on issues. Broadcast journalists frequently blamed the Fairness Doctrine for their bland coverage. But with the end of the Doctrine as a result of deregulation during the Reagan administration (1980-1988), programming content, including news and documentaries, has not become bolder. In fact, broadcast news has become less varied since deregulation, and at the end of the twentieth century, it is almost impossible to find a hard-hitting documentary anywhere on radio or television even on public television,

Patterns of ownership have changed as well. Daily and weekly newspapers once were locally and family-owned enterprises. Of the 1,550 or so daily newspapers published in America today, more than three-fourths are owned by newspaper groups or larger corporations. And a relatively small number of these groups or corporations-about 145-account for more than four-fifths of the total circulation of U.S. dailies.

Book and magazine publishing has always been more centralized than newspapers, being headquartered mostly in New York, but it still was often family-owned or operated as small businesses. Now, most of the major book companies and magazines have been merged into larger corporations, many of them media conglomerates. Specialized magazine and book publishing operations have been launched across the country, and these have usually been feasible economic ventures only because they do not require the huge investment in equipment required to produce a daily newspaper. These specialized magazines and books, however, are also not likely to reach a mass audience.

Radio and television were also small and locally owned businesses, mandated as such by Federal Communication Commission regulations that limited ownership to seven AM, seven FM, and seven TV stations. No owner could operate more than one in any given listening area as well. When networks were started in the late 1920s, this began the trend toward centralized an nationalized programming content, but station owners themselves remained relatively small-business operators.

With the deregulation started during the Reagan years, limitations on ownership were relaxed. When deregulation became complete with the overhaul of the communications law in 1996 (including no limits at all on the number of radio stations an individual or corporation can own), mergers began almost immediately. Within a few months Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, with 22 TV stations (the largest number in history) became larger than ABC, CBS, and NBC, and its stations reached some 40 percent of al American homes, being located in 11 of the top 12 markets. (ABC, CBS and NBC with their affiliate arrangements with local stations-the "net works"- were still massive, however, and provided more hours of programming than Fox.) Other organizations such as the Tribune Company also acquired new stations and was broadcasted in eight of the top 11 markets

Ben Bagdikian points out that by 1989, 29 corporations controlled most of the business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books, and motion pictures in the United States. By 1996, writes Robert McChesney, only about 50 firms controlled the overwhelming majority of the world's mass media, and nine of those 50-Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, Murdoch', News Corp., TCI, General Electric (NBC), Sony, and Seagram-held the dominant share. Immediately following are Westinghouse (CBS), New York Times, Hearst, Comcast, and Gannett.

Quite naturally, the purpose of mass communication has shifted. When the businesses were locally and family-owned, community and public service was as important a motive as profit. The primary goal of any large, publicly held corporation, however, is simply to make a profit and provide income for shareholders. The mass media have become bottom-line oriented, and the bottom line is money.

This orientation has changed news judgment. News is no longer the information that people need; it is now the information that news executives believe that people want. The news media make enormous sums of money providing titillating information, usually about celebrities, to feed an enormous public appetite for gossip and rumor, especially if it involves crime, violence, sex, and famous people. Two of the biggest stories, and big money makers, of the mid-1990s were the trials of 0. J. Simpson and the death and funeral of Princess Diana. Neither was news of serious consequence for their vast audiences, but the media exploited them-to the detriment of other, more important issues. As Robert MacNeil wrote about CNN's coverage of Simpson:

Keeping the audience hooked led CNN, in my opinion, to overdo its coverage of the 0. J. Simpson story. So did the commercial networks, operating on the same reasoning as CNN: If we do not do it, everyone else will and our audience will drain away. The result was that the 0. J. Simpson story was hyped, hyperventilated and blown out of all proportion to its importance in the scheme of things.... The obsession paid off handsomely. One report estimated that the Simpson coverage goosed CNN's ratings to an extent that raised profits by an additional $70 million in one quarter.

Nielsen Media Research says about 50 million Americans watched Princess Diana's funeral, at a very early hour on a Saturday morning. Nielsen also estimated that an incredible 2.5 billion viewers saw the rites worldwide, bringing in, of course, an equally astounding advertising revenue. Almost every medium in the world capitalized on Diana's death in some way-and made a profit from it. Time magazine, for example, produced a Diana commemorative issue that sold a million more newsstand copies than its usual weekly sale.' TV stations that concentrate most on violent and sensational news get the highest ratings and, thus, the highest profits. Wars, too, always make a lot of money for the mass media.

We have reached the point at which television is almost exclusively an entertainment medium, without much non -entertainment content. Even the news and information selected for television by its gatekeepers emphasizes the vivid, the bloody, the sexy, and the emotional. The same is increasingly true of newspapers and magazines. USA Today, the national newspaper started in 1982, has led the way in making newspapers more visual, more colorful, and more like television. Many other newspapers have followed its lead, and even the most popular magazines and books today are those that entertain rather than inform or analyze, express thoughtful opinions, or deal with philosophical issues.

In his four-part series for public broadcasting, The Public Mind.- Image and Reality in America, Bill Moyers showed how we have become a society inundated with visual images, a barrage that pummels our senses daily. The average TV viewer is exposed to about 42,000 TV commercials a year. "Almost everywhere we look today," Moyers said, "creative expression serves a commercial goal." Advertising has become "the common wafer of the marketplace."

What does this cultural atmosphere say to and about us? And should we care? Moyers writes:

Ever since the pioneers of public relations and advertising spoke about the "engineering of consent," critics have analyzed its effects. For some it reveals pure manipulation-the appropriation of language and meaning, the trivializing of life and thought. For others, it is the dawning of a new era-the printed word is dead and art and commerce are joined in ever more sophisticated ways.

Some probable results: The U.S. literacy rate is declining; many countries now have a more literate population than America. Readership of newspapers also has declined steadily over the past thirty years, and was sharply down in the 1990s. Many Americans are woefully ignorant of politics and public affairs, and they are less and less active politically. And, interestingly, American distrust of mass media is increasing.

A discouraging fact about life in America has been the declining percentage of citizens who vote. By the end of the twentieth century, fewer than half of those eligible were voting in national elections. And with this reduction in the percentages of voters, it became easier for special interests to sway elections. All they had to do was spend a lot of money on television and other media advertising in a campaign to assure victory with a smaller number of votes. Thus, political success increasingly depended on fundraising, usually from well-financed special interest groups, to pay for media advertising.

Crucial issues were often fought at the state level between special- interest groups seeking legal status for their concerns, such as affirmative action, handgun control, or regulation of pornography on the Internet. In California, for example, more money was spent in 1996 on campaigns for special initiatives than on electing the president. In Washington state, in another example, citizens in the urban area of Seattle, concerned about accidental handgun deaths, supported an initiative in 1997 for trigger locks on handguns. Citizens in the rural eastern part of the state perceived this proposal as a threat to their constitutional right to bear arms, however, and the National Rifle Association joined their side, spent millions of dollars on media advertising, and defeated the trigger-lock initiative.

In the age of mass media, Americans have been made to think that democracy means having lots of consumer choices in the marketplace of products, rather than alternative choices in ideology, issues, or political leadership in the marketplace of ideas.

When we realize that the illusions we receive from mass media are exactly that-illusions, not real or accurate or perfectly matched to our perceptions we become disillusioned. The first time we read a newspaper story that describes an event about which we have personal knowledge, we are likely to say, "Hey, that's not the way it was; I saw it myself and it didn't happen that way at all." The first time we visit a television studio and see the painted sets for the local news show, we say, "Gee, I thought that was the real city skyline behind the anchorperson." The first time we go to Washington, D.C., and see the White House, we exclaim, "It's so small! It seemed so much bigger on television! "

This book is about the illusions we get from mass media-and our disillusionment when we find out that everything isn't the way we thought it was. Dispelling these illusions may be one of the most important responsibilities of modern education. The illusions and disillusionments of young people in our society are probably greater than they have ever been in any society before. This book is not a scientific examination of the specifics of the impact of mass media. Instead, it presents current arguments about that impact by some leading thinkers, experienced observers, and thoughtful critics. Questions about the impact of mass media usually engender heated debate. The arguments raised here may be among the most important of our age, because in one way or another we are all affected by mass media. And we have all debated these questions ourselves, ever since we emerged from behind the dark glass of childhood to realize that TV, the silver screen, and the printed word may not, after all, represent reality.

What can we believe? What is true, and what is not? Education must provide a way to answer these questions. We need to be educated about mass media if we want to steer a clear course between illusions on the one hand and disillusionment on the other.

One thing seems certain: The power and reach of mass media at the beginning of the new millennium is greater than ever. The age of mass communication has made it possible for us to gain access to far more information than ever before, Information is indispensable to a complex and advanced civilization. We are in information -hungry Society: we need an ever-increasing amount of facts to maintain and increase our standard of living Information today is a commodity that we are willing to pay for. We also have more leisure time, and we depend on mass media to provide much of our information and entertainment. We have often been told that information is power. The question is, are we getting the information we really need? And what must we do to ensure that the information we receive from mass media will meet our needs and not the purposes of someone else?

This book is designed to help readers reach their own conclusions about the role of mass media in their lives. Conflicting arguments are often presented here deliberately These arguments should be discussed, and new facts and perspectives should be considered so that each person can arrive at an informed point of view. Only in this manner will truth-truth for each individual-emerge from this vast marketplace of facts and ideas.

Today, mass media are too essential to be ignored. The issues raised by them will no doubt continue to grow in importance throughout the twenty-first century. And even if George Washington were dropped from a time machine into our midst from the 1790s, it wouldn't take him long to understand and agree with those conclusions.

1. For a good sociological definition of mass media, see Charles R. Wright, Mass Communication: A Sociological Perspective, 3 rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1986).

2. Bernard Berelson and Morris Janowitz, Reader in Public Opinion and Communication (New York: Free Press, 1966), p. 379.

3. Quoted in "Society's Storyteller: How Television Creates the Myths by Which We Live," Media & Values, Fall 1992, p. 9.

4. Robert MacNeil, "Regaining Dignity," Media Studies Journal, Summer 1995, p. 105.

5. Richard Harwood, "The Golden Age of Diversity," Washington Post, July 22, 1994, p. A23.

6. Robert MacNeil, "More News, Lower Standards, The Freedom Forum, Oct. 16, 1996. 7. See Lance Morrow, "Journalism After Diana," Columbia journalism Review Nov./Dec. 1997, pp. 38-39.

8. Bill Moyers, "Consuming Images," The Public Mind. Images and Reality in America, Part One, Public Affairs Television Inc., Alvin Perlmutter Inc., the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1989.