he-scene broadcasts, advertisements and/or opportunities.
Secondly, mass communication helps us to correlate our response to the challenges and opportunities which appear on the horizon and to reach consensus on social actions. Town meetings have been replaced by information conveyed through up-to-date technology which enable us to read or listen to the rival arguments, see the rival candidates and judge the issues.
Third, it helps to transmit culture to new members. By supplying textbooks, teaching films and programs and constantly picturing the roles and accepted mores of our society, mass communication has taken over the role of teacher originally held by parents and tribal elders.
Further, the media entertains us. The ballad singer, the dancer, the storyteller and the traveling theater - even the pitchman - have gone on television, radio and film. Lastly, mass communication helps sell goods and services. Without advertising, the economic system could not survive.
Before the age of printing, man saw the world with all his senses, three-dimensionally, realistically. Through printing, he saw it only with his eyes, and in an abstracted, linear, sequential form (Rivers 18). Printed language acted as a filter for reality, giving information its own form. Television, on the other hand, is similar to the oral culture. It merely extends man's eyes and ears and lets him see reality in an immediate sense (Rivers 18). Today, technology has developed more machines, including computers, to enhance the image of information and its communication.
As the source of information, however, the media has always been in a position to be criticized. Although the first American book extensively attacking the press was published in 1859, the real thrust began with the publication of a series of articles by Will Irwin in 1911 arguing that the influence of the newspaper had shifted from editorials to news columns, that the commer...