包邮传播学专业英语教程-(第四版)

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         N SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, MILLIONS OF AMERICANS--IN FACT, millions
       of people around the globe--went to bed in shock. The world had
changed. The United States no longer seemed invincible. Americans no
longer felt safe at home. As everyone, from politicians to pundits to the
people next door, said, "Nothing would ever be the same again." Much, in
 fact, is the same; but not our view of the mass media. The questions we were
 asking about media in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the questions
we are raising now are shaped in large part by what happened on that
horrific day.
     At first we were impressed, even moved, by the performance of our
 mass media. The coverage of the attack and rescue effort in all media was
 thorough, knowledgeable, courageous, even-handed, and sensitive. But then
we started asking, Why were we caught so badly by surprise? Why didn't
we know about the anti-American feelings in much of the world? Where
 were the media? This question was asked again and again as the invasion
 of Iraq produced none of the weapons of mass destruction that had been
 the cause belli. Had the media been too compliant? Was their lack of aggres-
 sive checking a function of economic factors such as concentration and
 conglomeration? Were the media's failures in the run-up to war the fuel
 igniting an invigorated media reform movement at home on the political
 Right as well as the Left?
     But it did not take a cowardly terrorist attack on civilians or an inva-
 sion of a hostile country to start people thinking and talking about the
media. September 11 and the war in Iraq chased from the cultural forum
the relentless criticism of the media performance in the 2000presidential
elections.Dan Rather said that Media proresslonals
 their faces after that shameful failure of our democracy; they wore the
 entire omelet. People questioned the media's priorities--a missing Capitol
 Hill intern garnered more coverage than world events. Others were com-
 plaining that movies were starting to look like extra-long commercials,
 while television commercials were getting increasingly shorter and all
 media, even novels, were seemingly drowning in more and more advertis-
 ing. Critics across the political spectrum were concerned that media com-
 panies were merging at an unhealthy-for-democracy rate. Concern about
 media violence and sexual content remained unabated. Furor followed a
 television network's proposal to air hard-liquor ads. People who had lost
their life savings wanted to know what the media were doing while Enron
and WorldCom were stealing from them. To First Amendment advocates,
new copyright rules designed to thwart digital piracy were undoing two
centuries of fair use copyright protection, with consumers and democracy
poorer for it.
     The media, like sports and politics, are what we talk about. Argue over.
Dissect and analyze.
     Those of us who teach media know that these conversations are essen-
tial to the functioning of a democratic society. We also know that what
moves these conversations from the realm of chatting and griping to that of
effective public discourse is media education--the systematic study of
media and their operation in our political and economic system, as well as
their contribution to the development and maintenance of the culture that
binds us together and defines us. W