Page 114 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

inform. Since evil is always punished swiftly, war becomes the only
recourse open to the pure and virtuous in a two-dimensional mass-
mediated reality of good and evil. More recently, however, the cus-
tomary delivery of audiences to the commercial sponsor has been
extended to include the government (in the United States), and
politics in general, as the ultimate sponsor with regulatory and
legislative powers to bring to bear on media ownership. The offi-
cial construction of an “embedded” journalism in the process of
hostile military engagements in Iraq, for instance, is a powerful
example of the merger of government conduct and media interests.
Mass communication enhances the social environment with its
elaborate production of a personal sphere; for instance, penetrating
social (or political) media realities and privileging youth, while
catering mostly to white Anglo-Saxon audiences, ideas about love
and devotion, marriage and family life, including divorce, become
the mainstay of media fare that reaches beyond entertainment.
Expressed in the form of stories, dramatized in episodes of “reality”
television, or even featured in news programs, these accounts – not
unlike newspaper or magazine advice columns – have a moral to
be eagerly shared with the masses.
Yet the complex problems of the “real” social environment – such
as class, gender, or race relations, politics, or work – rarely inform
the mass-mediated reality for individuals, whose actual experience
makes them expert witnesses of the production of falsehood or the
simple omission of facts.Thus, working-class life rarely makes it into
the media, either as a dramatic performance or a news item; when
the homeless disappear from city streets, they also leave the site of
the media and are abandoned – again. Issues of gender equality are
trivialized, if portrayed at all, while race relations are pushed into
the background as they relate to economic and political issues,
stereotyping, and blatant racism – the political biographies of con-
temporary politicians are a case in point.
The mediated realities of politics and work reflect middle-class
concerns without exploring the potential of political action or
workplace reforms, for instance. Instead, they are celebrated as
traditional sites of American enterprise, especially on prime-time
television, while news accounts signal an awareness of political or
corporate corruption and slave labor practices of major US com-

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