Section A（81)We are told that the mass media are the greatest organs for enlightenment tha

Section A

(81)We are told that the mass media are the greatest organs for enlightenment that the world has yet seen; that in Britain, for instance, several million people see each issue of the current affairs program—Panorama. It is true that never in human history were so many people so often and so much exposed to many intimations about societies, forms of life, attitudes other than those which obtain in their local societies. (82) This kind of exposure may well be a point of departure for acquiring certain important intellectual and imaginative qualities; width of judgment, a sense of the variety of possible attitudes. Yet in itself such exposure does not bring intellectual or imaginative development. (83) It is no more than the masses of stone which lie around in a quarry (采石场) and which may, conceivably, go to the making of a cathedral. The mass media cannot build the cathedral, and their way of showing the stones does not always prompt others to build. For the stones are presented within a self-contained and self-sufficient world in which, it is implied, simply to look at them, to observe—fleetingly—individually interesting points of difference between them, is sufficient in itself.

Life is indeed full of problems on which we have to—or feel we should try to—make decisions, as citizens or as private individuals. (84) But neither the real difficulty of these decisions, nor their true and disturbing challenge to each individual, can often be communicated through the mass media. The distinction to suggest real choice, individual decision, which is to be found in the mass media is not simply the product of a commercial desire to keep the customers happy. It is within the grain of mass communication. (85) The organs of Establishment (代表官方),however well-intentioned they may be and whatever their form. (the State, the Church, voluntary societies, political parties), have a vested interest (既得利益)in ensuring that the public boat is not violently rocked, and will so affect those who work within the mass media that they will be led insensibly towards forms of production which, though they go through the motions of dispute and inquiry, do not break through the skin to where such inquiries might really hurt. They will tend to move, when exposing problems, well within the accepted cliche-assumptions of democratic society ad will tend neither radically to question these cliches nor to make a disturbing application of them to features of contemporary life. They will stress the "stimulation" the program gives, but this soon becomes an agitation of problems for the sake of the interest of that agitation in itself; they will therefore, again, assist a form. of acceptance of the status quo. There are exceptions to this tendency, but they are uncharacteristic.

(81)