Response to My Newspaper Post

I got a posting on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative so I thought I would respond. Hope it clears the air a bit:

Frances

As usual it was long but the points were two fold:

1. Whether newspapers or television, or even any new media, there is self-segmentation by some almost visceral self selection process which is complex, namely by agreeing with the presentation content or method or just being curious

2. Fox news viewers are not per se stupid, backward etc. I see that view all too often in fellow faculty who lives too close to Cambridge or in the upper west side in NYC. Now I really do not understand Glenn Beck, but there are always different forms of entertainment, I do not understand Jersey Shore either.

But the key point is the old statement by Peter Drucker on what he heard McLuhan say:

 "Did I hear you right," asked one of the professors in the audience, "that you think that printing influenced the courses that the university taught and the role of university all together." "No sir," said McLuhan, "it did not influence; printing determined both, indeed printing determined what henceforth was going to be considered knowledge."

The very fact that as a medium of information exchange changes then what we consider knowledge or truth changes with it. The challenge here is to see how that change occurs. In today's environment with blogs etc we are seeing a return to phamphleteers
which may not bee too bad, for the centralized purveyors of truth truly do not exist. The problem is that there will always be a Marat somewhere whipping up the furies of the populace, but there is not much we can do about that.

Hope this clears up my point.