ABSTRACT
The electronic media are the most attractive and promising field of employment for young intellectuals; hence, among the younger practitioners in radio and television “Marxists” abound. One of the chief failings of all this discussion, paradoxically in a field supposedly universal and tending to transform the world into a global village, is its parochialism. Vast theoretical structures are built on the strengths or shortcomings of the particular radio or television services in the authors’ own countries, world-shaking generalizations are spun out of the personal idiosyncrasies of the presenters of Panorama or News at Ten in Britain, the twitchings of Walter Cronkite's moustache in New York, or the inane gigglings of Johnny Carson in California. The most outlandish aspect of this curious book is its total unawareness of the fact that television also exists in the noncapitalist world. The selection of themes in the mass media may be dull, unskillful, and even injurious to the cultural well-being of a society.
