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  3. We are told that the mass media are the greatest organs for enlightenment that the world has yet seen; that in Britain, for inst

We are told that the mass media are the greatest organs for enlightenment that the world has yet seen; that in Britain, for inst

admin2009-06-24  62
问题     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 so many intimations about societies, forms of life, attitudes other than those which obtain in their own local societies. 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. It is no more than the masses of a stone which lie around in a quarry 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. 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 disinclination to suggest real choice, individual decision, which is to be found in the mass media is simply the product of a commercial desire to keep the customers happy. It is within the grain of mass communications. The organs of the Establishment, however well intentioned they may be and whatever their form (the State, the Church, voluntary societies, political parties), have a vested interest 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 the skin to where such enquiries might really hurt. They will tend to move, when exposing problems, well within the accepted cliché—cliché not to make a disturbing application of them to features of contemporary 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.
    The result can be seen in a hundred radio and television programs as plainly as in the normal treatment of public issues in the popular press. Different levels of background in the readers or viewers may be assumed, but what usually takes place is. a substitute for the process of arriving at judgment. Programs such as this are noteworthy less for the "stimulation" they offer than for the fact that that stimulation (repeated at regular intervals) may become a substitute for, and so a hindrance to, judgments carefully arrived at and tested in the mind and on the pulses. Mass communications, then, do not ignore intellectual matters; they tend to castrate them, to allow them to sit on the side of the fireplace, sleek and useless, a family plaything.
选项 A、insufficient diversity of information
B、too restricted a view of life
C、a wide range of facts and opinions
D、a critical assessment of our society
答案C
解析 尽管整篇文章主要是关于大众媒体的副作用，但并不是否定它的diversity，view和assessment，所以排除了其他三项。而且文章的开头还是对它的许多方面给予了一些肯定，与答案选项符合。
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