Media criticism

December 11, 2006 12:16 PM

Phrases like 'the news about an event has become more important/more real than the event itself' are commonplace. Where did this kind of media criticism start? Who is known for having said this?
posted by Termite to media & arts (8 comments total)

Links to articles are welcome.
posted by Termite at 12:20 PM on December 11, 2006

Simulacra and Simulation is about this.
posted by phrontist at 12:25 PM on December 11, 2006

Among many others, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman and Douglas Rushkoff are well known for these kinds of ideas.
posted by box at 12:35 PM on December 11, 2006

Also Debord.
posted by juv3nal at 12:52 PM on December 11, 2006

Baudrillard, Debord, McLuhan, Postman, etc. are all important media theorists, but I think the most relevant citation for you is Dayan's book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History, and the idea of media events [warning: shoddy wikipedia article, but hopefully you get the point] more generally. This school of criticism discusses the 20th century trend towards staging events primarily (or solely) for the purpose of generating subsequent media coverage.

Many commentators trace this at least as far back as Hitler's staging of massive rallies primarily so that they could be filmed by Leni Riefenstahl for the purposes of propaganda.

You might also take a look at Stuart Ewen's book, PR: A Social History of Spin, which traces the rise of corporate attempts to generate positive media coverage.
posted by googly at 1:25 PM on December 11, 2006

In the movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there's the line: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. I'm not sure where that fits into the time line, but that movie came out in 1962.
posted by willnot at 2:48 PM on December 11, 2006

Sigh, I cannot escape Baudrillard...

(takes this as a sign and goes back to writing his contemporary theory paper)
posted by synecdoche at 2:55 PM on December 11, 2006

The notion that the media is the message is spreading to news.

In my own estimation, it started with the 24 hour news networks feeding back on themselves just as a microphone picks up its own amplified signal and makes a horrible squeltch.
posted by clord at 4:35 PM on December 11, 2006