Passage Three
We are told 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 programme, Panoroma. 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. 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 not simply the product of a commercial desire to keep the customer 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. They will tend to move, when exposing problems, well within the accepted cliché assumptions of democratic society and will tend neither radically to question these clichés nor to make a disturbing application of them to features of contemporary life. They will stress the “stimulation”the programs give, but this soon becomes an agitation of problems for the sake of the interest of that agitation itself; they will therefore, again, assist a form of acceptance of the status quo (现状). There were 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 stimulation 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 (使⋯丧失活力)them, to allow them to sit on the side of the fireplace, sleek and useless, a family plaything.
41. According to the passage, the mass media present us with ______.
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
42. What effect is it claimed the mass media can have on our intellectual and imaginative development?
A. They are likely to frustrate this development.
B. They can form a basis for it.
C. They can distort our judgment.
D. They can stimulate too much mental activity.
43. How are the mass media said to influence our ability to make decisions?
A. They disturb us by their prejudices.
B. They make us doubt our own judgments.
C. They make no contribution in this area.
D. They make decisions appear too complicated.
44. The author says that a natural concern of the Establishment is to ______.
A. perform a good service to society
B. arouse strong emotions in the public
C. maintain its position in society
D. change the form of public institutions
45. What is the author's final judgment on how mass communications deal with intellectual matters?
A. They regard them as unimportant.
B. They see them as a domestic pastime.
C. They consider them to be of only domestic interest.
D. They rob them of their dramatic impact.