Wide context
Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)
/^t/When mass media started to develop at the begining of our century their main function was to inform people and bring them close to the world by means of broadcasting a variety of programmes such as: news, political discussions, press conferences, football matches, documentaries or business bulletins, which as they expected were supposed to interest people. When we take into consideration Polish mass media of the 70s, 80s and 90s, we can easily observe significant changes of their function eg. from the informative one into the impressive. A stiring example of this kind is commercials in the present-day TV or radio splitting almost every programme at least three times. Apart from these irritating features of our TV, we are also bombarded with omnipresent quizes, wheels of fortune, audio-tele stuff or "telephoniadas" encouraging us to take part in them and win millions of prizes if only we know whether two plus two makes four. Such stupifying effects are caused predominantly by TV, which found its place in every household to which it sends all sorts of soap operas and long running sagas, watched intensly by housewives. The next aspect of a Polish mass media of the 90s is the amount of violence, sex and crime presented everywhere and very often easily available to children on whom television has its maximum psychological effect. The access to such programmes becomes still easier as parents taking part in the "rats-race", leave their children with a TV on to unburden themselves of their tiring presence. In this context we can put forward a question whether children see what they like or like what they see? We should point out that a younger generation is more curious, better informed,