Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/Strangely enough, the advocates of the thesis that the means of mass communication positively affect our approach to reality are in minority. Their antagonists maintain that mass media shape the picture of the external world in our minds in an undesirable way and that the whole process resembles brainwashing. It can be even presumed that those clever mechanisms aim at subconscious imposing and then adopting certain standards of thinking, patterns of behaviour or particular attitudes. Yet, to be honest, people who are subjects to the continuous flood of overwhelming power of information are not totally helpless. Fortunately, this gloomy picture is somewhat exaggerated - at least as long as the above-mentioned subjects can switch off the radio or a TV at any moment they feel like doing it. There are still people who hardly ever watch television and, what should be emphasized, it is caused merely by referring to their responsible freedom of choice. They are able to judge and control their perception of reality independently. Moreover, they treat mass media as a collective indication of "the way of the world" or foundation for working out their personal judgements rather than direction-setter, let alone worshipped authority.