I'VE BEEN thinking about the media. I do that a lot anyway. But a number of things have conspired to bring the topic to the forefront of my thoughts. Donald Trump’s incoherent and inappropriate railing against disfavoured media organisations. The hysteria about ‘fake news’. And the increasingly heated debate about press regulation in the UK. These, among other things, have prompted me to reflect on the subject of the media.
The first question is whether ‘media’ is plural or singular. I know that, strictly speaking, the word is plural. But the media has (have?) come to seem like a single monolithic entity. Certainly, it (they?) is (are?) commonly talked about as if what was being referred to was one thing. Not a homogeneous thing at all. But something varied in the way that a slab of marble may have distinct streaks and mottlings.
Generalising in this manner is probably not conducive to a meaningful analysis. But it is illuminating in terms of the way it may reveal underlying attitudes to the media. Regardless of how the dictionary defines the word, it seems that in the real world outside grammar text books many people experience the media as a single entity. Or at least imagine it so.