McGuire

McGuire challenges as unsupported conclusions regarding the media’s vast influence, or, more specifically, the notion that the media’s vast influence is supported by data. His study, not long after the Gerbner work, is still dated as to the impact of television and may even be conservative as to the overall time the average person spends with media today.
It is probably a useful approach. Given the diversity of media, before praising, condemning or drawing any conclusions regarding the effects of media, McGuire notes the need for far more precision in analysis. I find it interesting that the study mentions over-the-counter drugs, as it precedes the flood of advertising for prescription drugs. The growth in sales of heavily advertised prescription drugs might be an interesting study. Similarly, I would expect different conclusions today in evaluating political advertising, given the massive increases in political spending over 20 years.

Gerbner

The major broadcast networks may still offer a middle-of-the-road news course, but more and more people who watch television get their news from highly partisan sources, including Fox News, MSNBC, and the Daily Show, in addition to the thousands of interest groups on the Internet offering articles, republications and blogs that likely match the viewer/reader’s political sentiment. Whereas the researchers here categorized their subjects according to how much media they received, the choices were far more limited at the time of this study. Moreover, where the heaviest viewing of television in the early 1980s might have been more concentrated among the less educated, today the most cutting edge technologies, that compete for the traditional television audience, are first available to the highest earners, frequently the highest educated.Today heavy consumers of home-based entertainment media have thousands of additional choices, many of them offering information or a perspective on that information. News is now less by professional news values and more by the popularity within a particular niche.

DT bio

A couple of decades ago I enjoyed being the youngest guy in a room full of seasoned reporters, lawyers or business folk. That changes after a couple of decades. I'm pursuing a master's degree in journalism after earning a doctorate (of sorts: J.D.) about a quarter-century ago. In between I've been a writer, editor, publisher, parent (two kids) and spouse (one wife). Come to think of it, I'm still all of those, and am a teacher besides. Teaching is the main reason I decided to continue my education. I attended Boston University as an undergrad; I got my law degree at the University of San Diego. Most of my career was spent in Massachusetts, California and Washington.
I left journalism a couple of years ago, and began teaching media studies at Elon University. I'm currently a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. I worked a lot of places as a journalist, but I doubt I'd be teaching but for the years I spent at Broadcasting & Cable magazine. After all those years in the media and then writing about the media (along with a brief stint working for a TV morning show), teaching media makes sense. And I enjoy being around young people