The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.

It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media.

The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.

Mass communication--wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued--presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)

The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.

Mass media wants bright lights. Mass media wants crazy clothes.