JOURNALISM is corrupting more valuable forms of communication, according to a pamphlet published today which accuses bishops and professors of selling out to the media for publicity.
Invasions of privacy or gratuitous sex attract the attention of the media regulators but are not the chief problem, states Prof Kenneth Minogue.
His argument is with the importance journalism attaches to perpetual change and its obsession with "reflecting society".
In a pamphlet published by the Social Affairs Unit, a research and educational trust, Prof Minogue analyses the effect of living under "a bombardment of news and views". "While journalism undoubtedly informs us, it also narrows our capacity to understand the world," he writes.
The Silencing of Society argues that the form which journalism takes: "framing what happens in small, constantly changing and emotionally stimulating nuggets of information", enslaves our attention so that we are distracted from fixing on one thing.
Prof Minogue, now retired from the London School of Economics, states that people, including teachers, politicians and clergymen, are forced into the attention-grabbing techniques of a media civilisation. He describes the media as "a church of change" amplifying the most accessible thoughts, which are "usually the most trivial and superficial".
"We have been liberated to follow our impulses, which largely consist in losing ourselves in learning about the doings of others. Our impulses may vary, but our subservience to impulse is constant."
Secularism, he writes, "replaces the sacraments of religion with a schedule of experiences (sex, travel, youth, one's 15 minutes of fame or attention) which constitute ΓÇÿquality of life'.
"It is a religion of change in which anything fixed is to be rejected as a barrier to the one grand and logically impossible project of building a life in which everyone enjoys the perfect satisfaction of needs.
"Its only evident ritual is an endless attention to press, radio and television, where repetition of news, background and opinion plays the role of ritual in churches."
He concludes that religion, morality and patriotism are all central to our identity but have been replaced by the media with secularism, sociability and internationalism.
Posing the question "what is to be done?", he answers: "Nothing. There is far too much policy around already. But it is worth thinking about."
