What, exactly, is the media?

I am thoroughly enjoying Adrian Monck's recently published book Can You Trust The Media.

...The media is not in the information supply business. It is in the distraction business. It wants to occupy the seconds, minutes and hours of our lives that are not spent earning the money required to make us valuable to businesses as a consumer or governments as a taxpayer, and as much of our working time as it can. It is there to force itself into out consciousness and by doing so, live another day.

And to claim that headspace, the media is prepared to do almost anything. It will purvey naked flesh, stock prices, sexual impropriety or political analysis, all in the hope of securing our precious attention. An important way of getting into our heads is by selecting those things that are new or unusual or presenting the familiar in novel ways. In shorthand, the news.

How honest and refreshing...