LANGUAGE CORNER
‘Media,’ Plural
‘Media’ Matters
We can skip examples of the use of the word as a singular. They're practically infinite, and maybe the outposts (like CJR) that are holding out for "media" as a plural will be overrun someday. But there are arguments for trying to mount a counterattack.
One has to do with literacy. The word has a useful and much-used singular form, "medium." It came from the Latin into English along with its Latin plural, "media," and both have been established in English since time immemorial. (The Anglicized "mediums" is rare these days, except in reports on the spirit world.) How can "medium" and "media" both be singular? It's not logical, and really not literate, despite those myriad examples of misuse.
Another argument for the plural is philosophical. Public figures — politicians, athletes and their coaches, performers of all kinds — like to blame journalists and journalism for all that isn't lovely in their lives. They consistently say sneeringly that "the media is" whatever, as if all of us in the ol' news game were the same. Polls that put us down among politicians and used-car salesmen in public esteem suggest that people are buying that notion. But even in a period when traditionally responsible news outlets wallow in sleaze from time to time (and agonize about it), it's unfair to imply that the best and the worst among us are indistinguishable. Subtly, "the media is" does that. We do well to fight for the plural, and to be even clearer by specifying "the news media" when we aren't talking about the trash peddlers or infotainment folks. A subtle counterattack is fair, and literate.
— CJR, May/June 1998
Addendum, June 16, 1998:
Via e-mail from Baxter Omohundro of Columbus, GA, a retired Knight
Ridder editor: "My list of abused words is long, but the
next time you feel like leaping to the defense of an increasingly
neglected singular I would nominate 'bacterium.'
'This bacteria is...' Ugh!"
