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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 12:00 AM

Iraq: Why the media failed

Afraid to challenge America's leaders or conventional wisdom about the Middle East, a toothless press collapsed.

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  • Tuesday, April 10, 2007 01:39 PM

    Leave the grammar alone

    Contrary to what some posters have claimed here, Kamiya is not wrong in taking a singular verb with the noun "media" ("The media is ..."). In this sense, "media" is a collective noun or mass noun, synonymous with "the press," referring to the group of professionals and institutions as a single group, and there's a well established pattern for the acquisition of a singular usage for an originally plural word like this ("agenda," "data"). This usage has a distinctly different meaning than the use of "media" as the plural of "medium." You may not like it, but this has become standard usage, and if it's not in your dictionary yet, it will be very soon.

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