DEBATE: THE PERSISTENT EVASION OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS IN MEDIA STUDIES: A REPLY TO MURDOCK AND MCKEGANEY AND SMITH.

The article present authors' reply against criticism of their studies concerning the persistent evasion of technical problems in media studies. A substantial part of the paper was given over to the re-analysis of the critics' data. The remainder of the paper involved general critical comments on "media studies" using one or two cases as occasions for a wholesale attack. Media studies is a big and burgeoning field. The thing critics' needs to do is to single out those which are exemplary, canonical, which are not fairly easily accessible to serious methodological criticism. The article author complain, that "form" has been neglected in media studies. Critics accepts their point, but suggests that recent studies may meet the authors objection. There are a lot of media studies, that does not stand disputing, but it is worth asking whether they add up to anything. They are very repetitive, being mainly designed to give some empirical application to more or less dilute versions of the theory of ideology.