Customer Reviews

Noise: How Our Media-saturated Culture Dominates Lives and Dismantles Families [Revised Edition]

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This book is the most comprehensive and intelligent analysis of its kind I have had the pleasure to come accross. The author presents the nine dominant forms of the media, explains their significance, and provides an easy method of using the media without having the media use you. The insights of the book are powerful, and the statistics are stunning. You will be amazed.

PRO: This book articulates what many of us suspect but don't have the time or energy to fully explore: too much media ruins lives. Her strongest chapter "Are you strong enough?" discusses how our highest human faculty is the mind and it's reasoning capability. It basically discusses how reflection is a lost art. We try so hard to be distracted and entertained; the silence that breeds unity with God is lost. We as a nation have become content with letting the media THINK for us since we are too busy with everything else in the world. This book has some outstanding statistics as well. It is very well researched and documented. I also appreciated the proactive steps it includes in the back of each chapter on tangible ways people can moderate the use of media in their lives. Finally, this book is balanced in that Tomeo isn't trying to tell us to throw the TVs out the window. Good can come from technology and she highlights this point esp. with good quotes from the late Pope JP2.

CON: I wish she would have delved more into cell phone usage and the impact that's having on culture. It's like the huge elephant in the room that wasn't really addressed much.

I also think the music section left a little something to be desired. We all know rap is harmful. But she didn't do much to address other genres of music that can stray into sad or inappropriate messages like most R&B and some alternative music as well.

Finally, I think this book limited its universality by leaning too heavily on the Catholic perspective. I am a strong, practicing Catholic myself, but I could see the shortcomings in how other religious perspectives weren't really validated. She threw out the "Christian" term regarding music and performers but even that wasn't consistent. And she includes things like "Catholics need to make their voices heard" where she could've simply said "People who want to protect traditional morals" etc. As a Catholic, it all applied to me. But this book has such good information and insight that I'd hate to see it bypassed by a lot of people who may not relate to the religious theme so much. We all need to band together to beat this media monster. Not just Catholics or Christians... but all people who want to fight for the decency in their families.

All in all, I do recommend this book highly. And to the reviewer who commented on the politics of it, no such statements were made. Tomeo addresses abortion and euthanasia but she doesn't sit down and tell you how to vote on Social Security or anything. She simply discusses what everyone already knows: the media is "left of center", and she backs it up with facts too!

Parents: would you allow your child to learn a foreign language you don't understand, make friends with strangers who speak that language, and invite them into your home to fraternize with your children unsupervised? "No way", you say, but let's be honest. Isn't that what so many teens are doing when they listed to Ipods, download videos onto their cell phones, chat on MySpace, or play video games? Children are generally more techno-literate than their parents and as technology gets more and more complex and personalized, it becomes harder to protect our children from the noise of popular culture as it seeps into our lives. We need a handbook to help us fend off this thief of our children's innocence. Teresa Tomeo, veteran TV and radio broadcaster, and host of the popular Catholic Connection radio show on Ave Maria Radio, has done just that in her book "Noise".
"Noise" answers the question so often voiced by the Baby Boomers, "What happened to TV?" When I was growing up, "Andy Griffith" and "I Love Lucy" were shows watched by the entire family, and now sexually charged shows like, "Desperate Housewives" is the most popular with young girls aged 9-12. Kids spend as much time hooked up to some form of media as they do in school these days, so we'd better educate ourselves about what's going on, before they're lost to us, and the Faith.
This book, which is as engrossing as it is terrifying, begins with a thorough explanation of the origins of the problem of immorality in media, and how Teresa, who worked for over 20 years in secular media, came to see the problem for what it is. The latter part of the book is divided into sections by type of media, with chapters dedicated to TV, radio, computer games, internet, music, and advertising, and explains the immoral influence in each. She ends her book with a challenge to each of us to get involved in changing the media culture for Christ, full of concrete suggestions from how to overcome our children's addiction to media, to how to get family-friendly coverage on their local news station.
Did you know that "The DaVinci Code" movie far outsold "The Passion of the Christ"? The situation is dire, but take heart, says Teresa. If you have felt that it was too late to stem the tide of the media's pernicious influence, take heart, says Teresa, new forms of media (talk radio, alternative cable news, and the internet) offer some hope to the prevailing humanist agenda out there. You are seeing the result of my taking her suggestions to heart; I began this blog as an attempt to help Catholic parents navigate the treacherous waters of modern media.

Even those of us who work in the media, however, and think we know a thing or two will be able to learn from Teresa Tomeo's exhaustive research, includes references to current statistics on media influence, and valuable resource section at the back of the book. I have read it twice, and learned new things each time to help my children use media wisely, to educate and inform our faith, not destroy it.
Make "Noise" a part of your armory against the ravages of pop culture on your children, and you might find yourself, like me, installing a second computer in the family den, next to the kids' computer, for yourself.

Teresa's insight into the media blitz cannot be understated. Her experience behind the scenes at a Detroit news station can attest to this.
The simple test that I tell people to to become more aware of the day to day noise that surrounds them is to do is try shutting everything off for one day. Any Sunday would be nice. See if time crawls by. See if you feel ancy. See how many times you reach for the remote, phone, computer..... See how much you accomplish. See how much better you feel at the end of the day. If you can go a month or six months see things in movies or particular stations that you never noticed before. Things that will repulse you where as before you ignored.
Tony

This book gives irrefutable PROOF of the effect of TV, Movies and computers on the psyche of our young people. It's not good. I purchased three books, highlighted several areas and gave them to my children to read and hopefully apply some of the principles for my
grandchildren.

Informative and a bit eye opening. Would have liked more information to affect change in the media. Perhaps that's a bit idealistic. However if more people actually understood the inner workings and how to have a voice, perhaps we would see more change. A great book for all new parents who need to understand about control of thiis powerful form of communiction and the importance of close monitoring of all media.

Wow! What an insightful book. A must read for everyone!

This book did cover some ills of our society in the music world, but it was more about the authors Catholocism and religious belief systems . Too narrowly focused. Predominantly focused on Catholic beliefs and imposition like there are no other spiritual practices that are valid

In the begining of the book the author states that media news sources are not reliable.Yet, later in the book she uses the news media reports to support another arguement.I found that odd.While I agree with the premise of too much noise in our lives I didn't find her resoning very convincining.

Just heard Ms Tomeo opining on "Focus On The Family Weekend" about the ills of TV for teens. That's all you need to know and why you don't need to read this book.