The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

In 1796, British tea merchant James Tilly Matthews expresses that the “minds of powerful men are being controlled by a diabolical machine” (xvi)—the Air Loom—that freezes tongues, fixates minds on ideas, and eventually breaks down bodies. Matthews, though “cogent and reasonable” (xvi), spent the rest of his life in mental asylums.

In 1919, psychoanalyst Victor Tausk publishes an article called “On the Origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia” based on his work with a patient named Natalija A. Natalija believes that “a rejected suitor” (xvii) put her “under the spell of an electrical apparatus” (xvii) that controls her mind and body. Natalija removes all human features from the machine, thus making it easier for the machine to fracture her own identity.

Gladstone uses this concept of the influencing machine as her “central metaphor” (xiv) to depict the way news consumers believe the media control them.  

Human biases that “beset” (61) the media influence the stories news outlets cover and how they cover them. Some of these biases include: a tendency to prefer new stories; a desire for a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end; and preference for news with “a visual hook” (65). These factors affect news coverage and not usually for the better.