The Medium is the message
"The Medium is the Message" is a concept coined by Marshall McLuhan in his book "Understanding Media". McLuhan argues that the "message" refers to the impact that new inventions and innovations have on human problems, as well as the changes in scale, pace, and patterns that they bring about.
McLuhan understands "media" in a broad sense as the medium of communication. In his book "Understanding Media", he uses the example of the light bulb to illustrate this concept. The light bulb itself does not contain any specific content like a newspaper article or a television program, but it is a medium that has social effects. With the presence of a light bulb, people can create a space in the darkness of the night. McLuhan describes the light bulb as a "medium without content". He states that the light bulb creates an environment simply by its existence.
Similarly, the message of news programs about heinous crimes may be more important in terms of the change in public attitudes towards such crimes, which is brought about by the fact that such crimes are virtually brought into people's homes and seen during dinner time, rather than the individual news articles themselves.