Class Response: "The camera that shows us reality still excludes it."

This week during a lecture about the major effects TV has had on our culture and society, I was struck by a particular thing Mr. Miller said.
"The camera that shows us reality still excludes it."
I immediately wrote this down; it perfectly encapsulated the largest revelation I have had thus far in Journalism 1. The theme of my extended thinking on the lectures we've had has been realizing how limited our perception of reality has become because of mass media. A wonderful visual Mr. Miller gave to support this was of Bush standing in front of a lush, beautiful place for a broadcasted message about how healthy the world is. What you could not see when viewing this broadcast was that right out side of the camera's range there was dead grass and litter and smog. I thought this really summed up the patterns I have seen in media, television in particular.
TV shows us an altered reality. For example, a romance film will show a boy grabbing a girls face in a crowded hallway and kissing her, then the scene ends and the movie goes to what the girl does afterschool. In theory this is a nice scene, but would it really ever happen in real life? I doubt it. What would happen after the kiss? Would they walk away? Would they run? I don't know, because I have never heard of this happening in real life. But, I still have an expectation in the back of mind that this will somehow happen to me at some point.
Interesting.