> There are various reasons for this, television being a prominent example.
I tend to agree with the Putnam thesis, but I don't think you can lay this all on television. Until the 80s there were really only 3 viable TV/radio networks (CBS, NBC and later, ABC). If you watched the nightly news on any of those networks you got pretty much the same vision of reality. There was more variation in newspapers, but people watched a lot of TV in that era and for the most part they shared a cohesive vision.
I tend to agree with the Putnam thesis, but I don't think you can lay this all on television. Until the 80s there were really only 3 viable TV/radio networks (CBS, NBC and later, ABC). If you watched the nightly news on any of those networks you got pretty much the same vision of reality. There was more variation in newspapers, but people watched a lot of TV in that era and for the most part they shared a cohesive vision.