When Marshall McLuhan said the medium is more important than the message, I think he was referring to which of the two is actually affecting our way of life. Sure, the message is what you are recieving, and most likely going to think about once you recieve it, but the manner in which you recieve it can affect not only how you translate the information into meaning but also the degree of reaction to the information. If 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina had happened without the medium of television or radio, it would not have been able to impact the whole of the nation so immediately. The telegraph could relay the information in text but could not relay the literal devastation or compare to the sense of emotional impact as a radio transmission could. Those could convey a message or sense but could not show the information to the person getting it. Television, therefore, is much more impactful on our sense of immediacy. In terms of 9/11, I was watching the news as the second plane flew into the towers and everyone in the classroom jumped and churned. If it had been a radio or telegraph or even newspaper, the nation would not have been able to simultaneously watch the event unfold. The medium being the message is the form in which your body ingests information. And that ingestion affects what pieces of the information you find relevant to yourself. Watching people jumping out of a building is much more mentally impactful than hearing the same thing from a radio or in the newspaper.