grammatical number - Which is correct: "All the media is" or "all the media are"?


I think I know that media is a plural word.


So then which of the following is correct?




  • All the media is...

  • All the media are...



When you search Google, both seem to appear at the same frequency.



Answer



Actually, when I google for these phrases, I'm seeing this:



The Corpus of Contemporary American English paints a similar picture, though the sample size is rather small (1 vs 3 cites). You get more results if you leave out the "all" (445 vs 602). These numbers also include a few cites of the form "the quality of the media is..." or "many in the media are...", which are obviously not relevant here, but the overall trend is still rather clear.


The British National Corpus, on the other hand, favors the plural form. There are fewer results overall, so I took my time to check every single one for relevance, and here's the overview:


                      BNC         COCA        Google

the media are         43           445?
all the media are      1            1         110,000
the media is          19           602?
all the media is       0            3         225,000

So the Americans prefer the singular form, while the British prefer the plural. This should come as no surprise knowing that the British like to treat other collective nouns such as staff, Microsoft or Metallica as plural, too, while Americans prefer the singular. See these answers to related questions:



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