Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Pre Class 11/7

"People talk so much about the weather in day-to-day life because it's a subject that cannot cause trouble. The farther a paper extends its circulation, the more it favors such topics that interest 'everybody' and don't raise problems." (Bourdieu 254)
This relates to last weeks readings, in regards to the power held by a few large corporations through our media. News has to diffuse stories and situations in order to in the end benefit themselves with more consumers. If the stories remain middle of the road, where no opinions are thrown out and no sides are taken, they will draw larger consumer market. A lot of this article discusses mass circulation as well and its relation to journalism, scholars, writers, and so forth. These people working the mass circulation control who has the ability to become a public figure, going back to the "golden rule" principal.
Is this power too much? Bourdieu moves forward showing just how much power journalists have, along with some of the effects the power has on what we see as viewers. Journalists dominate superior categories on occasion and they want nothing so much as to be apart of the intellectual crowd.
The next big point was censorship, which he claimed journalists don't even have to think about performing. They only retain things that are interesting to them or that fit their mental rubric. This is why people can't rely on strictly the media for their information, because what you see is only half the story.

No comments:

Post a Comment