Bella Bourdieu

When referring to journalists, Bourdieu wrote, “Above all, though, with their permanent access to public visibility, broad circulation, and mass diffusion–an access that was completely unthinkable for any cultural producer until television came into the picture–these journalists can impose on the whole of society their vision of the world, their conception of problems, and their point of view” (Bourdieu 330). He describes how journalism has become divided, and differentiated, separating itself from other forms of media, establishing its mode of expression and the representation of opinions and ideas. I think he is arguing that journalists (on television) are responsible for manipulating information and picking and choosing what is represented on air, but I’m not sure I agree. He didn’t seem to address the factors behind the representation of information on television. Every journalist has a boss that they must answer to; every boss has a superior, and so on. Each person answers to a higher power that influences and helps to decide which information is provided to the public. In my mind, the journalist is at the very bottom of the ‘news food chain’–they are simply ordered about, told what story to research, find everything out, give the report to the handsome man and woman anchors for the show, and watch them read it aloud. The higher powers have personal interests in which stories are presented, whether it is coming from economic or political persuasion, or whatever, the journalist is not making the most important decision of all. Granted, Bourdieu is probably looking at a lower level–anything that comes from one person’s mouth to another’s ear is going to be biased, selective, and changed. Perhaps that is what Bourdieu is talking about in his piece about Television. He wrote, “The effect is censorship, which journalists practice without even being aware of it. They retain only the things capable of interesting them and “keeping their attention,” which means things that fit their categories and mental grid; and they reject as insignificant or remain indifferent to symbolic expressions that ought to reach the population as a whole” (Bourdieu 330). He also mentioned the ‘pseudo scholarly research’ being performed on media currently, and how some people have declared ‘mediology’ a science, to which he clearly disagrees. Ultimately, Bourdieu feels that “the increased influence of the most cynical and most successful seekers after anything sensational, spectacular, or extraordinary, a certain vision of the news comes to take over the whole of the journalistic field” (Bourdieu 332).