WoolyBully7, Bourdieu

“Our news anchors, our talk show hosts, and our sports announcers have turned into two-bit spiritual guides, representatives or middle-class morality. They are always telling us what we ‘should think’ about what they call ‘social problems,’ such as violence in the inner-city or in the schools (329).”

After watching evening news for years and years I can no longer watch it after having read Pierre Bourdieu. In retrospect, all they really talk about are crime violence, fraud and scandals, which is common sense no matter where in the world you are for the most part. It doesn’t greatly affect what people already know or are aware of, at least for American news. Some countries have programs that may be a little more graphic but not astoundingly different. The goal of the TV news is to inform and relate to as many people as possible and then maybe attract new viewers, increasing their income from ad sales. This leads to the news being almost featureless without a whole lot of zest, every night is the same plotline over and over again it seems. This news cannot “offend” anyone, as to lose viewers, and can’t “bring up problems, and if so, cannot pose problems (328).”

I really enjoyed why he brought weather as the most common form of conversation since it’s so not political and so unemotional and unproblematic. Guaranteed every single one of us has started a conversation with the sayings, “I heard it is supposed to rain today” or “wow, what a gorgeous day.” Macherey can help us out with this one, “It is what has not been said that must be studied.” That rupture between what the news covers and something stupid like the weather, must be studied.