yellowdaisy 4, Bourdieu

I found the Bourdieu article to be very insightful in regards to how television and journalism have a strong impact on our society. When you really think about what we see on TV like the news or read about in big newspapers are stories that are safe. This meaning they will get a lot of people’s attention and apply to everyone. Television and journalism evidently decides what we think because we are watching or reading the same stories everywhere all over again that tell us what’s important enough to know and our opinion. This is usually something that avoids offending any audience so everyone continues to watch and they get good ratings. I found the part interesting where Bourdieu discussed how the safest subject to discuss is the weather because it doesn’t offend anyone or pose a real problem, yet even for that he had an exception being the farmer who needed rain. This brings me to think how every news show on television has the same stories of being the non controversial weather, sports scores and then what Bourdieu described as the “agenda”. The agenda is “the issues up for discussion” or “problems to be covered” which only applies to newspapers if the television show is covering it and “gives it full orchestration”. Not only does television decide on what our “social problems” are but also it has the power to tell us what we think about them. An example of this is how 20/20 can randomly decide to do an entire TV special of how a certain medicine is bad for you. Even if it was previously working for you just fine and you saw no bad side effects, most people will throw it away and agree with them and tell everyone else it’s bad too. I agree that TV is good for spreading important information yet we have to make sure we are getting all the information not just what was selected to be shared and that we still are capable of forming our own opinions on things.