Herman, Chumsky, & Bourdieu

For Tuesday’s class we were asked to read “On Television” by Pierre Bourdieu and “A Propaganda Model” by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. TV is a huge part of today’s society. People are much more likely to turn on the TV and watch the news rather than picking up a newspaper. What is said on the news really does matter, because it’s what people are listening to, and it’s what people are being influenced by.

I thought it was interesting when Bourdieu says, “It must attempt to be inoffensive, only problems that don’t pose any problem” (Bourdieu 328). When I think of the media and this quote it doesn’t make sense to me, because I watch the news all the time and a lot of the issues brought up are offensive. Depending what news channel you turn on, some favor the Democratic party and the others favor the Republican party and so on, but the issues that are talked about can be very offensive to people who don’t believe in what they’re saying. This goes along with when he says, “these journalists can impose on the whole society their vision of the world, their conception of problems, and their point of view” (Bourdieu 330). They use this power of being able to say what they want and express their opinions to be published to the world, trying to persuade people to believe what they believe.

Bourdieu states, "Human interest stories create a political vacuum. This can occur on a national or international scale, especially with film stars or members of royal families, and is accomplished by fixing and keeping attention fixed on events without political consequences, but which are nonetheless dramatized so as to "draw a lesson" or be transformed into illustrations of "social problems" (332). This quote I found to be completely true about today’s society. We are so obsessed with popular culture and what the celebrities are doing rather than the actual important issues going on in the world. People nowadays are more likely to know that Lindsay Lohan is going to rehab for the 6^th time, than to know what’s going on over in Iraq or with the economy…which are the issues that are actually important and affect us.

Herman and Chomsky say, “It is their [the media] function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society” (Chomsky and Herman 257). The media does amuse, entertain, and inform the people, but I’m not sure if all the time it’s for the reasons they are talking about. A lot of the time, like I mentioned before, it’s about stuff that doesn’t really have a huge impact on us, such as celebrity gossip.

“On my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this work”