Pre Class- Bourdieu

After reading Pierre Boudieu’s piece called “On Television” I began thinking about television news versus print media. With the invention of television and the widespread access to it, I think it is impossible for print media to gain the same kind of widespread access and attention. Bourdieu says, “If the printed press should happen to raise an issue—a scandal or a debate—it becomes central only when television takes it up and gives it full orchestration, and, thereby, political impact” (332). I think that this is very true in our media culture today. I often hear students discussing major events that have been spotlighting in the news and they say, “Did you see that on television this morning?” They never refer to reading anything in a newspaper or magazine, which would have been the standard mode to receive news before the invention of the television. Another aspect of television news that Bourdieu discusses is the fact that everyone is getting news from the same place, whereas before people many have been reading many different news sources. Bourdieu says, “When the information supplied by a single news medium becomes a universal source of news, the resulting political and cultural effects are clear” (338). The danger in this is that those who are in charge are able to spread their ideas in a widespread manner. It puts everyone on the same plane of agreement and puts across ideas of sameness. This reminds of a Hebdige when he discusses how Althusser says, “Ideology is profoundly unconscious.” We are unaware of the ideologies that mass media corporations and more specifically the television are portraying in everyday news. In a way we want to have shared assumptions because it creates a comfortable zone. If you are not taking part in the shared assumptions being put across by dominant ideologies then in turn you may alienate yourself.