frouella, 11/7

"Even the best-known journalists occupy positions of structural inferiority vis-a-vis social categories such as intellectuals or politicians -- and journalists want nothing so much as to be part of the intellectual crowd. No doubt, this structural inferiority goes a long way to explain their tendency toward anti-intellectualism."
--Bourdieu

This quote made me think of that part in the movie Die Hard (no, the first one, Baudrillard!) where the newscasters are doing the story about the hostage situation in the Nakatomi Tower. In an attempt to sound intelligent, one of the stuffed-shirt "experts" makes a comment about how the hostages may be experiencing "Helsinki Syndrome," at which point an overzealous anchorman interjects that he means Helsinki, Sweden. At which point, the audience realizes that they're both idiots, since the correct term is actually "Stockholm Syndrome" and Helsinki is in Finland. What's kind of scary though, is that according to an article I read in Wikipedia (keep the source in mind, people), there's been an increase of people referring to the psychological term as "Helsinki Syndrome" because of that same reference in Die Hard. Okay, now you can laugh, Jean...

I really like Bourdieu's article on the whole, but I do have an issue with one particular quote:
"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."

I see what Bourdieu is saying here, but my question is about the part where he says that it ought to (emphasis mine) reach the population as a whole. So isn't that view in fact assigning his own judgement on what should be considered news? Different people have different views about what is considered significant; is he saying that he's the authority for what should be deemed important for the entire population? Or maybe he's just saying that journalists should report ALL the news, regardless of how important they themselves think it is, since someone out there might think it's important? If that's the case, all media outlets everywhere will only have time for news; yeah, sorry folks, hope you weren't too set on that next episode of Lost or anything. Don't get me wrong here, I actually agree with Bourdieu more than I disagree with him; it's just that unless people only watch the news 24/7, something is inevitably going to be missed.

Random Po-Moment:
On the front page of the Orlando Sentinel website at the time of this posting (since Blogger won't post links from my Mac >.<), the only picture next to the headlines doesn't have anything to do with Kevin Beary or the downtown performing arts center or any other pressing central Florida issue for that matter; instead, there's a full color graphic of the new Nintendo Wii system. What the -- ??? How do you even say that? Is it like "weee?" Maybe "wiiii?" "W2," like the tax form? Iono -- I'm sure somebody will be excited over this in-depth coverage, but c'mon, in the headline? Yeah, this sooo supports Bourdieu's point...