TyG - Bourdieu and Chomsky

“There is the fact that television more and more defines what Americans call the agenda… If the printed press should happen to raise an issue – a scandal or debate – it becomes central only when television takes it up and gives it full orchestration, and, thereby, political impact” (Bourdieu 332).

And, I suppose that internet-only news outlets, like bloggers, are even farther down the food chain than newspapers and magazines in re: “political impact,” because they have less “power of diffusion.” However, these wanna-be’s may very well have access and insight that more traditional journalists, whether in print or electronic media, cannot have because of the nature of their position, i.e., integrated into the machine. As such, major media journalists frequently do not have the freedom needed for objective reporting.
Bourdieu explains this by saying:
“Yet it remains true that, like other fields, the journalistic field is based on a set of shared assumptions and beliefs, which reach beyond differences of position and opinion” (330).
Chomsky's (and Herman's) approach outlines four news “filters” – the size and wealth of news organizations; the affect of advertising and sponsors’ views; a reliance on biased sources, like the government and businesses; ‘flak,’ or direct pressure applied by power brokers; and ‘anti-something’ (communism, terrorism, pick-any-ism) – that influence what information actually makes it into the public eye (257-8).
Therefore, while capital-T Television may, for now, hold the best cards at the political poker table, it is, at the same time, growing less and less able to see those cards and use them effectively; television has become dependent on others to actually “break” news of a controversial nature, and must wait until stories have circulated a while – testing the political waters – before diving in with their powerful though tardy “I told you so.”