“Our news anchors, our talk show hosts, and our sports announcers have turned into two-bit spiritual guides, representatives of middle-class morality. They are always telling us what we ‘should think’ about what they call ‘social prob” (Bourdieu)
This quote was the most impactful to me as I read through Bourdieu’s deconstruction of our media landscape. Though Bordieu wrote in a time before social media, many of his conclusions are still applicable to our modern media landscape. In this quote specifically, Bourdieu discusses how the masses only care about/ talk about the issues made aware to them by the media. I would take it one step further than what Bourdieu writes and say the news organizations itself. Depending on the program, news anchors, sports announcers, and talk show hosts don’t have control over what they talk about; the writers and producers do. I do agree that late-night Talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, and Lily Singh have more control over the material that they talk about. However, a normal news anchor does not have as much control over what they talk about.
Bourdieu’s idea connects back to Marx and Engels, who writes “Each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it is compelled…to present its interest as the common interest of all the members of society… it has to give its ideas the form of universality (Marx and Engels). The news anchors, talk shows hosts, and sports announcers want us to be worried about what they are worried about. For example, American news stations will focus highly on American politics. Left-wing sources like CNN will focus on the problems/ corruptions in the Republican party and right-wing sources like Fox News will focus on corruption in the Democratic party. However, few news sources have covered the persecution and imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims and Christians in China. This issue is just as important (arguably more important) than some of the petty political squabbles occurring in the United States. But, we don’t talk about it BECAUSE our news anchors, talk show hosts, and sports announcers do not.
Picture of the "re-education" camps in China
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