Media Control: News as an Institution of Power and Social Control

Description

Media Control: News as an Institution of Power and Social Control challenges traditional (and even some radical) perceptions of how the news works. While it’s clear that journalists don’t operate objectively – reporters don’t just cover news, but they make it – Media Control goes a step further by arguing that the cultural institution of news approaches and presents everyday information from particular and dominant cultural positions that benefit the power elite. From analysing how the press operate as police agents by conducting surveillance and instituting social order through its coverage of crime and police action to bolstering private business and neoliberal principles by covering the news through notions of boosterism, Media Control presents the news through a cultural lens. Robert E. Gutsche, Jr. introduces or advances readers’ applications of critical race theory and cultural studies scholarship to explore cultural meanings within news coverage of police action, the criminal justice system, and embedding into the news democratic values that are later used by the power elite to oppress and repress portions of the citizenry. Media Control helps the reader explicate how the power elite use the press and the veil of the Fourth Estate to further white ideologies and American Imperialism. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction The experience of experiencing power: A beginning Purpose of the book Plan of the book 1. Power, Propaganda and the Purpose of News Explicating the embassy evacuations: The purpose of banal news Power: A briefing on news as commodity Incorporating the news: Joining “the power elite” Conclusion: Interpreting news as propaganda 2. Making News: Purposes, Practices, and Pandering Reading news as national rhetoric: The Boston Bombings From social power to “media power” Conclusion: Interpreting journalism through levels of analysis 3. Displacement and Punishment: The Press as Place-makers Here is not there: Place ideologies in the press The power of “othering” in press characterizations of place and race News place-making as “The New Jim Crow” Conclusion: Media displacement as punishment 4. News as Cultural Distraction: Controversy, Conspiracy, and Collective Forgetting Controversy or bust: Media commitment to crazy in national crises The distraction of “conspiracy theory”: News, fear, and the need for protection Militarization and media violence: The violence of media language Conclusion: Collective forgetting and media control 5. Normalizing Media Surveillance: Media Waiting, Watching, and Shaming Media waiting: Fearing South Beach’s Urban Beach Week Media watching: The functions of media surveillance Media shaming: Normalizing “correction”-as-control Conclusion: Media surveillance as punishment 6. The Violence of Media Sousveillance: Identifying the Press as Police Police myth: Media adoption of police power Journalistic information and (questioned) collaboration Controlled monitoring as mediated practice Conclusion: The virtuous violence of media sousveillance Conclusion: The Myth of Being “Post-Media” & Why Americans Will Always be Media Illiterate Media control: An assessment & reminder The death of media literacy: The force of digital distractions & corporatization Media socialization and press pacification through journalism education Conclusion: Complicating media control’s collective identity Glossary of Key Terms Index