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.
Author(s): Robert E. Gutsche Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 398
Tags: Media Control, Social Control, Power
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Preface......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 13
Introduction......Page 17
The experience of experiencing power: A beginning......Page 18
Purpose of the book......Page 40
Plan of the book......Page 52
1. Power, Propaganda and the Purpose of News......Page 65
Explicating the embassy evacuations: The purpose of banal news......Page 66
Power: A briefing on news as commodity......Page 74
Incorporating the news: Joining “the power elite”......Page 82
Conclusion: Interpreting news as propaganda......Page 91
2. Making News: Purposes, Practices, and Pandering......Page 107
Reading news as national rhetoric: The Boston Bombings......Page 108
From social power to “media power”......Page 133
Conclusion: Interpreting journalism through levels of analysis......Page 136
3. Displacement and Punishment: The Press as Place-makers......Page 149
Here is not there: Place ideologies in the press......Page 150
The power of “othering” in press characterizations of place and race......Page 160
News place-making as “The New Jim Crow”......Page 169
Conclusion: Media displacement as punishment......Page 172
4. News as Cultural Distraction: Controversy, Conspiracy, and Collective Forgetting......Page 199
Controversy or bust: Media commitment to crazy in national crises......Page 200
The distraction of “conspiracy theory”: News, fear, and the need for protection......Page 206
Militarization and media violence: The violence of media language......Page 220
Conclusion: Collective forgetting and media control......Page 242
5. Normalizing Media Surveillance: Media Waiting, Watching, and Shaming......Page 255
Media waiting: Fearing South Beach’s Urban Beach Week......Page 256
Media watching: The functions of media surveillance......Page 266
Media shaming: Normalizing “correction”-as-control......Page 277
Conclusion: Media surveillance as punishment......Page 285
6. The Violence of Media Sousveillance: Identifying the Press as Police......Page 299
Police myth: Media adoption of police power......Page 300
Journalistic information and (questioned) collaboration......Page 314
Controlled monitoring as mediated practice......Page 320
Conclusion: The virtuous violence of media sousveillance......Page 326
Conclusion: The Myth of Being “Post-Media” & Why Americans Will Always be Media Illiterate......Page 339
Media control: An assessment & reminder......Page 340
The death of media literacy: The force of digital distractions & corporatization......Page 344
Media socialization and press pacification through journalism education......Page 354
Conclusion: Complicating media control’s collective identity......Page 367
Glossary of Key Terms......Page 377
Index......Page 380
