The Jeremiad Over Journalism

generally implicit in the routines they follow rather than explicit‖ and the tendency for news outlets
to monitor their competitors also reinforces the tendency of a homogenous field rather than a
diversified one. 203 In Cook‘s words, ―[t]he strong similarities of news processes and news content
across modalities (television, radio, newspapers, and newsmagazines), size of organization, national
or local audiences, etc., point to the news media as a single institution. 204
2.4.1 Bourdieu’s Field Theory and Habitus
Cook‘s notion of institutions seems closely connected to Bourdieu‘s understanding of field. To
Bourdieu, a societal field be it journalism, economy or politics is made up of ―invisible structures‖
and mechanisms, not wholly unlike Cook‘s ―unspoken procedures, routines, and assumptions.‖ 205
In Bourdieu‘s words, the journalistic field is to be understood as a ―force field‖ which ―contains
people who dominate and others who are dominated,‖ a space where social agents struggle to
maintain or improve their position. These different positions within the journalistic field in turn
determine the strategies pursued. 206 The journalistic field, which according to Bourdieu, belongs to
the somewhat subjugated field of cultural production, relative to the economic and political field, is,
in the words of the French sociologist Patrick Champagne, ―caught between the competing
imperatives of ‗freedom of press‘ and the ‗laws of the market.‘ 207 In accordance with the jeremiad
over journalism, Bourdieu laments the increased commercialization of the journalistic field,
especially in television, which he sees as making its presence felt on other journalistic platforms
certain degree of independence within the different journalistic organizations when he points out that ―the genius of
American journalism is that it operates out of commercial organizations built on the autonomy of news professionals."
203
A concrete example of the tendency to monitor the competition was offered by Washington Post‘s publisher
Katherine Graham in 1984, when she remembered wondering out loud to editor Ben Bradlee about why other
newspapers were not covering the Watergate break-in, ―If this is such a hell of a story, where is everybody else?‖
Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (New York:
BasicBooks, 1992). Page 105.
204
Timothy Cook, Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution (London: University of Chicago
Press, 1988). Page 73-84.
205
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Political Field, the Social Science Field, and the Journalistic Field," in Bourdieu and the
Journalistic Field, ed. Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). Page 29-30. Bourdieu, On
Television.Page 39-42.
206
Bourdieu, On Television. Page 40-41. Michael Grenfell, ed. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts (Stocksfield:
Acumen,2008). Page 69.
207
Patrick Champagne, "The 'Double Dependency': The Journalistic Field between Politics and Markets," in Bourdieu
and the Journalistic Field, ed. Rodney Benson and Erik Nevey (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). Page 48.
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