The Jeremiad Over Journalism

like the press and publishing, because this means that an ―audience ratings mentality‖ increasingly
rules decisions concerning media content. 208
―It seems to me that the journalistic field is losing more and more of its autonomy (…) The
weight of the economy within the field is constantly growing (…) [Yet] cultural capital
remains on the side of the ‗purest‘ journalists of the print press, and they are often the ones
who launch the critical debates that television picks up.‖ 209
As Champagne has noted, ―[j]ournalistic production is always strongly dictated by the social,
especially political and economic conditions in which it is organized.‖ 210 The power of commercial
―ratings mentality‖ of television spills over into other fields also within journalism. TV in the
journalistic field ―is more and more dominated by the market model‖ and thereby exerts force on
newspapers and magazines as well as individual journalists. The consequence is then that ―through
the weight exerted by the journalistic field, the economy weighs on all fields of cultural
production.‖ 211
Yet, even though the journalistic field is caught between, and in many respects dominated by, the
political and economic field, it does wield its own significant power, and in Bourdieu's words ―all
the fields of cultural production today are subject to structural pressure from the journalistic
field.‖ 212 Or more specifically,
―Even though they occupy an inferior, dominated position in the fields of cultural production,
journalists exercise a very particular form of domination, since they control the means of
public expression. They control, in effect, public existence, one‘s ability to be recognized as a
public figure, obviously critical for politicians and certain intellectuals.‖ 213
208
Bourdieu, "The Political Field, the Social Science Field, and the Journalistic Field." Page 43.
209
Ibid. Page 42.
210
Champagne, "The 'Double Dependency': The Journalistic Field between Politics and Markets." Page 50-52.
211
Bourdieu, On Television. Page 56
212
Ibid. Page 56.
213
Pierre Bourdieu, On Television, trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (New York: The New Press, 1996). Page 46.
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