Broadcasting’s need for credibility traps it between consensus and its critics

Evidence

All professionals generate their own distinctive ideologies and routines. But the growth of professionalism in broadcasting seems to have another function—essentially that of a defensive barrier which insulates the broadcaster from the contending forces which play across any progressive-making in a sensitive area. It is often a species of professional retreatism, a technique of neutralization. By converting issues of substance into a technical idiom, and by making himself responsible primarily for the technical competence with which the program is executed, the producer raises himself above the problematic content of the issues he presents. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 872 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Broadcasting self-regulates within the state’s definition of sociopolitical reality; Broadcast objectivity is an operational fiction hiding selective, value-laden construction.; Consensus is manufactured through the process of debate itself. (+7 more)

Related

• Broadcasting’s formal balance of two sides distorts unequal real-world conflicts (similarity 0.91)
• Broadcast professionalism functions as a defensive retreat from contested content (similarity 0.88)
• Media serve capitalism through impartial professional practice rather than overt bias (similarity 0.86)
• Media neutrality underwrites the shared presuppositions of political contest. (similarity 0.84)
• Media bias cannot be explained by broadcasters’ personal politics. (similarity 0.81)
• Media balance reproduces the shared presuppositions that bracket political disagreement (similarity 0.81)
• Broadcast impartiality is a staged performance of neutrality, not genuine neutrality (similarity 0.80)
• Neutral broadcasters translate all political conflict into the language of compromise (similarity 0.80)
• Professional skill in text reproduction requires suppressing intellectual interest in content (similarity 0.80)
• Television expresses and contains conflict simultaneously. (similarity 0.80)
• Broadcasters regulate themselves mainly by imagining public opinion. (similarity 0.79)
• Broadcasters are simultaneously independent and institutionally aligned with power (similarity 0.79)
• Traditional media face contradictory demands that make competent truth-telling punishable. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Media serve capitalism through impartial professional practice rather than overt bias #expands (0.80)
• Broadcast professionalism functions as a defensive retreat from contested content #expands (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 872
• Formal balance and impartiality in media mask real dominance of prevailing interpretations #expands (0.75)
• Broadcasting’s formal balance of two sides distorts unequal real-world conflicts #expands (0.70)