Media bias is neither conspiracy nor freedom but overdetermined institutional convergence

Evidence

To account for such a fact we require, neither a simple “conspiracy theory” nor a simple “freedom-and-pressures” model, but rather the model of a society and its major institutions as a “complex formation structured in dominance”; a model which identifies the specificity of the different institutions within the complex of power and ideology, locates their “relative autonomy,” includes the possibility of conflict and contradictory movements between them, while retaining the notion of central areas of convergence, of conjuncture—the “overdeterminations” of power. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 858

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core model Hall builds his whole media analysis on: ‘complex formation structured in dominance’ with ‘relative autonomy’ of institutions and ‘overdetermination’ of power.
• XREF: The ‘overdetermination’ concept comes straight from Althusser’s reading of Freud via Mao; connects to Hall’s later classic ‘Encoding/Decoding’ essay. — connects to: Partisan cable news abandoned objectivity to confirm viewer biases at the public’s expense — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 142; American corporate media silence renders the term ‘neoliberalism’ unusable in US politics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 131; Mainstream media’s failure to explain the banking crisis empowered Tory narratives — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1857 (+12 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Partisan cable news abandoned objectivity to confirm viewer biases at the public’s expense — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 142; American corporate media silence renders the term ‘neoliberalism’ unusable in US politics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 131; Mainstream media’s failure to explain the banking crisis empowered Tory narratives — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1857 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Media reproduce dominant ideology without direct state command or overt bias. #expands (0.92)