News conventions and profit motive reduce complex reality to uniform stories.
Evidence
For like all modes of communication, television, radio, and newspapers observe certain rules and conventions to get things across intelligibly, and it is these, often more than the reality being conveyed, that shape the material delivered by the media. Since these tacitly agreed-upon rules serve efficiently to reduce an unmanageable reality into “news” or “stories,” and since the media strive to reach the same audience which they believe is ruled by a uniform set of assumptions about reality, the picture of Islam (and of anything else, for that matter) is likely to be quite uniform, in some ways reductive, and monochromatic. It ought to go without saying that the media are profit-seeking corporations and therefore, quite understandably, have an interest in promoting some images of reality rather than others. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 178
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism claim — conventions for intelligibility and audience assumptions, not conspiracy, drive uniformity — is the chapter’s analytical core.
- XREF: connects to: Media coverage replaces lived events, reducing people to walk-on roles.
Related
- Media coverage replaces lived events, reducing people to walk-on roles. (similarity 0.91)
- Media output is uniform despite the abundance of sources and outlets. (similarity 0.83)
- Objectivity and factuality in news are unattainable ideals, not achievements. (similarity 0.80)
- Reporters impose their internalized frameworks on the events they cover. (similarity 0.79)