Media and Ideology Textbook PDF

Okay, here is the transcription of the provided text from that image, formatted in Markdown. # CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology Source: Screen Gems/Getty Images. Most media scholars believe that media texts articulate coherent, if shifting, ways of seeing the world. These texts help to define our wor...

Okay, here is the transcription of the provided text from that image, formatted in Markdown. # CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology Source: Screen Gems/Getty Images. Most media scholars believe that media texts articulate coherent, if shifting, ways of seeing the world. These texts help to define our world and provide models for appropriate behavior and attitudes. How, for example, do media products depict the "appropriate" roles of men and women, parents and children, immigrants and local communities, or bosses and workers? What defines success, and how is it achieved? What qualifies as criminal activity, and what are the sources of crime and social disorder? What are the underlying messages in media content, and whose interests do these messages serve? These are, fundamentally, questions about media and ideology. Most ideological analyses of mass media products focus on the content of the messages-the stories they tell about the past and the present-rather than the effects of such stories. In this chapter, then, we focus primarily on media messages. Part IV of this book will turn to the relationship between media messages and their audiences. ## WHAT IS IDEOLOGY? An ideology is basically a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and that makes value judgments about that world. Ideology is related to concepts such as 152 --- CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology 153 worldview, belief system, and values, but it is broader than those terms. It refers not only to the beliefs held about the world but also to the basic ways in which the world is defined. Ideology, then, is not just about politics; it has a broader and more fundamental connotation. ## Ideology and the "Real" World Ideologies do not necessarily reflect reality accurately; in fact, they can often present a distorted version of the world. In everyday language, it can be an insult to charge someone with being ideological, precisely because this label suggests rigidly adhering to one's beliefs in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. When Marxists speak of ideology, they often mean belief systems that help justify the actions of those in power by distorting and misrepresenting reality. As we will explore in the next chapter, media scholars are often interested in assessing how media content compares to the "real" world. But analysts of ideology generally perceive the definition of **the real** as, itself, an ideological construction. Which aspects of whose "reality" do we define as the most real? Those that are the most visible? The most common? The most powerful? Instead of assessing images and making some judgment about levels of realness, ideological analysis asks what these messages tell us about ourselves and our society. We can often be unaware of the ideological position of contemporary media because it reflects our own taken-for-granted views of the world. It is easier to recognize ideological content of media images by looking at older media. Old movies or television programs, for example, can seem unusual to us because they present an understanding of society that is at odds with our contemporary assumptions. For example, most U.S. television programs made in the 1950s and early 1960s featured almost entirely white casts; African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities were virtually nonexistent. These same programs typically assumed that sharply defined, divergent, and unequal gender roles were appropriate and desirable, usually with men as breadwinners and women as stay-at-home moms. Old Western movies of the era typically took for granted the right of European Americans to conquer the land of native peoples, who were often portrayed as violent savages, rather than as indigenous people trying to defend against invaders. In discussing ideology, the primary question about such images is not whether they were realistic reflections of society; they clearly were not. (At best they were distorted and selective representations of a narrow slice of white, middle-class life; at worst they were highly prejudicial stereotypes that are offensive to today's sensibilities.) Instead, an examination of ideology is concerned with what messages these images send about the nature of the world, how it operates, and how it should be. Media portrayals from this period reflect an ideology-beliefs about who is and isn't worthy of inclusion, what roles are appropriate for different groups, and what is just. The images in today's television and movies often suggest a different ideology than the one portrayed in this earlier era. When scholars examine media products to uncover their ideologies, they are interested in the underlying images of society they provide. Therefore, they tend to be interested in the recurring patterns that are found in the media rather than in a specific example of media content-things depicted in a single newspaper, website, movie, or hit song. For --- 154 PART III CONTENT ideological analysis, the key is the fit between the images and words in a specific media text and broader ways of thinking about, even defining, social and cultural issues. ## Dominant Ideology Versus Cultural Contradictions One key debate regarding the ideology of media is between those who argue that media promote the worldview of the powerful-the "dominant ideology"-and those who argue that mass media texts include more contradictory messages, both expressing the dominant ideology and at least partially challenging worldviews. We prefer to think of media texts as sites where cultural contests over meaning are waged rather than as providers of some univocal articulation of ideology. In other words, different ideological perspectives, representing different interests with unequal power, engage in a kind of struggle within the media. But it is not an even battlefield. Some ideas will have the advantage--because, for example, they are perceived as popular or they build on familiar media images-and others will be barely visible or difficult to communicate in certain forms because they are unfamiliar. For example, a political analyst who says, "We need a strong military to fight terrorism," is tapping into a popular sentiment in the United States, which requires no explanation; it is a widely taken-for-granted assumption about the world-an ideological position. Another analyst who says, "Perhaps the presence of our troops around the world is one factor provoking terrorism," is likely to generate puzzled looks or even anger. Such an argument will require much more explanation to be understood because it runs counter to the dominant ideology in the United States-though it would be much more familiar in some other societies. Different actors try to use media to communicate their interpretation of the world to a broader audience. But there is no guarantee that audiences will understand or interpret the meaning of this content in any uniform way-a topic we explore more fully in Chapter 8 on audiences. For example, the 2009 film Precious is a fictional story about a poor, obese, physically and emotionally abused, African American girl named Claireece Precious Jones, who eventually finds a faint glimmer of hope for the future with the encouragement and support of a teacher at an alternative school. What is the ideological content of such a movie? Some critics argued that the stark film sent a negative message about the black community. New York Press film critic Armond White (2009) criticized the film for its use of "brazenly racist clichés," including a scene in which the title character steals and eats a bucket of fried chicken. Other critics thought the film-produced with the backing of Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry-was a realistically desolate, disturbing, and ultimately positive story that portrayed a damaged young woman struggling against overwhelming odds to save herself. A Washington Post critic called it "the most painful, poetic, and improbably beautiful film of the year" (Hornaday 2009). Clearly, the meaning and significance of this single media product were interpreted very differently by different critics. In addition, broader trends in media content-and their ideological significance-are often the focus of controversy and debate. For example, some Christian conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists find themselves in agreement when they point to the U.S. media as a prime example of a decadent and sinful society, while most Americans take the pres- ence of sex, violence, and consumerism in the media as a simple fact of life. Time and time --- CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology 155 again, the media are simultaneously criticized by some for the messages they supposedly send while being applauded by others. These media battles often become quite fierce, with some voices calling for outright censorship, others defending free speech, and still others worrying about the consequences of cultural struggles that seem to represent a war of absolutes with no possibility of compromise. ## The "Culture War" Battles Over Ideology For those engaged in the promotion of particular ideas, including diverse groups such as politicians, corporations, citizen activists, and religious groups, media are among the pri- mary contemporary battlegrounds. Media, in fact, are at the center of what James Davison Hunter (1991; Hunter and Wolfe 2006) has called the "culture wars" in contemporary American society, in which fundamental issues of morality are being fought. Hunter stresses the ways in which media-advertising, news, letters to the editor, and opinion commentary-provide the principal forms of public discourse by which cultural warfare is waged. The morality of abortion, homosexuality, immigration, or capital punishment is debated, often in very polarized terms, in the mass media, as cultural conservatives and cultural progressives alike use various media technologies to promote their positions- including blogs, user-generated content platforms such as YouTube, and social networking sites like Facebook. One of the principal reasons why media images often become so controversial is that they are believed to promote ideas that are objectionable. In short, few critics are con- cerned about media texts that promote perspectives they support. Ideological analysis, then, often goes hand in hand with political advocacy, as critics use their detection of dis- torted messages to make their own ideological points. As a result, exploring the ideologies of mass media can be very tricky. The most sophisticated ideological analysis examines the stories the media tell as well as the potential contradictions within media texts, that is, the places where alternative perspectives might reside or where ideological conflict is built into the text. Ideological analysis, therefore, is not simply reduced to political criticism, whereby the critic loudly denounces the "bad" ideas in the media. Nor, in our view, is analysis particularly useful if it focuses on the ideology of one specific media text without making links to broader sets of media images. It may be interesting to ruminate over the underlying ideology of a popu- lar movie such as Forrest Gump. (Is it a nostalgic valorization of white men in the days before multiculturalism or a populist story of the feats of an underdog?) However, this inquiry will move from party conversation to serious analysis only if we think more care- fully about the patterns of images in media texts rather than analyzing one film in isolation. At its best, ideological analysis provides a window onto the broader ideological debates going on in society. It allows us to see what kinds of ideas circulate through media texts, how they are constructed, how they change over time, and when they are being challenged. ## Ideology as Normalization In October 2009, U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama gave an interview to the magazine Glamour, whose readers had voted her one of the most important women of the year. The interview --- 156 PART III CONTENT was reported in a Danish newspaper, whose journalists decided to focus on Obama's love tips. The underlying idea was that, having attracted and married the U.S. President, Ms. Obama could give some good advice to other women on how to catch powerful men. The description of Ms. Obama concentrated on her appearance ("brilliantly white smile," "bare upper arms"), ignoring her law school education and her successful career prior to becoming the First Lady. Ms. Obama was pictured as a devoted wife who does everything to please her husband, including dressing and smiling appropriately. According to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), a research project focusing on gender representation in the news media, the story "reinforces the stereotype that a woman's goal is to attract, attain and keep a man. The underlying message is that dressing and smiling like Michelle Obama, can enable women to attract and keep powerful men" (GMMP 2010). What are the stakes in the battles over the ideology of media? As the Obama example highlights, media texts can be seen as key sites where basic social norms are articulated. The media give us pictures of social interaction and social institutions that, by their sheer repetition, on a daily basis, can play important roles in shaping broad social definitions. In essence, the accumulation of media images suggests what is "normal" (e.g., women must be preoc- cupied with their appearance if they want to be successful) and what is "deviant." This articulation is accomplished, in large part, by the fact that popular media, particularly televi- sion and mass advertising, have a tendency to display a remarkably narrow range of behav- iors and lifestyles, marginalizing or neglecting people who are different from the mass- mediated norm. When difference is highlighted by, for example, television talk shows that routinely include people who are otherwise invisible in the mass media-cross-dressers, squatters, or strippers-the media can become part of a spectacle of the bizarre. The key in understanding such messages is to see the overall pattern rather than any single story. For example, the 2010 GMMP found that more than half-52 percent-of news stories in the United States reinforce traditional gender stereotypes through "generalized, simplistic and often exaggerated assumptions of masculinity and femininity" (p. 32). In contrast, only 13 percent of the news stories in the United States challenged traditional gender stereotypes. Traditional gender stereotypes were prevalent in news media around the world. The GMMP analysis found that 46 percent of the news stories in Europe rein- force traditional gender stereotypes; the figure jumps to 81 percent in news media in the Middle East. Despite the likelihood of their having very different political stances, those who are concerned about media depictions of, say, premarital sex have the same underlying con- cern as those who criticize the prominence of stereotypical gender images. In both cases, the fear is that media images normalize specific social relations, making certain ways of behaving seem unexceptional. If media texts can normalize behaviors, they can also set limits on the range of acceptable ideas. The ideological work lies in the patterns within media texts. Ideas and attitudes that are routinely included in media become part of the legitimate public debate about issues. Ideas that are excluded from the popular media or appear in the media only to be ridiculed have little legitimacy. They are outside the range of acceptable ideas. Therefore, the ideological influence of media can be seen in the absences and exclusions just as much as in the content of the messages. Media professionals generally have little patience with the argument that the media are purveyors of ideology. Instead of seeing media as places where behaviors are normalized -- CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology 157 and boundaries are created, those in the industry tend to argue that the images they pro- duce and distribute simply reflect the norms and ideas of the public. This is not ideology but simply a mirror that reflects the basic consensus about how things are. To be sure, ideologies do not usually appear in media texts because writers and produc- ers consciously want to impose their value systems on audiences. Rather, they are the result of the intersection of a variety of structural forces, including the producers' ideas of who the target audience is and what viewers would like to see, industry culture, genre conven- tions, the producers' own knowledge of human relationships, and more general cultural standards in a given social context (Levine 2001). In fact, as we saw in Chapter 2, most mass media are commercially organized to attract audiences for profit, so there is good reason to believe that popularity will be more important to media producers than a commitment to any specific ideology, beyond the promotion of consumerism. So our investigation of the ideology of media does not mean that producers are consciously trying to sell certain ways of thinking and being. Ideology is produced not only by committed ideologues. As we will see, we can find ideology in our everyday lives, in our definition of common sense, and in the construction of a consensus. ## THEORETICAL ROOTS OF IDEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS The analysis of ideology can be traced back to the works of Karl Marx and, especially, to 20th-century European Marxism. The analysis has evolved over time, maintaining some elements of its Marxist origin while developing more complexity and nuance. In what follows, we take a look at the evolution of ideological analysis, starting with its Marxists origins. This work is relevant insofar as it helps uncover a specific view of how society functions-that privilege and power are connected to one's position in the economy and class structure. ## Early Marxist Origins For early Marxists, the discussion of ideology was connected to the concept of "false con- sciousness." Ideology was seen as a powerful mechanism of social control whereby mem- bers of the ruling class imposed their worldview, which represented their interests, on members of subordinate classes. In such a system, the subordinate classes who accepted the basic ideology of the ruling class were said to have false consciousness because their worldview served the interests of others. For Marx and early Marxists, social revolution depended on the working class breaking free of the ideas of the ruling class-moving beyond their false consciousness-and developing a "revolutionary" consciousness that represented their material interests as workers. This new way of thinking would then stand in opposition to the ruling ideology, which promoted the economic interests of the capital- ist class. (Later, scholars looked beyond the economy and the class structure in order to analyze how privilege and power are distributed according to other identity factors, such as race, gender, and sexual identity.) In this context, ideology was understood to involve having ideas that were "false" because they did not match one's objective class interests. One of the ways capitalists ruled --- 158 PART III CONTENT industrial society was by imposing on the working class a worldview that served the inter- ests of capitalists yet pretended to describe the experiences of all humankind. For example, owners often used a divide-and-conquer strategy in stoking conflict among workers by promoting resentment and hatred toward racial minorities and recent immigrants. In the United States, white workers often came to believe that their biggest problem was minori- ties or immigrants taking away their jobs. As long as this belief was dominant, employers knew that internal divisions among workers would prevent effective organizing for better pay and working conditions. For workers, holding such beliefs actually worked against their own economic interests. Ideology, then, was about mystification, the masking of interests, and the conflation of the particular and the universal. Moreover, ideology could be understood in straightforward economic-class terms. Capitalists had a class interest in the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of labor. Their ideology, which celebrated individualism and the free market, was a result of their economic interests. Workers had a class interest in funda- mentally changing the conditions of their work and restructuring the social relations of production; this could be accomplished by a social revolution-a collective response and a regulation of markets. Any system of ideas that did not recognize these economic reali- ties, according to an early school of Marxism, was the result of the ideological power of capitalists. Ideological analysis, from this perspective, meant identifying the ways working people's ideas failed to reflect their class interests; in essence, it was about pointing out how consciousness was "false" and in need of correction. The critique of ideology has evolved a great deal from its connections to the concept of false consciousness, but it still maintains some of the basic outlines of the early Marxist model. Ideological analysis is still concerned about questions of power and the ways in which systems of meaning-ideologies-are part of the process of wielding power. And ideological analysis continues to focus on the question of domination and the ways certain groups fight to have their specific interests accepted as the general interests of a society. But the contemporary study of ideology is more theoretically sophisticated, paying atten- tion to the ongoing nature of ideological struggles and to how people negotiate with, and even oppose, the ideologies of the powerful. Ideas are not simply false, and the connection between ideas and economic interest is not necessarily straightforward. In fact, much of the contemporary study of ideology has moved away from a focus on economic-class rela- tions toward a more dynamic conceptualization of the terrain of culture. ## Hegemony The key theoretical concept that animates much of the contemporary study of the ideology of media is hegemony. Drawn from the work of Antonio Gramsci (1971), an Italian Marxist who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, the notion of hegemony connects questions of culture, power, and ideology. Gramsci argued that ruling groups can maintain their power through force, consent, or a combination of the two. Ruling by way of force requires the use of institutions such as the military and the police in an effort to physically coerce-or threaten coercion-so that people will remain obedient. There is no shortage of historical examples of societies in which the use of force and the threat of even more severe forms of coercion have been the principal strategy of ruling. The military dictatorship is the most obvious example. -- CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology 159 Gramsci (1971) noted, however, that power can be wielded at the level of culture or ideol- ogy, not just through the use of force. In liberal democratic societies, such as the United States, force is not the primary means by which the powerful rule. Certainly there are impor- tant examples of the use of force-turn-of-the-century efforts to crush the labor movement, the incarceration of members of the Communist Party in the 1950s, the violence directed at the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. But these examples stand out because the use of physical force is not the routine strategy for maintaining social order. Instead, Gramsci's work suggests that power is wielded in a different arena-that of culture in the realm of everyday life-where people essentially agree to current social arrangements. Consent, then, is the key to understanding Gramsci's use of hegemony, which is exer- cised through a kind of cultural leadership. Consent is something that is won; ruling groups in a society actively seek to have their worldview accepted by all members of society as the universal way of thinking. Institutions such as schools, religion, and the media help the powerful exercise this cultural leadership because they are the sites where we produce and reproduce ways of thinking about society. Hegemony, though, is not simply about ideological domination, whereby the ideas of one group are imposed on another. Instead, the process is far subtler. Hegemony operates at the level of common sense in the assumptions we make about social life and on the ter- rain of things that we accept as "natural" or "the way things are." After all, what is common sense except for those things we think are so obvious that we need not critically evaluate them? Common sense is the way we describe things that "everybody knows," or at least should know, because such knowledge represents deeply held cultural beliefs. In fact, when we employ the rhetoric of common sense, it is usually to dismiss alternative approaches that go against our basic assumptions about how things work. Gramsci (1971) reminds us that one of the most effective ways of ruling is through the shaping of commonsense assumptions. What we take for granted exists in a realm that is uncontested, where there is neither need nor room for questioning assumptions (Gamson et al. 1992). Hegemony theorists remind us that commonsense assumptions, the taken for granted, are social constructions. They imply a particular understanding of the social world, and such visions have consequences. It is common sense, for example, that "you can't fight city hall" or that women are better nurturers than men or that "moderate" positions are more reasonable than "extreme" positions. When people adopt commonsense assumptions-as they do with a wide range of ideas-they are also accepting a certain set of beliefs, or ideol- ogy, about social relations. A similar dynamic applies to what we think of as "natural." Nature is something that we define in opposition to culture because nature is perceived to be beyond human control. We generally think that the "natural" is not a social construction; nature is more enduring and stable than the creations of human societies. Thus, if social structures and social rela- tionships are defined as natural, they take on a kind of permanency and legitimacy that elevates them to the realm of the uncontested. Think about the social relationships we call "natural" (or "unnatural"). Is it natural that some people are rich and some are poor, that people will not care about politics, or that people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds will prefer to live with their own groups? If these conditions are simply natural, then there is little reason to be concerned about economic inequality, political apathy, or residential segregation because they are not social problems but the natural order of things. --- 160 PART III CONTENT The image shows two Al Jazeera websites, one is a homepage for Al Jazeera English and the other is a promotional page for the "Empire" series on the Al Jazeera website. The U.S. media's assumptions about the world are discernible when we consider the perspectives used in foreign media. For example, the English-language version of Qatar-based Al Jazeera (available in the United States) features a regular investigative series on "People and Power," which examines abuse of power by those in control of governments and corporations, and "Empire," which analyzes the "global powers and their agendas." Such programs often present a distinctly different, bottom-up approach to news. Let's look at some more controversial claims about the natural. One of the principal underpinnings of racist ideology is the belief that one race is naturally superior to others. Sexism rests on the assumption that men and women, by nature, are suited to different and unequal tasks. And contemporary discussions of sexuality are filled with claims about the "natural" status of heterosexual relationships and the "unnatural" status of gay and lesbian relationships. These examples illustrate how claims about nature work in the service of ideology. If such claims are widely accepted-if they are seen as the outcome of nature instead of culture-then there may be legitimate reason for racial inequality, sexual dis- crimination, and the demonization of gays and lesbians as these relationships are the result of the natural order of things. What we think of as natural and normal, then, is a central part of the terrain of hegemony. --- CHAPTER 5 Media and Ideology 161 Hegemony, however, is neither permanent nor unalterable. Gramsci (1971) understood it as a process that was always in the making. To effectively wield power through consent, ideological work through cultural leadership is an ongoing necessity. The terrain of common sense and the natural must be continually reinforced because people's actual experi- ences will lead them to question dominant ideological assumptions. People are active agents, and modern society is full of contradictions; therefore, hegemony can never be complete or final. Some people will not accept the basic hegemonic worldview, some people may resist it, and changing historical conditions will make certain aspects of hege- monic ideology untenable. Ultimately, Gramsci saw hegemony as a daily struggle about our underlying conceptions of the world, a struggle always subject to revision and opposition. Rulers who try to maintain their power by defining the assumptions on which the society rests work to bring stability and legitimacy and to incorporate potentially opposing forces into the basic ideological framework. In a striking example, images of rebellion from the 1960s have become incorporated into our democratic story and now are used to sell cars and clothing. Sociologist Stuart Hall, the leading voice of British cultural studies, has provided a sophisticated analysis of how mass media institutions fit into this conception of hege- mony. He argues that mass media are one of the principal sites where the cultural leader- ship, the work of hegemony, is exercised. Media are involved in what Hall calls "the poli- tics of signification," in which the media produce images of the world that give events particular meanings. Media images do not simply reflect the world, they re-present it; instead of reproducing the "reality" of the world "out there," the media engage in practices that define reality. As Hall (1982) puts it, "Representation is a very different notion from that of reflection. It implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping; not merely the transmitting of an already-existing meaning, but the more active labour of making things mean" (p. 64). Media representations are intertwined with questions of power and ideology because the process of giving meaning to events suggests that, potentially, there are multiple defini- tions of reality. For example, a workers' strike can be represented in several competing ways. The personal stories of the workers or an interview with a union leader can give a positive picture of the strikers. Reports highlighting statements from the company's man- agement may shed negative light on the strike A story that focuses on the inconvenience caused to the general public can make the issues involved in the conflict seem irrelevant. In Prime Time Activism, media sociologist Charlotte Ryan (1991) recalls her early activity as a union organizer in a public hospital. Every evening, after leaving the picket line, union activists would run home to watch the news on television to see how their efforts had been represented on the local news: Was the workers' or the company's perspective empha- sized? How were the workers on strike represented? Media have, as Hall (1982) says, "the power to signify events in a particular way." The question, then, is, "What are the patterns by which events are represented?" This is funda- mentally a question about ideology because it suggests that media are places where certain ideas are circulated as the truth, effectively marginalizing or dismissing competing truth claims. Many scholars argue that media generally adopt the dominant assumptions and draw on the commonsensical views of the world that everyone knows. As a result, media representations, while not fully closed, have the tendency to reproduce the basic stories --- 162 PART III CONTENT and values that are the underpinnings of this hegemony. For example, according to Becker (2006), when reality television shows like ABC's Supernanny or Fox's Nanny 911 focused on heterosexual middle-class families, these programs helped to "naturalize" certain ideolo- gies of parenting and the family, marginalizing alternative family forms, particularly single- parent households and families with same-sex parents. In this way, the ideology of the nuclear family presented in these kinds of programs participates in broader cultural con- flicts about the family and emphasizes a particular perspective in, for example, the ongoing debate about gay marriage. Media are, without doubt, not simple agents of the powerful-such as political leaders, major corporate actors, or cultural and religious authorities. As we will explore further in Chapter 8, the ideas of the powerful are not simply imposed on readers or viewers. Media are cultural sites where the ideas of the powerful are circulated and where they can be contested. Social change activists and social movements, for example, regularly seek to challenge the ideas of the powerful in the mass media (Ryan 1991). As we move from a theoretical discussion of media, ideology, and hegemony to specific cases that illustrate the ideology of mass media products, we will see the complex ways in which media products are a part of larger ideological debates. ## NEWS MEDIA AND THE LIMITS OF DEBATE For decades, Americans have debated the politics of the news media, with criticisms of the news coming with equal vigor from both sides of the political spectrum. The under- lying assumption in this debate is that news media are, in fact, ideological; the selection of issues, stories, and sources is inescapably value laden. While media outlets fend off attacks from the political right that they are too liberal and attacks from the left that they are too conservative, journalists find themselves precisely where they want to be: in the middle. This middle ground serves as a haven for reporters, a place that is per- ceived as being without ideology. After all, if ideological criticism comes from both sides, then the news must not be ideological at all. Attacks from both sides make the center a defensible place. Because we generally associate ideology with ideas that are perceived to be extreme, those in the middle are viewed as pragmatic rather than as ideological. And as ideology is something to be avoided, the journalistic middle ground becomes safe. There is good rea- son for journalists to want to occupy this territory. It insulates them from criticism and gives the news legitimacy with a wide range of readers and viewers who see themselves as occupying some version of a middle ground. However, the notion that the news reflects the "consensus" is itself ideological because news does the active work of defining that consensus. Once that consensus is defined, the claim that reporting is a mere reflection of an already existing consensus is blind to the ways such definitions work to solidify it. We might say the same thing about the journalistic center. The news does not so much occupy the middle ground as define what the middle ground is. In the process, news reporting effectively defends the legitimacy of this worldview, which is oriented to the reproduction of current social arrangements. In