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ABOUT THE BOOK

Media Control: News as an Institution of Power and Social Control challenges traditional (and even some radical) perceptions of how the news works. While it's clear that journalists don't operate objectively – reporters don't just cover news, but they make it – Media Control goes a step further by arguing that the cultural institution of news approaches and presents everyday information from particular and dominant cultural positions that benefit the power elite.
From analysing how the press operate as police agents by conducting surveillance and instituting social order through its coverage of crime and police action to bolstering private business and neoliberal principles by covering the news through notions of boosterism, Media Control presents the news through a cultural lens. Robert E. Gutsche, Jr. introduces or advances readers' applications of critical race theory and cultural studies scholarship to explore cultural meanings within news coverage of police action, the criminal justice system, and embedding into the news democratic values that are later used by the power elite to oppress and repress portions of the citizenry. Media Control helps the reader explicate how the power elite use the press and the veil of the Fourth Estate to further white ideologies and American Imperialism.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

I. The Experience of Experiencing Power: A Beginning
II. Purpose of the Book
III. Plan of the Book

1. Power, Propaganda & the Purpose of News

I. Explicating the Embassy Evacuations: The Purpose of Banal News
II. Power: A Briefing on News as Commodity
III. Incorporating the News: Joining 'The Power Elite'
IV. Conclusion: Interpreting News as Propaganda

2. Making News: Purposes, Practices & Pandering

I. News as National Rhetoric: The Boston Bombing
II. Narratives of Journalism Studies: Politics, Profits & Media-making
III. From Social Power to 'Media Power'
IV. Interpreting Journalism Through Levels of Analysis

3. Displacement & Punishment: The Press as Place-makers

I. Here is Not There: Place Ideologies in the Press
II. The Power of 'Othering' in Press Characterizations of Place & Race
III. News Place-making as 'The New Jim Crow'
IV. Conclusion: Media Displacement as Punishment

4. News as Cultural Distraction: Controversy, Conspiracy & Collective Forgetting

I. Controversy or Bust: Media Commitment to Crazy in National Crises
II. The Distraction of 'Conspiracy Theory': News, Fear & The Need for Protection
III. Militarization & Media Violence: The Warfare of Urban Memory
IV. Conclusion: Collective Forgetting & Media Control

5. Normalizing Media Surveillance: Media Waiting, Watching & Shaming

I. Media Waiting: Fearing South Beach's Urban Beach Week
II. Media Watching: The Function of Media Surveillance
III. Media Shaming: Normalizing 'Correction'-as-Control
IV. Conclusion: Media Surveillance as Punishment

6. The Violence of Media Souseveillance: Identifying the Press as Police

I. Police Myth: Media Adoption of Police Power
II. Journalistic Information & (Questioned) Collaboration
III. Controlled Monitoring as Mediated Practice
IV. Conclusion: The Virtuous Violence of Media Souseveillance

Conclusion: The Myth of Being “Post-Media” & Why Americans Will Always be Media Illiterate

I. Media Control: An Assessment & Reminder
II. The Death of Media Literacy: The Force of Digital Distractions & Corporatization
III. Media Socialization & Press Pacification Through Journalism Education
IV. Conclusion: Complicating Media Control's Collective Identity