To what extent do you agree with Alain de Bottom's views on the News?
How can you link Marxism and Hegemony to de Botton's criticisms of the News?
How could you use Pluralism and new technology to challenge de Botton's views on the News?
I agree to Alain de Bottom’s view to a large extent. I believe that there are many issues such as Global warming and incidents in other country’s that aren't being shown frequent enough for the audience to care about.
I believe that the ‘’hierarchy of news has collapsed’’ as Bottom stated, because the important news won’t be shown if it is not popular. Important and popular are separated – and most times popular news is chosen over important news. This could possibly be too dumb down the audience, and only show them as much as they should see to keep them in their place – a prime example of hegemony as a Marxist would say. Stupid and irrelevant news such as ‘’Taylor Swift’s’’ legs making the news covers all the time, make the fact that plenty dying somewhere in North Africa that is not an elite nation much less important since audiences are not shown this enough for them to care and develop empathy for such disadvantaged people. Alain de Bottom questions if we are ‘crazy’ to not care, but it is simply the Media that chooses to show what they feel is important, and according to the News Values it is Elite people and nations. Photo journalism from less developed country's is required in order to create relations with the people involved in disasters, rather than just a headline that runs for 3 seconds. I agree that professional photo journalism is required in order to get people more interested, for example what is happening in Ferguson, USA over the murder of Mike Brown. This is potentially the reason as to why ''world news, which is primarily disaster based gets the lowest figures''. Increase empathy will increase the viewer ship from audiences as well as give them quality news - and not dumb them down and help them see what is actually happening in the world.
On the other hand, this argument can be challenged and linked to Pluralism due to the fact that the audience want extensive information on irrelevant celebrities, rather than know about what directly affects them (for example Global warming), therefore the media and news publish and produce what the audience want – and if they want to be dumbed down, and not get high quality and relevant news they won’t get that.
Choose two news stories from the last six months - one that supports de Botton's views and one that challenges his belief that the News is used for social control.
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