The Persistent Evasion of Technical Problems in Media Studies

In his 'reply' to our paper 'Biasing the News'1 Murdock accuses us of 'misrepresenting media studies'2 and there is a sense in which he must be right, though it is not alas one which enables him to rebut our arguments. A substantial part of our paper was given over to the reanalysis of some of Murdock 's data.3 This is not the part of the paper which attracts interest, and all the oral and written comments we have received have avoided reference to it, though it is the part which interests us and which motivated the production of the paper. Oddly enough, Murdock gives only a brief section of his counter-argument to discussion of this part, though it is the one which directly concerns his work. The remainder of our paper involved general critical comments on (sociological) 'media studies' using one or two cases as occasions for a wholesale attack. Media studies is a big and burgeoning field. We do not need Murdock to tell us that, or to give us reading lists in it. The fact that there is an awful lot of it about (and that a lot of it is awful) gives reason and edge to our objections. However, given that we are briefly characterizing and criticizing a large field, we are bound to be in a position where some studies can be found which will, in one way or another, be exempt from one or other of our strictures. That a study is not subject to one criticism does not entail that it also avoids the others, and we cannot find studies which do avoid the difficulties we point out, some of which Murdock concedes we do correctly identify. It is no good, then, listing a large number of studies. The thing Murdock needs to do is to single out those which are exemplary, canonical, which are not fairly easily accessible to serious methodological criticism. We complain, for example, that 'form' has been neglected in media studies, Murdock accepts our point, but suggests that recent studies may meet our objection, but the one to which he refers is one that we have just had occasion to review, and which we argue does no better with its data than the studies we criticize in the initial paper.4 Murdock likens us to Tom Jones' tutor, Thwackum, but conducts himself in the fashion of Jones' other teacher, Square, who held virtue to be a matter of theory only, and was well versed in eclectic reliance upon the writing of the 'antients'. The reference to Thwackum is no doubt meant to be chastening, as is the citation of media literature. How insolent we are to question all this established knowledge in so many books. The citations lay down the criteria for club membership; media studies are about the things these books are about, for they are the relevant authorities. We disagree. And insist that the criteria are arbitrary. We are not impressed by bulk. There are a lot of media studies, that does not stand disputing, but it is worth asking whether they add up to anything? They are (despite divergences and disagreements amongst various kinds of approach to the media) very repetitive, being mainly designed to give some empirical application to more or less dilute versions of the theory of ideology. They seek over and over again to make much of the fact that the media are socially produced, so much that we think we shall likely weep if we have to read again that 'Everyday life is not organized a priori as discrete public events which can be simply mirrored by newsworkers. It does not differentiate itself into newsworthy events for reporting and publication'5 and that 'importance and interest are not endemic properties of occurrences

Argument (complex analysis · Criticism · Epistemology · Evasion (ethics · Field (mathematics · Law and economics · Political science · Reading (process · Section (typography · Sociology · Subject (documents · Computer Science · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Mathematics · Media Studies and Communication · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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