1) I agree with Alain de Botton's views on the News to a great extent. Botton states that the news does not focus on things that are important, but in fact focus on less important things. He uses the example of natural disasters that occur in the world and the fact that the news does not create sympathy for these stories. This is the reason why us as audiences can go to sleep so easily and not worry about those who have been affected. To contrast, Botton uses an image of Taylor Swift with her legs revealed which he states would be more important for news organisations to put on the front of their news as oppose to global warming, which is a serious factor affecting us. Botton also uses an interesting quote that 'the hierarchy of news has broken down.' By this, he means that the unimportant news is now at the forefront of news, whilst more important but perhaps less fun news is in the back and is given less importance. Overall I strongly agree with Botton's view on the news as most news corporations sell their news in this way to audiences.
2) Marxism and hegemony can be linked to Botton's view on the news as he shows elite people such as Prince William who is carrying his baby's car seat and celebrities such as Natalie Portman taking her son to the park who receive attention from the news. Although they are doing every day activities that most parents do anyway, it still means that things such as flu's spreading and children in less developed countries dying gain less coverage. The reason they gain less coverage is simply because they are less important and people only care to read about elite people. The point is that elite people stay in control and the centre of attention while others do not get much attention from audiences and are therefore classes as less important, encouraging hegemony as the elite continue to stay in control. News companies are concerned about making profits, as oppose to providing important, knowledgeable news.
3) Pluralism and new technology could challenge Botton's views on the news as citizen journalism is increasing, especially on the internet. This means that footage is published online and reaches social networking sites such as Twitter and YouTube and is shared among audiences. Citizen journalism tends to focus on things that happen to normal people, instead of the elite. For example, the Ian Tomlinson is a great example of citizen journalism having an impact on the elite as his case was further investigated after the police denied killing him. I believe citizen journalism will only continue to grow and in fact news companies need citizen journalism in order to provide efficient evidence for their stories in most cases that they did not capture themselves.
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