Representing the masses
There are two threads to this story. First I was taken by Joel Jenkins post about how the corporate news media (and this includes the ABC) has become less diverse in terms of the background and social class of its workers (ie journalists and editors) leading to the creation of less authentic and less diverse public narratives, ones which tend to subscribe to the narrow range of life experience and class that represents not the masses but rather the few professionals who now drive the corporate news world. This is not unlike what Chomsky described in his book, Manufacturing Consent. He was talking largely about print media at the time but the process and outcomes are to my mind similar. In both cases what we end up with is less diversity in points of view, and those remaining tends to coalesce around a normative centre. It also serves the purposes of excluding from reasonable debate and discussion, a range of so-called fringe issues or points of view either by starving such discussion