Class and News

Book excerpt: News as a cultural product has earned a place in scholarly research over the past several decades, and media scholars and sociologists have successfully looked at news for ideological content and how news may shape an audience's ideas on politics, gender, and race. But how does news influence an audience's ideas about social structure? Class and News is a multidisciplinary collection of essays examining how the news media treats or neglects this structure in everyday reporting. Are certain stories chosen for their appeal to the upper or middle classes? Are stories of interest to lower class readers/viewers avoided? How are issues of social order reported or reflected in stories that aren't about class? This in-depth work will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the dynamics of class and news in the United States.