content, in other words, is an opening to the profound themes in
human life in general.
2. AC640 readings: Miljan and Cooper’s “Agents of Control or Agents of
Change?”
Lydia Miljan is an associate professor in the political science department at the University
of Windsor, and the former director of the National Media Archive at the Vancouver-based
Fraser Institute. Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of
Calgary, a newspaper columnist at the Calgary Herald, and a senior fellow at the Fraser
Institute.
This chapter, taken from Miljan and Cooper’s 2003 book, Hidden Agendas: How
Journalists Influence the News, is a thoughtful analysis of journalistic bias and media culture, and is written from the political right. Media bias—a frequently debated issue in
society at large—is a theme that has prompted many a commentator to take to their
soapbox and decry the liberal or conservative tendencies of journalists. It’s a topic that is
far more bruited about than formally studied or understood, and Miljan and Cooper bring
their considerable methodological sophistication to the problem.
a. the embedded state
The authors argue that the image of journalists that media critics like Noam Chomsky
present—that of journalists as agents of the capitalist status quo—is wrong. As these two
see it, journalists largely reflect a left-liberal system of values that is critical of capitalism,
uncomfortable with tradition英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】al mores, and concerned to expand the role of the state in
people’s lives.
The authors identify two contrasting approaches to the study of journalists and their role in
society: (i) a cultural critical approach, such as practiced by Chomsky as well as neo-
Marxist critics of journalism; and (ii) a liberal pluralist approach, one favoured by Miljan
and Cooper. The cultural critical approach sees journalists as “agents of control,” insofar
as their stories and commentary reflect a preference for the status quo. The liberal pluralist
approach sees journalists as “agents of change,” desiring the expansion of government’s
role in society and allying themselves with various groups in the state’s bureaucratic
system, e.g., a ministry favouring a national daycare program.
The authors argue that Canada is not uniformly capitalist, and that corporations and elites
do not have an undue amount of power in Canadian society. Government and business, in
fact, are more co-dependent than they are antagonistic. Moreover, we need to understand
the state in a different way to then better understand the relationship of journalists to it. As
they see it, the state does not behave as a uniform entity. Rather, like any other social
institution, states contain groups competing with each other for resources, seeking
alliances with like-minded interests in society at large, and having different views on
issues.
The authors’ neo-institutionalist perspecti
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