Television News and the Nation: The End?

Menahem Blondheim and Tamar Liebes
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Menahem Blondheim: Dpartment of History and the department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tamar Liebes: Carl and Matilda Newhouse Chair in Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2009, vol. 625, issue 1, 182-195

Abstract: The golden age of television news gave a large majority of otherwise diverse Americans a unified, seamless, and clear-cut image of their nation, its central players, and its agenda. Carefully scheduled, edited, sequenced, and branded, heard and seen simultaneously across America, it provided a pretense of order to the chaos that is news. The permanence and stability of the nation, as expressed in a complex way by TV news, provided Americans with an all-important sense of existential security experienced on an unarticulated emotional level. Today, a disjointed news environment is crushing the nature of network news as a transitional object. Television news no longer reassures viewers by connecting them to a surmountable world out there but carries them on a loop from themselves to themselves.

Keywords: television; news; news technologies; telegraph; transitional object; nationalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:625:y:2009:i:1:p:182-195

DOI: 10.1177/0002716209338574

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