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I’ve become very interested in this man. I’ve actually read this essay in a collection of his works called Sociology is a Martial Art - but I thought this (which is also published as a separate book on its own) was worth discussing in a review. There is also a documentary of the same name about Bourdieu, which is available on YouTube here .

A couple of years ago now I read a book called Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. There were many ideas in that book that I found incredibly interesting, but one that has stuck with me is the problem with trying to understand what is going on in the world by reading newspapers, which that book compares to trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of the clock.

Bourdieu explains this idea in more detail in this short essay. The problem of television is much more interesting than just ‘the medium is the message� � although there is a lot to this idea too. The main problem with television is that you think you are learning something by watching it when, in fact, you are only having your prejudices and the received prejudices of your society reinforced.

Let’s take two very recent events � the ‘completed� revolution in Egypt and the current revolution taking place in Libya. Watching the news on these two social shifts has been fascinating while I’ve been reading this book. Egypt came after a series of other uprisings in other Arab countries. Uprisings in which one demonstration looked much the same as the next. We are shown all of the drama of large crowds, loud shouting, banners, flags and dolls burning, guns being fired in the air � and there is little else to think but ‘God, the natives are restless tonight�.

What this remarkably consistent string of images conveys to us sitting snugly and smugly in our living rooms is a dysfunctional society in need of some form of strict order. Television makes all issues ‘immediate� � that is, virtually any issue displayed just happens and so doesn’t need to have a past to explain it or even a future � events just are. They exist on our television screens and their meaning is exactly whatever the image displays � and that meaning is generally a cliché: angry people, bad rulers, greedy politicians, evil bankers or fat-cat CEOs giving themselves huge pay bonuses.

But since nothing has a past, nothing can be explained or reflected on or changed. And since nothing can be explained there can be no solutions to any of the problems we witness on our widescreen plasmas. Television breeds a strangely comforting sense of hopelessness, of alienation and of entrapment.

Television loves images, and the more dramatic the better � but all that means is that television frames every image in a way to make it look as dramatic as it possibly can look. And that means more dramatic than it probably is.

We have been told that Egypt is now going to be free and democratic and better than ever before � we have all witnessed people power in action. But our television news services, if they had bothered to say anything at all about Egypt last year, would have said Egypt had been all of those things already. How else could we explain why Egypt was the second highest recipient of US Foreign Aid in the world? You can see how important it is why television doesn’t do history!

A couple of weeks ago I signed a petition calling on world governments to block Mubarak skimming billions of dollars out of Egypt for his own personal gain into a maze of foreign bank accounts � and to demand our governments do this immediately, before it is too late.

Now, don’t get me wrong about Libya, but how the news has presented what is going on there seems to have been quite different. There is also a revolution going on in the streets of Libya, but this time there is talk of crimes against humanity and every effort is being made to ensure Gaddafi does not escape with the loot. Like I said, don’t get me wrong, I’m really not saying Gaddafi deserves any better treatment � but I find it amazing that our news can now treat the Egyptian ‘revolution� as now being essentially over (when in reality very few of us would have the least idea what is about to happen there next), while if Gaddafi is removed from power (and we are even at the moment talking about imposing no fly zones across the internal territory of a sovereign nation) will it take there t be the same outcome (that is, the military control of the country) before our media will be able to say things are normal?

In an interview I saw Gaddafi told a journalist he did not understand the internal political situation in Libya, how the system worked � the journalist responded by saying that he did understand it. That may well be true � but one thing is certainly true, I did not come away from watching the interview understanding anything about the Libyan system of government, Gaddafi’s role in that system or who the people exercising people power were or what they wanted.

I would love to believe that democracy is about to bloom in Egypt � but from watching the news I have no means of being able to have any confidence in that. From watching the news the only thing I can say is that there have been lots of people on the streets of Egypt, and now those crowds are no longer on the streets. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing may have to wait until something else clichéd happens � probably involving a man in his autumn years wearing an ornate military uniform nodding coldly and taking control (bringing peace?) as endless lines of soldiers march in formation before him.

Bourdieu also discusses the types of ‘intellectuals� most likely to end up as commentators on television. He says they are generally not well admired in their own professions � hence their need to seek attention from a less discerning and more popular medium. They are also unlikely to say anything interesting � in the sense that what they are most liked for by television is not their ability to say anything challenging or even interesting, but rather their ability to talk without needing to stop for thought, to comment without content on virtually any subject.

The medium is not one suited for serious debates, and so it is much more interested in conflict � conflict often for its own sake. His advice, if you ever have the misfortune of being interviewed by a journalist (and this probably covers all of them in all media) is to assume they are thick and ill-informed and will ask stupid questions. Your answer therefore should start with the question you think they ought to have asked, in the nicest possible way, obviously � “Your question is certainly interesting, but it seems to me there is another one that is even more important…�

The examples of Egypt and Libya are in part beside the point � at least these are issues of real substance and moment � unlike most of what is on television news programs. Most television journalism is about buildings falling down, or cats caught up trees, or car accidents, train derailments or random stock market fluctuations that are no less meaningless to most of the audience for being discussed breathlessly.

Spectacle is all � but spectacle without context. Just what, as a single case among millions, are we to make of the Italian political system based on the endless reports of the Italian president having sex with a seventeen year old prostitute? And if we can learn virtually nothing from this titillating sideshow, I have a further question, has that consumed more or less newsprint internationally than the Global Financial Crisis? I don’t know the answer to that � but I fear it may be a close run thing.

And finally, a quote:

“The goal of teaching is not only the reading, writing and arithmetic needed to make a good worker; the goal of education is to offer the means of becoming a good citizen.�

Bourdieu writes clearly about things that matter a great deal � he explains the changes they are causing and the direction these changes are likely to continue to take. Television seeks to manipulate you � by trying to understand how and why it seeks to do this you will give yourself a way to defend yourself against this manipulation. This is a wonderful companion text to Postman’s How to Watch Television News and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.