Pierre Bourdieu: On Television (1996–) [French, English]

On Television exposes the invisible mechanisms of manipulation and censorship that determine what appears on the small screen. Bourdieu shows how the ratings game has transformed journalism — and hence politics — and even such seemingly removed fields as law, science, art, and philosophy. Bourdieu had long been concerned with the role of television in cultural and political life when he bypassed the political and commercial control of the television networks and addressed his country’s viewers from the television station of the College de France. On Television, which expands on that lecture, not only describes the limiting and distorting effect of television on journalism and the world of ideas, but offers the blueprint for a counterattack.

Publisher Liber-Raisons d’Agir, Paris, 1996
95 pages

English edition
Publisher New Press, 1998
Translated by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson
ISBN 1565844076
104 pages

Publisher (EN)

Sur la télévision; suivi de l’emprise du journalisme (French, added on 2014-8-29)
On Television (English, updated on 2014-8-29)