"The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war"
About this Quote
Homogeneity is the fantasy that makes media criticism easy: blame "the media" as if it were a single loudmouth at the bar. Bruce Jackson’s line punctures that convenience. The specific intent is corrective, almost bureaucratic in its precision: war coverage isn’t one story with one bias, but a messy ecosystem of institutions, genres, deadlines, and incentives. Embedded reporters, wire services, local stations, partisan cable panels, foreign correspondents, NGO briefings, TikTok clips, leaked documents, and official press conferences don’t just differ in tone; they compete over what counts as reality.
The subtext is a warning about power and perception. If war is mediated through many channels, then propaganda isn’t simply a top-down lie; it’s also a drift created by routines. Some outlets reproduce official frames because access is currency. Others chase visceral imagery because attention is currency. Still others foreground human suffering because moral clarity is currency. The result is not balance but fragmentation: different publics living inside different wars.
Context matters here: Jackson, as a public servant, is positioned between state messaging and public understanding. That vantage point makes the sentence feel like both a defense and an indictment. It defends journalists from the lazy charge of uniformity, while indicting the audience’s habit of treating media as a monolith to be trusted or dismissed wholesale.
The line works because it narrows the target. Instead of arguing about whether coverage is “biased,” it forces the sharper question: which media, which war, told for whose needs?
The subtext is a warning about power and perception. If war is mediated through many channels, then propaganda isn’t simply a top-down lie; it’s also a drift created by routines. Some outlets reproduce official frames because access is currency. Others chase visceral imagery because attention is currency. Still others foreground human suffering because moral clarity is currency. The result is not balance but fragmentation: different publics living inside different wars.
Context matters here: Jackson, as a public servant, is positioned between state messaging and public understanding. That vantage point makes the sentence feel like both a defense and an indictment. It defends journalists from the lazy charge of uniformity, while indicting the audience’s habit of treating media as a monolith to be trusted or dismissed wholesale.
The line works because it narrows the target. Instead of arguing about whether coverage is “biased,” it forces the sharper question: which media, which war, told for whose needs?
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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