ABSTRACT
The ‘impartiality’ of television news and current affairs is now widely considered a myth. This standard critique is usually presented in terms of ‘bias’ and ‘distortion’. In this article I argue against the terms and implications of this position. In a wide variety of studies the pictures and definitions constructed by journalistic practices are said to provide ‘biased’ or ‘distorted’ accounts of an independent and objective reality; they are ‘biased’ or ‘distorted’ because they are informed by a body of ruling and dominant ideas, which are said to ‘belong’, in a simple way, to ruling political or economic groups. In short, television journalism is made to appear to be a kind of megaphone by which ruling ideas are amplified and generalized across all sectors of the social formation.
