ABSTRACT
Any account of social life is necessarily partial. We selectively and systematically omit in order to sharpen and differentiate. To focus on a topic is to enhance by elimination. The one begets the other. Journalists are professional account makers, skilled at purposive elimination, tuned to resonant enhancement. They reflect what they describe, therein constituting that described as at once real, real again, real in fact. Through their media, journalists' accumulated constitutive work permeates the very relationships they purport to describe, giving it sustenance, form and shape.
