ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several Anti-realist epistemological theories that relate the closest to news media. This starts with a basis on Saussurean structuralism before moving on to an influential and more modern application of it, Stuart Hall's 'encoding/decoding' model. The Social Constructivist position and Tuchman's 'strategic rituals' of the media will then be defined before a discussion of the utility of these Antirealist theories in explaining truth in journalism will take place. Anti-realism will not be viewed as a 'solution' for the above-noted dialectic of Realism and Pragmatism. It argues an Anti-realist epistemology is the stepping stone to a stronger and more critical approach towards news media, that of Baudrillard's Hyperrealism. Social Constructionism is often seen as being Antirealist in that the argument is that "journalism, regardless of the integrity of individual journalists and editors, is always a selective, partial account of a reality which can never be known in its entirety by anyone".
