ABSTRACT
The argument that threads throughout the chapter is that culture, specifically arts and entertainment, needs to be taken seriously by scholars theorizing about a socially responsible normative role for media organizations. Raymond Williams argued that culture is ordinary because it is part of a person’s everyday life and experience. Culture also could serve a normative role because it helps create a worldview, often is directly political, and at times inverts the power structure both in a political sense and also in the meanings created by artists, the subjects they consider, and the way they express those subjects artistically. In the chapter, the author discusses the concept of political humor through mock news programs, explores the portrayal of journalists in movies and television, considers social responsibility theory in terms of entertainment programming, and critically examines Neil Postman’s central argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death.
