American Journalism’s Ideology: The Question of Bias in the Media

Dr. Robert Jensen (The University of Texas at Austin) // January 31st, 2017 // 2:00pm-3:00pm // Jesse H. Jones Communication Center (CMA) 5.136

The routine assertion that mainstream journalism outlets are disproportionately staffed by liberals, producing a liberal bias in mainstream news, misses the more deeply embedded conservative nature of corporate commercial journalism. In this talk, Professor Robert Jensen will provocatively argue that most journalists reproduce the dominant ideology of the contemporary United States—involving world affairs, economics, and ecology—which can be best understood as forms of fundamentalism and therefore dangerous to a meaningful conception of democracy.

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin and the national group Culture Reframed. He is the author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (Spinifex Press, 2017). Jensen’s other books include Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully (Counterpoint/Soft Skull, 2015); Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue (City Lights, 2013); All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002).

Free and open to the UT community and general public