Media Representation

As there is not much diversity in the individuals that are classified as public intellectuals, there is not much diversity in the academic fields and disciplines most represented within the media.  There are certain backgrounds that are much more represented than others.  There have been times I have seen that racially diverse individuals in the media are looked at to answer for the entire population for their race.

The most common academic fields that are seen in the media are political science and economics.  It is obvious that the media outlets that people subscribe to have a political agenda and leaning.  With this, the political science individuals usually occupy the spaces in our media.  Following this, the public is usually concerned with the current economic state.  Economists are looked to in order to shed light in the current time as well as for what is predicted in the future to come. 

Academic backgrounds that are not often represented in the media are subjects such as psychology, English, and the arts.  The arts are usually looked down upon from the “professional” backgrounds as something lesser.  The perspectives that could be shared from any of these backgrounds could be extremely beneficial.  By consistently broadcasting individuals of the same background, it creates a barrier for those outside of it to enter. 

As for the intellectual and philosophical perspectives, there are categories of expression.  Each of the individuals that work for media outlets must adhere to what their network wants to broadcast.  With this, they cannot deviate far from what the media source wants.  We see this from the termination of Tomi Lahren for her differing perspective on abortion from The Blaze.

Depending on how diverse of news sources one subscribes to, will determine which perspectives are limited.  Usually, if one subscribes to only one wing of media, they will not hear the perspectives from the other wing.  There are times that individuals that have differing opinions will come onto a media source, but this usually ends up not building a bridge in any capacity.  In the end, the viewer will back up their media outlet’s representative and discredit the visiting representative.