> When I have to explain something to people who don't know all the specialist terms, I like to state things in terms of concrete real-world examples.
Yeah I do tend to do that too, but I'm also wary that concrete examples in this case tend to make people switch off their minds and think with their ideologies. It's a hard balance to strike - I usually try to concretise the example with an analogy if the topic is messy. But the failure to communicate successfully here is mine, so I'll try to clarify.
What I mean is that the media props up the narrative of its audience. A concrete example is the idea of cultural norms. So to concretise the parent I was originally replying to:
> And it's not just a question of generalization, but a question of whose stories get told through the media. Whose lifestyles make it into the "lifestyle" section.
becomes:
> the media promotes WASPy values, lifestyle sections promote very "white" lifestyles
So my point was that yes, they do, because it sells, because most of their audience is white and share those cultural values - and that is because that is the biggest audience segment available. Hence large WASP-cultural population => media wants large audience => media targets WASP-cultural audience => everywhere you look, WASP cultural standards are promoted. The norm is reflected and promoted by the media. Role models are mostly white and represent WASP values.
But where in a modernist setting, these values are treated as ideals to live up to (and thus that if you have different norms, you'd better shape up), in a postmodern context the idea of "objectively best" cultural norms breaks down because people simply disperse into their own groups with their own media that reflect their own norms. Every groups creates an echo chamber where there is no competing narrative because they shut it out.
My criticism of progressivism is that it hasn't abandoned the idea of a central narrative, and instead of creating parallel media is mostly concerned with reforming the old media to represent every cultural bloc, ie tokenism. Also for confusing race with culture.