Media, ‘reality’, signification

Abstract

In making the national press awards for 1977, James Callaghan referred to the media as a ‘mirror held up to society’. The analogy is, of course, a hackneyed one. The concept of the mirror with its attendant series of questions-do the media offer a faithful reflection of reality, or do they mirror the real in a one-sided, distorting way?—has haunted the study of the media since its inception. The difficulty with the analogy, however, consists in the suggestion that a dividing line can be drawn between ‘reality’ or society on the one hand and the world of representations on the other. It implies that the media are secondary and derivative, somehow less real than the ‘real’ they reflect, existing above society and passively mirroring it rather than forming an active and integral part of it. Like a mirror, it is suggested, they reflect only what is placed in front of them by the structure of the real itself.

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