The Bias of Mediatization: Utopia in Charlottesville

Abstract

The paper reconstructs Harold innis’ idea of media’s bias. It is argued that media construct a view of the future in line with temporalized Platonism that excludes people that belong to the past. The clash of statues and media in Charlottesville presented mediatization as a progressive but not dialectical force. Statues and media did not check each other’s biases. Media embody the confrontation of authority and publicity (Habermas) or the Enlightenment and Absolutism (Koselleck). After the neoliberal commercialization, the Enlightenment acquired the form of utopian future that confronts the media logic against conservative forces. The truth is constructed according to the prescribed future. Trump blamed all, in accordance with the Absolutist principle. Commercial media professionalism stood by its Enlightenment origins and accused Trump of revitalizing forces of the past. Because most citizens were against taking down the statues, commercialized media logic was less receiver steering than the public service media.