Oyster Coverage: Chiastic News as a Reflection of Local Expertise and Economic Concerns

The media, it is argued, are agents of legitimation - for themselves as well as others. Issues and social actors become recognized as important when they appear within the limelight of the news, and reporters are relied upon to correctly choose among the myriads of issues and actors vying for their attention. What happens, though, when an economically important cultural icon becomes a health threat? This is the situation facing news organizations in Southern Louisiana where oysters are both loved and loathed as food. We study newspaper presentations of oysters in Southern Louisiana over a ten-year period to investigate the ways in which this issue was approached. In many of the instances when negative articles appeared, positive statements could be found in the same issue of the newspaper, creating what we refer to as chiastic - defined as two parallel lines moving in opposite directions - media presentations. The presence of this type of news reporting is discussed in terms of the economic and cultural importance of the oyster, the economics of newspapers, and the stance of news organizations as cultural authorities.