Misrecognition
While acknowledging that subjects of poverty are copiously reported on in the Canadian and U.S. mainstream press, this article argues that because journalism uses a third person form of address in telling stories, the actors are rarely recognized as the « implied audience » of the reports. It is argued that the status of have-nots is denied direct dialogue with the journalist leading to a form of first level misrecognition from the urban commons. The argument is demonstrated through examples drawn from a larger study of newspaper coverage in Canadian and American mainstream daily newspapers in 2010. Suggestions are proposed as to how the change from a third to a second person form of address impacts the implied audience and the journalist’s professional culture. A gloss is presented as an introduction to the relations between community and material resources that make up the urban commons, its information sphere, and the conceptual link between two levels of recognition that orient the argument.