Content of mass media: making the news Flashcards
Window on the world
For most people TV is important source of information about what is going on in the world, news broadcasts are carefully managed to give an impression of seriousness and credibility
The news is manufactured and manipulated with a high degree of selectivity bias - caused by?
- Institutional factors (impossible to show everything)
- The culture of news production and journalism (how news professionals think and operate)
- The ideological influences on the media (cause and nature of bias)
Institutional factors - The new’s diary (Schlesinger)
- Are not a spontaneous response to world events
- News diary is any pre planned event
- E.g. olympics, queens jubilee
- Tells us most news is planned
- Not a true reflection on reality
- Socially constructed
Financial costs - e.g. Chile’s miners
- So much is spent covering a world event
- Companies have to stick to a budget
- ITN spent their budget covering protests in Tinanamen Square
- BBC were able to
Competition
Pressure to being the first without checking (GUMG)
Time or space available
Isn’t enough time to include everything, a journalist must decide what’s most news worthy
Churnalism
Form of journalism in which press releases and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create news media instead of further research or checking it
Nick Davies
- Found 80% of stories in Britain’s press were not original an that only 12% of stories were generated by reporters
Audience
The perceived audience will be influenced by the section of the news
The culture of news production and journalism - news values
Events that are reported have to go through some kind of gatekeeping/filtering process seeing if it is newsworthy
- Manufactured by journalists, socially constructed
Gatlung and Ruge believe there are 4 news values that determine worthiness
1) Events that are extrodinary E.g. cat in bin lady 2) Events that concern important people E.g Royalty or celebrities 3) Events that are dramatic/negative E.g. Coronavirus/9/11 4) Events that are of human interests E.g. Cures to diseases, animal related
News values
Extrodinariness = Unpredictable Threshold = Size of story Reference to elite = Famous/powerful Negativity = bad news > good news Personalisation = Can be personalised Unambiguity = Simple and clear to understand Composition = Clear and catchy headline
Journalists and news values
Journalists value what is newsworthy, this is referred to as gatekeeping; only a tiny amount of events make it through the gate, we are given a narrow agenda and real news has been replaced by infotainment
Ideology influences on the media
A set of ideas
Ideology influences on the media - Traditional Marxists
Owners directly control content > Marcuse - false needs > Milliband - opium > Press Baron - Rothermere/Beaverbrook - Anecdotal, can reject
