Language and Situation Language of Newspapers. Flashcards
Outline the features of a newspaper.
Ownership. Audience. Platform/distribution - newspapers or online. Circulation (amount of readers). Political alignment.
Define bias through selection and omission.
An editor can express bias by choosing to use or not to use specific new items. Within a given story, some details can be ignored, others included, to give readers or viewers a different opinion about the events reported.
Define bias through placement.
Readers of papers judge the firs page stories to be more significant than those buried in the back. Television and radio newscast run the most important stories first and leave the less significant for later. Where a story is placed, therefore, influences what a reader or viewer thinks about its importance.
Define bias by headline.
Many people read only the headlines of a news item. Most people scan nearly all the headlines in a newspaper. Headlines are the most read part of a paper. They can summarize as well as present carefully hidden bias and prejudices. They can convey excitement where little exists. They can express approval or condemnation.
Define bias by photos, captions and camera angles.
Some pictures flatter a person, others make the person look unpleasant. A paper can chose photos to influence opinion about, for example, a candidate for election. On television, the choice to which visual images to display is extremely important. The captions newspapers run below photos are also potential sources of bias.
Define bias through names and titles.
News media often use labels and titles to describe people, paces and events. A person can be called an ‘ex-con’ or be referred to as someone who ‘served time twenty years ago for a minor offence’. Whether a person is described as a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’ is a clear indication of editorial bias.
Bias through statistics and crowd counts.
To make disaster seem more spectacular (and therefore more worthy of reading about), numbers can be inflated. ‘A hundred injured in air crash’ can be the same as ‘only minor injuries in an air crash’, reflecting the opinion of the person doing the counting.
Define bias by source control.
To detect bias consider where the news item ‘comes from’, is the information supplied by a reporter, an eyewitness, police or fire officials, executives or elected or appointed government officials? Each may have a particular bias that is introduced into the story. Companies and public relations directors supply news outlets with puff pieces through news releases, photos or videos. Often news outlets depend on pseudo-events (demonstrations, sit-ins, ribbon cuttings, speeches and ceremonies) that take place mainly to gain news coverage.
Define bias through word choice and tone.
Showing the same kind of bias that appears in headlines, the use of positive or negative words or words with a particular connotation can strongly influence the reader or viewer.
Outline the purpose of Halls Encoding/Decoding model.(1980)
Hall (1980) proposed a model of mass communication that highlights the importance of active interpretation within relevant codes.
Outline the moment of encoding in Halls model.
When the ‘institutional practices and organisational conditions and practices of production’ take place.
Outline the moment of text in Halls model.
‘The symbolic construction, arrangement and perhaps performance. The form and content of what is published or broadcast.’
Outline the moment of decoding in Halls model.
‘The moment of reception or consumption.’
Outline the three positions for the reader of a text in Halls model.
Because of the active role of the audience, decoding may well be different to the encoder’s intended meaning. In this way then, he proposed three positions for the reader of a text.
Dominant reading.
Negotiated reading.
Oppositional reading.
Outline dominant reading in Hall’s model.
The reader fully shares the texts code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading.
