Category: News

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News – some good quotations

Andrew Goodwin suggests that ‘the real issue is whether the range of biases represented is fair‘

 

John Fiske notes that ‘News, of course, can never give a full, accurate objective picture of reality nor should it attempt to, for such an enterprise can only serve to increase its authority and decrease people’s opportunity to “argue” with it, to negotiate with it.‘

 

I F Stone argues that ‘most of the time, objectivity is just the rationale for regurgitating the conventional wisdom of the day‘

 

Daniel Chandler cites that a correspondence has often been reported between the order of importance which the media give to ‘issues’ and the order of significance attached to them by the public and by politicians.

 

Stuart Hall notes that ‘journalists speak of “the news” as if events select themselves.‘

 

Richard Hoggart argued that the most important filter through which news is constructed is ‘the cultural air we breathe, the whole ideological atmosphere of our society…‘

 

John Fiske notes that ‘All television channels or networks use an early evening news programme to lead into their prime-time schedules. This is designed to draw the male of the household into the TV audience… though it often ends with a “softer” item that is intended to bring the female back into the audience.‘

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Supplementary articles on TV News

Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model of News
Five filters which ensure only certain kinds of information filter through; filters which ensure privileged info which suits the interests of powerful elites. These filters are:

  1. ownership: a few large and wealthy organisations – news is more apt to be pro their owner’s interests.
  2. advertising: affluent audiences needed; advertisers need a buying mood – lighter stories
  3. sourcing: tight timetables lead to journalists accepting pre-packaged information therefore well-resourced organisations can gear up to supply these ‘packages’ and they can reflect their interests.
  4. flak: certain stories can generate expensive legal battles e.g. evidence against the tobacco industry.
  5. ideological: unquestioned assumptions about the superiority of capitalism over communism; currently US v Iraq.

 

Van Zoonen 1994
“In feminist research the conclusion is that media output fails to represent the actual numbers of women in the world (51%) and their contribution to the labour force.”

 

From John Hartley
How to analyse a news programme:

News as an industrial commodity

Journalism: news values
Competition: news as a commercial commodity; sources; rival news media
Entertainment – how to retain viewers while telling them unpalatable truths; how does news appeal and appal?
Regulation: licensing; ‘decency’; self-censorship; violence (but not between intimates); dead bodies but not in close-up (broken during most recent gulf war!)

 

News as a generic form

Visual elements; décor, set, graphics
Verbal / sound effects; institutional voices (reporters/ commentators / anchors) accessed voices (‘real’ people);effects (music/ dubbed sounds)
Narration: plot of stories; characters(we/they) (personifications: heroes/ villains / victims); action and dialogue within and between stories.
Differentiation: how news is like and unlike other genres (advertising /talk shows /drama) and media (papers / radio / internet.)

 

News as dramatisation of democracy

Our representatives – talking heads (decision making); Visualised by location (reporters outside no. 10); celebs (actions and remarks) based on bodily recognition.
Vox pops: ‘ordinary’ people’s views, soundbites of the ‘chorus’ of politics.
National identity: myths of who we are, ‘we love children’, ‘we are free’, ‘ …they are illegal immigrants’…

 

News as a regime of truth

Impartiality versus bias
Conflict: truth as a ‘product’ of both sides; truth as violence!
Eyewitness ideology: ‘being there’ is trustworthy; but the info comes form a handout and a reporter stands in front of the relevant scene.
Fact versus fiction: news has eye contact but no music, drama has music but no eye contact!