news Flashcards
what are 3 roles of the news?
gatekeeping
agenda setting
norm setting
what are the news values
composition
continuity
elite people
proximity
frequency
meaningfulness
negativity
personalisation
proximity
threshold
unambiguity
unexpectedness
what is a criticism of news values?
they aren’t based on british new, cannot be applied to british news
what 2 factors may restrict news
regulation eg OFCOM
journalists code of ethics, although this is not mandatory and some don’t follow eg levenson inquiry into the phone hacking scandal
what 6 constraints are there on the news?
financial costs
audience
time/space availabilty
source of news
immediacy
deadlines
what is the marxist view of news?
the news is biased and is used as an ideological tool
McChesney
the news is not truthful - media owners use the news as an ideological tool leading to the ‘truth’ being constructed around the capitalist and right wing views of the owners
herman and chomsky
the news is not objective because it is constructed around market forces. most media companies are supported by advertising, so the news is constructed around their advertising contracts
edwards and cromwell
corporate crime is not covered in the news in order to maintain support from these advertising companies and keep the owners of the media companies hapy
what is the neo marxist view of the news
the news is biased because of journalists backgrounds rather than a capitalist conspiracy
hall
journalists rank police officers, politicians and civil servants as more important than ordinary people and so will side with them and promote their views
GUMG
journalists side with powerful groups as they have more in common with the owners and they engage in agenda setting
how do moral panics relate to news?
the news covers events they see as anti-social and this sparks competition between media sources to produce the most interesting story. the media exaggerates and twists the event to produce a more interesting story and this creates a moral panic within the community. eg mods and rockers - cohen
what are criticisms of moral panics?
-the concept of the moral panic is too abstract to be measured
-some moral panics are jusitified (Jewkes)
-media diversity allows people to do research of multiple sources in order to find the truth (McRobbie and Thornton)
-the audience can see past the moral panic techniques as they are not passive (Jewkes)
