Selection and Presentation of the News Flashcards
(13 cards)
Galtung and Ruge - News Values
- Timely - current
- About Elite nations/people
- Simple + brief
- ‘Big’ - size of event
- Negativity (bad news sells)
- Personalisation
- Proximity
- Unexpectedness
McQuail - Social construction of the news
News is socially constructed because the ‘gatekeepers’ who are journalists and editors make choices and judgements about how much coverage they will give to certain events.
Factor 3: Ownership, ideology and bias: Bagdikian / Curran Et Al
Bagdikian - Stresses the importance of advertising means news reports will be presented in a way that avoids offending advertisers, with some stories being cut off completely.
Curran et al - There is a conservatism in the media, which avoids too much criticism of the way society is organised. This means that minority opinion is under-represented in the media.
How do these 5 factors affect selection and presentation of the news?
Factors: Organisational Constraints
- Journalistic ethics - Some journalists won’t publish thing they believe are wrong/innacurate.
- Financial Costs - Some news might attract a bigger audience (controversial.) EG. News outlets may cut their cost where they are sending reporters overseas.
- Audience - Different audiences shape what stories are chosen. EG. Guardian + The Sun cover different news stories.
- Deadlines - Limited choices. EG. Anything that happens after 10PM won’t be in the following days newspaper.
- Time and space - BBC News covers about 15 items in 25 mins to limit what is chosen to be part of the news report.
How do these affect selection and presentation of the news?
Factor 2: News values
Generally guidelines to determine how newsworthy an event is.
The more news values an event has, then the more important an event is.
Factor 3: Rupert Murdoch - A02: Iraq
Exerted his control over the reporting of the Iraq war in 2003 - he was pro-war therefore his newspapers didn’t criticise it.
A02 - Hegemonic approach
Journalists and ediots have the same values as their managers. - Conservatism.
Ideology and Bias
Most journalists are m/c
More than 50% of journalists were educated in private schools.
Agenda Settings - McCombs
Argues that the media not only have influence over what we think about, but also know how we think about certain subjects.
Different news corporation have different agendas, as the content presented will differ depending on the audience and the priorities of the process.
How is citizen journalism changing news?
Citizen Journalism
New technology has created better opportunities for citizen journalism.
Videos shot on a pgone can be uploaded to Twitter, YouTube etc.
This means ordinary people are more involved in directly collecting, reporting and spreading news stories.
Bivens - Citizen Journalism
Argues that citizen journalism through the mobile phone pictures and videos at the scene of news events is transforming traditional journalism.
Gatekeeping: Gans (1979)
Editors act as gate-keepers: they decide what is news and what is not.
This is a filtering process, sometimes based on practical considerations and other times it will be political/cultural or based on news values.
A03: Social construction of news
GUMG - Highly political construction of news. Marxists argue less to do with news values and more to do with transmission of ideology.
Media often target the powerful and news can expose corruption and abuse of power.
