Reality? ... Or part of the agenda?

My last post was left questioning our news values – is there true importance in what we call the news, or has it been overrun with the commercialisation of media and social life?

Lecture 10 (in week 11) opened a new standpoint for analysis of this issue. It was proposed that while reality exists, it is mediated by our social life; our perceptions and values are socially constructed. The media play a large role in forming the social world that we know and understand. While we perceive it to be reality, the media filter and shape what is and isn’t presented to us. As there is so much news, filtering is vital. However, the commercialisation of media can become a problem, manipulating and shaping what we are presented as news. Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than others.

Agenda setting is the process of presenting certain issues more frequently and prominently to make them appear more important than others.

There are four interrelating agendas within agenda setting:

·         Public agenda: topics which members of the public think are important

·         Policy agenda: issues that decision/policy makers think are salient

·         Corporate agenda: issues that big businesses/corporations think are important

·         Media agenda: issues discussed in the media

The mass media set the agenda by emphasising specific topics and this determines how the public agenda is formed. The stuff that the media puts out, the public deem as important. Do you think that this is okay? The controversial question of matter is whether the media agenda is controlled by the policy or corporate agenda.

During the lecture we discussed some ideas of Walter Lippmann, one of the ‘fathers of communication’. I could easily write for pages about his theories and examples but briefly, his most well known work was on his theories of the formation of public opinion. Lippmann described how the media create pictures in our minds. For example, images of 9/11 are embedded within our heads; it is unlikely that we would think of the event without picturing such an image as this:

“Propaganda is used as a tool to help shape images in the minds of human beings in support of an enterprise, idea or group”.

Mitt Romney

Mr. Redman’s example was of Mitt Romney, the nominee of the Republican Party for the President of the United States. Romney’s biggest setback in his campaign is that he is a Mormon. There is nothing wrong with following this religion, but the public have preconceived notions of what Mormonism is about. In response and in support of the group, a campaign of ads has targeted audiences (or voters) to reconstruct their views of what or who a Mormon is. You may have seen similar ads in Australia.

Lippmann argued that we rely on pre-constructed images in our mind to formulate judgements rather than by critically thinking. Instead “in truly effective thinking the prime necessity is to liquidate judgements, regain an innocent eye, disentangle feelings, be curious and open-hearted".

Dr. Redman loved that statement! A good journalist should be able to step that little bit back, observe and understand an event without being corrupted by it.

There are a number of different aspects to consider within agenda setting. These were called the ‘agenda setting family’.

·         Media gate keeping: What the media chooses to reveal to the public. How much exposure a topic gets.

·         Media advocacy: The purposive promotion of a message i.e. smoking is bad for your health.

·         Agenda cutting: Issues with little coverage in the media are cared about less. Most truths or realities that are going on in the world aren’t represented.

·         Agenda surfing/bandwagon effect: the media follows the crowd or trend (or sets it on) i.e. the Kony campaign.

·         The diffusion of news: the process through which an important event is communicated to the people. How, where and when news is released. For example the news was released a couple of days after Osama Bin Laden was killed that the event had occurred.

·         Portrayal of an issue: The way an issue is portrayed will influence how the public perceive it. However, when different media outlets portray an issue in different ways, the public are left to make up their own mind.

·         Media dependence: The more dependant people are on the media, the more susceptible they are to media agenda setting.

Like any good theory, the agenda setting theory has explanatory power, predictive power and can be proven false. Its weaknesses lie in the fact that news cannot create or conceal problems, for people who have already made up their mind the agenda setting effect is weakened, and new media changing agenda setting with more access to different platforms and 24 hour news.

Clearly there is a lot to be said about agenda setting, but is it always a bad thing? In some cases is it necessary? Agenda setting may not be about controlling what people think but telling them what they should think about.

What we call the news

Only a small percentage of events that take place globally make the news. So how do we determine what makes the cut?

Lecture number nine discussed news values and what we call the news. News values are the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that it is paid by the audience.

While news values vary across cultures and areas, there are some key aspects to consider when evaluating news worthiness.

Impact: How much will this affect the audience?

“News is anything that makes a reader say, `Gee Whiz'!”
Arthur MacEwen, American editor

However, with such an array of media platforms and ease of access to information across the globe, is it more difficult than ever to surprise and attain the interest of audiences?

“No one says "Gee Whiz!" very much these days, of course, not even in America — both because that expression has long since been supplanted by others more colourful and less printable, and because our capacity for surprise has long since been dulled by a surfeit of sources.”
Shashi Tharoor, Indian writer and diplomat

Audience identification: Is the story interesting? Does it relate to what is happening in the world and in areas of the culture of interest to your specific audience? A valuable story to the audience is one with which they feel some ownership.

Pragmatics:

• ·      Ethics
• ·      Facticity
• ·      Practicality
• ·      Current affairs
• ·      Everyday 

Source influence: How powerful/trustworthy/reliable/accredited are your sources?

 

Among the most valuable of stories, without a doubt carry the “Ghee Whiz!” factor and, in considering audience identification, people are also attracted to relativity and stories of close proximity.

‘If it bleeds, it leads’
‘If it’s local, it leads’

Though highly sort after, these are not the only news values set to determine the news worthiness of a story.  Here’s a few more values brainstormed in the lecture and tutorials:

 

Complementarity and combinations of such news values will allow a story higher probability of successfully becoming news.  Very few of these factors ultimately will deem a story un-newsworthy.

With continued development of news values, tensions climb amongst journalistic approaches. There remain three main issues:

• ·      Journalism’s ideals vs journalism’s reality
• What a journalist is taught and sets out to do as against what they actually, or are perceived to do – a question of ethics
• ·      Journalism vs Public Relations
• The age-old battle, but are journalists now relying more than ever on PR – is this an issue?
• ·      Journalism vs commercialisation of media and social life
• Should we be questioning our news values?

Is there an issue with ♫ ‘what we call the news’ ♫ ?

Are our news values and the amount of importance we place on news stories completely distorted? Would this be a result of the values of the audience or the prominence media outlets put on particular stories? Being reliant on each other, they are likely both to blame for any possible misconstrued values. Do you think there is a problem at all with what we see in the news?

A question of ethics

Week eight’s lecture allowed us the pleasure of indulging in some of Dr John Harrison’s words of wisdom. Author of ‘Ethics for Australian Business’, it was only appropriate that he instructed our ethics lecture.

To be ethical is a question of correct conduct within society. As a result ethics are always contestable. With so many conflicting opinions, how can we determine the good from the bad, right from wrong, or ethical from unethical? Read a little bit more about ethics here: ethics in a nutshell.

Should Journalists establish ethical ideals based on the collective values of the dominant public, or will this allow more possibilities for breaches or challenges to ethical ideals? Otherwise, should they follow government policies and guidelines in regards to ethics, or might this enable capitalism (in a radical sense) or possibly confine information in some cases?

Boundaries of ethics are ever changing. Therefore a few theoretical paradigms come in handy:

Deontology is a rules based approach. It deals with duties and moral obligations whereby in following guidelines you will do the right thing. All ethics codes, policies or guidelines are deontological.

Consequentialism focuses on the outcome. It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as the outcome was good, right or successful: the ends justifies the means. This approach also looks at sourcing the greatest good for the greatest number.

Virtue ethics is based on dispositions of character. Habits of character are the ‘golden means’ of behaviour. Therefore goodness comes from good habits which evolve with experience.

In one of our tutorials we interviewed fellow students as an exercise. In questioning them we were reminded that “You're not here as a compassionate human being, you’re here as a journalist”. So where do we draw the line?

Personally speaking virtue ethics seem like the way to go, wouldn’t you agree? Dr Harrison left us with some wise words to assist in this dilemma.

“What makes a good journalist is the sort of person you are”

To be ethical is a question of character and we must be able to recognise that boundaries are there.

We looked at some ethically questionable adverts during the lecture and rated them accordingly. I had a look for a further few, and there’s definitely plenty out there - what do you make of these ones?