4. Key Idea (Potter)
• News is not a reflection of actual events;
• It is a construction by news workers who are
subjected to many influences and constraints.
5. Reflection or a Construction?
> Constraints
• Deadlines
• Geographical focus
• Resource limitations
• Story formula (WWWWW)
6. “Character”
Most Americans (68%) use TV as #1 source of election
information
Shrinking sound bites & expanding image bites
30
25
20
15
Seconds
10
5
0
1992 1996 2000 2004
Election year
Sound bite Image bite
13. Defining framing…
• Entman: “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived
reality and make them more salient in a communicating
text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem
definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or
treatment recommendations for the item described.”
• McCombs: “framing is the selection of a restricted number
of thematically related attributes for inclusion on the media
agenda when a particular object is discussed.”
• Potter: framing “shapes what gets selected and presented
as news”. They help journalists “do their jobs more easily
and fulfill the goals of the businesses that employ them”.
14. Reflection or a Construction?
> News-Framing
1. Commercialism
– Goal of news is to turn a profit
– Journalists construct stories to attract a large
audience
– Rent audience to advertisers
– Promote commercial products
15. Reflection or a Construction?
-Framing > News
2. Marketing perspective
– Sensationalism
– Soft-news
– Deviance
– Entertain and
retain audiences
16. Reflection or a Construction?
>News-Framing
3. Ownership
– Pressure to turn a profit
– Reinforces marketing perspective
17. Reflection or a Construction?
>News-Framing
4. Organizational structures
– Small, flexible, entrepreneurial, quick adaptation
– Compartmentalized, specialized functions, staff of
technical people
18. Reflection or a Construction?
>News-Framing
5. Branding
– Audience develops loyalty to reporter
– Results in regular attention to particular station
– Reporters become celebrities
19. Reflection or a Construction?
> News-Framing
6. Use of sources
– Based on appearance of expertise
– Willingness to tell a good story
– Used repeatedly by multiple organizations
– Incestuous relationship
20. Reflection or a Construction?
> News-Framing
7. American values
7. Hyperlocalism
21. the making of news is…complex
Manufacturing Consent
(by Noam Chomsky)
Clip: covering the war in
East-Timor
27. Now, how do I deal with news?
• Potter (p. 187): to be well informed,(…) you
need to pay attention to messages and really
think about them”, in terms of your
• knowledge structures
• higher order skills
•www.fair.org: blog with insights in structural
news functioning
28. Now, how do I deal with news?
It’s not: what is the case, what surrounds us as world
and as society?
It’s rather: how is it possible to accept information
about the world and about society as information
about reality when one knows how it is produced?
(from: The Reality of the Mass Media – N. Luhmann)
30. The Gutenberg legacy
On images…
“…the medium of the subhuman, the savage, the
‘dumb’ animal, the child, the woman, *and+ the
masses…”
W. J. Thomas Mitchell
Art Historian
32. Parsing information
Type 1 Type 2
Word-based Visual-based
Media
Dependent on literacy Independent of literacy
Print media Visual media
Short evolutionary history Long evolutionary history
Biology
No specialized brain centers Specialized brain centers
Processed @ 500 msec Processed @ 50 msec
Difficult to recall Easy to recall
Cognition
Extensive rehearsal for memory Minimal rehearsal for memory
Schema dependent Not schema dependent
Slow inferences Quick inferences
Secondary to compelling visuals Assigned priority over words
Explicit propositional syntax No propositional syntax
Marker of intellect Marker of “idiocy”
Culture
Culturally constructed as rational Culturally constructed as emotional
Sophistication Lack of sophistication
Socially stratifying, exclusionary Socially equalizing, inclusionary
In this lecture I want to review some of the basic principles of news media. They are mostly based on the book we make our way through, but they also stem from other scientific books on the subject, as well as from my own experience. I let myself be guided – and I think we all let ourselves be guided in our media use – by my previous experiences in the field of journalism and found some great examples that will hopefully be as insightful to you as they were to me. We will see several aspects enter the stage:
Geogr. 1 local news, few newspaper not have own geog territory 2. geograf area’s are more importantResource: always more events, handheld devicesEnd: criminal trials, press could illuminate the complexity of issues more and educate the public about the underlying nature of the problem
News workers pay careful attention to what kinds of stories and presentation formats generate the largest audience. Had led news workers to believe that the public wants more soft news items than stories about thhe government, economy and political matters2 types of deviance: statistical deviance or norm breaking deviance (person goes into a bank and withdraws money from ohterpeople’s accounts at gunpoint, 700.000 scheringa)
Appearance : Lack experience or education to evaluate credentialsIncestuous lagerhuis
Am values, individualism – people who do things their own way, moderatism, fanatism of any kind arouses skepticism; social order, where peace and order are valued. People who deviate are wrongdoers. Leadership, responsible capitalismHyper: overall audience shrinks for newspapers, tv-news and even the internet. audience is fragmented in sports-focused news shows such as SportsCenter, celebrity-focusedd news such as E!, comedy news shows such as theDaily Show or The Colbert report and personality-driven news shows such as Bill O’Reilly. These news seekers are less interested in global or national issues and more in
(1:24:00 – 1:29:00) The documentary gives a one sided view on news media structures in the United States in the say 70-80 and 90s of the bygone century, and I didn’t want to withhold this little fragment with some paramount examples of how we are deluded by the workings of news media in general. When I was your age and studied in Amsterdam, writings by Mr Chomsky would always spread among the students and I’m quite certain he had a lot of supporters among dutch students in general in his days, and I guess I think it’s a shame that your generation seems in my view to not have been blessed with an outspoken and broadly supported maybe even popular scientific mediacritic such as Chomsky. It also seems that Chomsky’s reputation here, was a lot less popular than oversees, and he has made that claim himself more often than not, precisely because he wasn’t granted access to a mass media audience in his own country. There are of course several reasons to sum up as to what caused that circumstance. Now, I’m not saying please listen very carefully to what mr. Chomsky has to say here as it’s one-sided and probably polarizing,
Fab: Jayson blair
political and financial interests have huge effect in the ‘media war’ there is no such thing as THE Arabic worldmost CNN, BBC and New York Times journalists don’t speak Arabic languagelength/size of broadcast news coverage or paper article keep news agencies from bringing news with sufficient background, history and nuance
