The document discusses how news is not an objective reflection of events but is instead constructed through various framing influences including commercial pressures, organizational structures, source selection, and biases that shape what stories are reported on and how they are presented. It also examines the challenges of objectivity in news reporting and how viewers can develop a more critical understanding of the complex factors that go into the manufacturing and construction of the news.

1. News and Reality
(Potter, Ch. 12)
10/20/09

2. Overview
• some ideas on news and framing reality
• Exercise: define framing…
• 8 news framing influences
• problems with objectivity

3. Manufacturing consent – documentary on Noam Chomsky

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

7. Voter decisions based on…
Character: 55%
Issues: 33%

8. Media coverage…
Character: 48%
Issue: 16%

9. Populism

10. Family

11. Family & patriotism

12. From Agenda-setting to Framing
(in article by David Weaver, School of Journalism, IU)

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

22. Objectivity
• Fabrication surface
• Bias
` depth

23. Objectivity
• Bias - ignoring important stories
- toward particular political view(s)

24. • Fabrication surface
• Bias
• Partiality
• Context depth

25. Objectivity
• Balance depth

26. Objectivity?
Discussion about international news coverage:
(evoked by Dutch journalist/author JorisLuyendijk)
Why aren’t journalists honest about their subjectivity?

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)

29. The politics of news framing

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

31. Evolutionary History

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

33. Visualization = Banalization?
Rick Roderick and the banalization by mass
media (4/5 – 1:40 - 3:25 and 4:27 – 6:34) )