4.3 - Selection and Presentation of the News

• How is the news socially constructed?


  • the media cannot report all the events happening everyday, so what counts as the news is selected and constructed by a range of factors
• What are the factors affecting the news?

  1. Influence of the owners
  2. Profits
  3. Globalisation
  4. New technology
  5. Citizen journalism
  6. Organisational constraints
  7. Agenda setting
  8. Gate keeping
  9. Norm setting
• How does influence of the owners affect news?


  • owners give the direct instructions and resources to carry out news reports
  • journalists self censor their work as they do not want to upset their owners
• How do profits influence the news?


  • owners are concerned with making profit so news gets turned into 'infotainment'
  • Bagdikian - leads to conservatism of media - media will only upload one viewpoint that will make profits, so minority inluence viewpoints are neglected
• How does globalisation affect media?


  • increase in competitiveness across the global market, means that media owners need to compete to survive
  • as a result, it leads to uploading of short, snappy reports
• How does new technology influence media?


  • new media means anybody can access news anywhere and an increase in opportunities for journalism
  • new media means ordinary people are involved in directly collecting and uploading reports
• How does citizen journalism affect media?


  • Bivens - CJ can expose offences, politics, celebs and police (George Floyd), which are ignored by the media
  • When news related videos are uploaded, they tend to gain millions of views, making it difficult for mainstream organisations not to ignore
  • can shape mainstream agendas
  • Example - A women's organisation set up checkpoints at IDF and found that they had insight into Palestinian women's viewpoints
• How do organisational constraints affect the media?


  • people no longer check the news and has led to the intensity of the news changing to 'breaking news', with news constantly changing bulletins
  • This places pressures on media to work within a tight schedule and can lead to churnalism
• How does agenda-setting affect media?


  • the media owners can choose what to include or leave out of the news and will influence the main topics people talk about
  • GMG - suggests media organisations work within dominant ideologies which help forms a list of subjects
  • Philo - media were very effective in channeling the public's anger towards 'slumdog millionaires' but not focusing on why the bank crisis happened in the first place
• How does gatekeeping affect media?


  • media's power to refuse to cover some issues and to let others through
  • sometimes, the media does not cover issues because they lack interest to audiences or are too offensive to society
  • strikes over diseases and public health
• How does norm setting affect media?


  • describes the way media emphasise and reinforce conformity to social norms
  • Encourages conformist behaviour; no strikes, obeying laws, helping others
  • Discourages non-conformist behaviour - murder, rape
• What do Galtung and Ruge argue?


  • argued that events become newsworthy and are more likely to be reported if they conform to some of these news values
• What are news values?


  1. Composition - events that fit the importance and relevance of society
  2. Continuity - events that are likely to have a continuing impact (covid)
  3. Elite nations/people - stories or pics which involve what celebrities or royalty or politicians
  4. Frequency - events that fit into the routine schedule of a news programme
  5. Meaningfulness - events that will have meaning and be of interest to audiences
  6. Negativity - bad news is always reported above positive stories
• What are news values?


  1. Personalisation - events that can be of interest from a human angle
  2. Proximity - involves items that have cultural/geographical proximity to audiences
  3. Threshold - events that are considered large enough to have an impact
  4. Unambiguity - events that are clear and easily understood
  5. Unexpectedness - events thar are in some way out of the ordinary
• What are the organisational routines that affect the presentation of the news?


  1. Financial Costs
  2. Time/space available
  3. Deadlines
  4. Immediacy/actuality
  5. Audience
  6. Journalist ethics
• How does financial costs affect the presentation of news?


  • news gathering is expensive and sending journalists overseas incurs great costs. The last 10 years have seen a decline in expensive forms of news (investigative reporting)
  • EXAMPLE - BBC had to find 650 million fees for TV licenses for age 75+
  • Newspaper readings have fallen in last 20 years, so journalists were made redundant to save costs
• How has financial costs led to the selective presentation of the news?


  1. Williams - severely undermined the quality of investigative journalism in the UK. Has been reduced to digging up dirt on MP'S, politicians and celebrities
  2. Franklin - has led to the 'infotainment' of news
• How does time/space available affect the presentation?


  • News has been tailored to fit for the time for a news bulletin or column space in a newspaper
  • BBC evening fits 15 reports in 30 mins and Channel 4 in 1 hour
  • Newspaper only has a fixed amount of space for news leading to news stories being excluded
• How do deadlines affect presentation?


  • TV news has an advantage because it can report news as it happens (9/11)
  • Newspapers have deadlines so focus on more previous day news and generally tends to be more detailed and analytical
• How does immediacy and actuality affect presentation?


  • events are much more likely to be reported on TV if they can be accompanied by live film footage (adds dramatic reality)
  • technological advances have gathered a level of immediacy - 'breaking news'
• How does the audience affect the presentation?

  - pluralists argue that the style of news content is a response to the type of audience

  • Five News - characterised by short, snappy reports
  • Sun - aimed at w/c as it uses simplistic language
  • Channel 4 - more eloquent language as it is for m/c
• How do journalists ethics affect the presentation?


  • Keeble + Mair - all british newspapers are signed to the Press Complaint's Commision (PCC) code of conduct - will not publish innacurate or misleading information
  • However, the PCC has no legal powers to punish any irresponsible behaviour
  • OFCOM - responsible for protecting people from being exposed to harmful or offensive material
• Journalist ethics -


  • Example - News of the world admitted the hacking of Milly Dowler's voicemails
  • Lord Leveson concluded that the hacking of phones was encouraged by media owners and suggested to set up an independent body for media complaints (Coalition gov disagreed)
  • Set up a watchdog - no companies signed up to it
• Marxist views towards selection + presentation of news -


  • McChesney - argues that this is an ideological myth invented by the media owners in order to present the media as unbiased to democracy. News is not objective and truth telling
  • Powerful media owners are able to influence the social manufacture of news and this affects the choice of stories being selected and presented.
  • Argues media sees official sources as legitimate but other perspectives as powerless
  • Bagdikian - USA capitalist leaders presented as heroes but americans ignored
• Marxist view on selection and presentation -


  • advertising - Herman + Chomsky argue news gathering is shaped the power of advertisers who support capitalist ideologies. This is since most companies are part of profit seeking organisations who want a supportive environment
  • News is not objective as it is a form of propaganda catered to the advertisers and capitalist ideologies
• Neo-marxist perspective view on selection and presentation -

  • Hall - the news is supportive of capitalism as those in powerful positions have better access to media institutions than others
  • Hall argues that most journalists rank primary definers as more credible than those from pressure groups (trade unions)
  • This 'hierarchy of credibility' means journalists report what prominent people say about events. This focus on primary definers means minority groups are often ignored by the media/seen as threats
• Neo marxists perspectives on selection and presentation -


  • GMG - argues that the journalists unconsciously side with the dominant ideology because they have more in common with the ruling class (white, middle class)
  • Journalists engage in agenda setting - news broadcasts used language to sympathise with more powerful
  • Trade Unions - 'demanding' - greedy
  • Management - 'offers' - generosity
• What is churnalism?


  • journalists uncritically churn out articles based on second hand news and pre written material, rather than investigating news for themselves
  • Davies - found that 80% of 'The Times' and Guardian were churnalism
• Evaluation of neo marxist views -


  1. Schelsinger - media do not always act in favour of the powerful as politicians are careful of what they say as they do not want to be pressured to resign
  2. No unified media - companies are in competition with each other
  3. Audiences are not passive; can reject media
  4. Feminists argue they neglect the way women are presented in news
• What are moral panics according to Cohen?


  • the media focuses on particular groups through their style of reporting and define these groups as a threat to society
  • the panic puts pressure on the authorities to control the problem and discipline the group
  • Cohen - media's reaction to youth disturbances on Bank Holiday - a few scuffles turned into a 'day of terror'
  • Journalists see problem groups as newsworthy because they assume audiences share their concerns about societal change
  • Moral panics are also used to attract audiences and profits (Black muggers - divide between black and white)
• Evaluation of Cohen -

  1. Jewkes - too vague in deviant behaviour as it fails to consider levels of deviance (cannabis use/paedophillia)
  2. Jewkes - not all folk devils are vulnerable to media's wrath (rapists deserve)
  3. Postmodernists - increase in new media means audiences are not passive and can reject media