Moral panics & churnalism

• What did the Glasgow Media Group find when studying the reporting of industrial strikes ?

  • Employers were filmed in the peace and quiet of their offices
  • Workers filmed shouting on busy streets in protests

  = gives the impression that employers are more calm and reasonable people and have a better case than the workers
• Define a moral panic

  A wave of public concern about an exaggerated of imaginary threat to society stirred up by sensationalised media reporting
• Example of a moral panic

  Mods & rockers
• How do pluralists criticise moral panics

  1. Huge diversity of media reports and interpretation of events
  2. Citizen journalism
  3. People are more skeptical of mainstream media and less likely to believe it
  4. Short shelf life of news
  5. Sustaining an audience of more difficult now due to large amount of stories
• assumptions of journalists that affect the content of the news

  Becker: hierarchy of credibility- attach importance to the views of the powerful and influential

  Manning: journalists are under pressure from market competition to use primary refiners as cheap and easy sources of information

  Hall et al: powerful people are seen as primary definers as they’re seen as experts and are given more airtime= can set the news agenda

  GMG: journalists in higher roles tend to be mainly white middle class men who share the dominant ideology
• Define churnalism

  journalists reduce time and costs by producing articles based on information provided by news agencies, government press releases, spin doctors, public relations firms and recycle these without checking the facts
• Statistics to support churnalism

  Davies: 80% of stories were mainly or partially constructed from second hand material provided by news agencies and pr, only 12% were generated by reporters
• What are “Advertorials”

  Branded content paid for and are promoting their products but masquerading as journalists news articles