Selection and Presentation of the News

• The news is considered to be socially constructed - there is no objective criteria that determines if something is newsworthy
• Pluralists would say news is selected based on practical factors and seeks to engage the audience
• Marxists would say the news is selected to convey specific ideologies to the masses
• Chomsky says news is a way to manufacture consent for the activities of the elite
• Some say journalists use news values to judge what is appropriate news
• Globalisation and the growth of new media means news companies are making less revenue
• Williams says cost cutting has impacted the quality of investigative journalism
• Davies - Churnalism - the same stories are published across different newspapers with little to no change; cost effective but no unique news
• Bigger news companies may sell stories to smaller companies
• It may be difficult to report on events in areas where news companies don't have correspondents
• As 24 hour news coverage grows, deadlines grow shorter, and stories must be simplified
• In traditional print, stories have to perfectly fit the pages. Likewise on TV they must fit the allocated time perfectly
• Journalists must also consider if stories might run for multiple days - and how they should be presented if this is the case
• News must now be accessible and easy to share
• Franklin says news now serves as infotainment, as different companies compete for attention
• The Media Reform Coalition found that 1 in 3 people access news exclusively through the internet
• A growing number of news outlets may mean it is harder for any individual company to fund high quality journalism
• BBC's impartiality means it presented both sides of Brexit as having equal possibility, when a significant majority of economists predicted it would damage the economy - coverage skewed away from the truth
• Media tends to be Eurocentric, focused on White European and American news
• Assumption audiences are more interested in Western hemisphere than elsewhere
• 80% of journalists come from professional and upper class backgrounds
• GUMG - newsroom bias
• Journalists can act as gatekeepers of information, agenda setting by selecting what audiences should and shouldn't know
• It's the Sun wot won it - news influences politics and elections, and doesn't hide this fact either
• Governments employ spin doctors to manipulate the media into publishing stories they want published
• Embedded journalism - giving the press access to stories as long as they report it favourably
• Galtung and Ruge identified news values that made stories more newsworthy
• Negativity - bad news gains more attention than good news
• Unexpectedness - surprising news will be of interest to audiences
• Elite people - famous and powerful people are more likely to be reported on
• Proximity - how close is the story to the audience
• OFCOM regulates media and news to check for libel
• Journalists are meant to follow a code of ethics, but many do not
• Levenson Inquiry - News of the World was hacking phones
• FATSID - financial, audience, time/space, sources, immediacy, deadlines
• Brighton and Foy point out news values are not a tick list of criteria but emerge through gut instinct from experienced journalists
• Cohen identifies how the media creates moral panics
• Media identifies folk devils who serve as scapegoats for issues in society
• Folk devils that sell well become widespread as other media sources compete to cover the same topic, and people become more concerned due to the increased coverage
• Result is a moral panic over a non-issue in society, eg DnD, Hoodies, Gaming, Immigrants, Trans people