Module 10: Studying the News
This module is divided into two basic sections. The first section deals with newspaper or
print news. The second section deals with television and radio news.
From studying this module, you should learn to do the following:
- understand and apply the attributes for what contributes to making the news “newsworthy.”
- analyze the different sections of a newspaper and the functions of those different sections in
terms of audience use and effectiveness.
- understand the development of news, particularly in terms of the rise of Web-based news.
- understand the ideological perspectives shaping the news related to issues of bias or news
selection.
- understand how corporate ownership of the news influences bias and selection.
- understand ways of assisting students in production of their own news.
- understand issues associated with the focus on entertainment aspects of local television news.
- understand elements of television news story selection related to quality and presentation.
- understand and examine issues related to political coverage, war coverage, diversity, and
commercialism associated with television news.
In studying the news, a major initial concept to examine with students is the question as
to what constitutes “news.” Students could consider different examples of recent community or
school events—passing of a school bond referendum, opening of a new business, a bank robbery,
discovery of pollution in a river, death of a prominent citizen, etc. and determine whether or not
these events would be considered to be “news” in the context of their own personal
conversations/gossip, the local radio station, the local town newspaper, the local regional
newspaper, the local television news station broadcast, and a national newspaper. In doing do,
they could consider the following criteria to determine the extent to which these events are
“news”:
- significance. Does the event have some significance for certain people? What is considered to
be significant for some may not be significant for others. Significance may also depend on the
interests, needs, and knowledge of certain audiences. An environmentalist may perceive the
pollution of a river as highly significant, but not perceive a bank robbery as significant.
Students could examine some of the most significant news stories during the 21st Century and
discuss why these events were considered to be significant:
Stories of the Century
http://www.newseum.org/century/index.htm
Webquest: creating newspaper reports on the major stories of the 20th century:
http://www.rapides.k12.la.us/pjh/newswebquest.htm
- relevance. The relevance of certain events may also depend on audiences’ interests, needs, and
knowledge. A group of high school students may perceive passing of a school bond referendum
as highly relevant to their educational future, while perceiving the opening of a new business as
irrelevant to their lives.
- unusualness/sensational. In some cases, stories of unusual or sensational events are perceived
of as “news” because they attract audiences’ attention or are entertaining to audiences. For
example, stories from the “News of the Weird” archive
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html
focus on bizarre, strange events such as the following:
For an anniversary tribute to Sept. 11 victims, the city of Jersey City, N.J., planned to
release a flock of doves at a downtown ceremony, but since officials waited until the last
minute to order the doves, all suppliers were sold out. Jersey City wound up having to use
pigeons (which had been caged most of their lives), and observers at the solemn
ceremony were forced to witness the awkward birds smashing into office-building
windows, plunging into the Hudson River and careening into the crowds. [New York
Times, 9-19-02]
- practical. Audiences may also consider something as “newsworthy” if it has practical,
utilitarian value for them. This accounts for the increase in the amount of information on
medical/health or consumer topics that audiences may perceive as useful for their own personal
health or shopping, even though the information provided may not be considered as highly
significant in terms of political or economic considerations.
- threatening audience beliefs. Audiences may also perceive news that challenges or threatens
their beliefs and attitudes as not newsworthy. They may perceive such news as “bad news” or as
news that does not belong in a newspaper or broadcast given their own ideological perspectives.
Webquest: elements of news
http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~jwoehrle/webquest.html
Considering community needs/interests. In applying these different criteria, in deciding to
include or emphasize a particular story, a newspaper or TV news editor may take local
community needs and interests into account, asking the question, is this event significant or
relevant to my community’s own needs and interests? These considerations are central in
considering whether a news story should be considered as “significant” for inclusion in the news.
In determining whether to include a local crime story, an editor may consider whether
information about that crime would enhance the community’s larger needs and interests.
However, an editor may also believe that a crime story will attract attention, even though it may
not necessarily enhance the community’s larger needs and interests, thereby considering the
sensational nature of the story to be a more important criterion than the significance or relevance
of the story.
Other factors related to news value
www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/nvdetail.html
- Frequency: the time-span of an event and the extent to which it 'fits' the frequency of the
newspaper's or news broadcast's schedule…. Background to the news, though - e.g.
economic, social or political trends - is less likely to make it into the news as such trends
take a long time to unfold.
- Threshold: How big is an event? Is it big enough to make it into the news?
- Unambiguity: How clear is the meaning of an event? The mass media generally tend to
go for closure, unlike literature, where the polysemy of events is exploited and explored.
An event such as a murder, a car crash and so on raises no problems, its meaning is
immediately grasped, so it is likely to make it into the news. In an Observer article of
June 11 2000, Peter Preston quoted the results of a survey of 300 leading US media
professionals across the US, conducted by The Columbia Journalism Review, which
revealed that the most regular reason why stories don't appear is that they are 'too
complicated'.
- Meaningfulness: How meaningful will the event appear to the receivers of the news?
- Consonance: Does the event match the media's expectations? Journalists have a pretty
good idea of the 'angle' they want to report an event from, even before they get there. If
the media expect something to happen, then it will.
- Unexpectedness: 'Man bites dog' is news. If an event is highly unpredictable, then it is
likely to make it into the news.
- Continuity: Once an event has been covered, it is convenient to cover it some more - the
running story
- Reference to élite persons: The media pay attention to important people. Anyone the
media pay attention to must be important.
Civic journalism. A key concept in considering the relationship between the news and the local
community is the idea of “civic journalism”—the extent to which a newspaper attempts to foster
public discussion and debate about local issues with the intent of solving problems and changing
public policy. Journalists who are interested in civic journalism believe that journalists should be
actively engaged in not only reporting news, but also in influencing and fostering change. A
study, "Measuring Civic Journalism's Progress," conducted at the University of Wisconsin for
the Pew Center for Civic Journalism found that “at least one fifth of all U.S. daily newspapers -322 of the nation's 1,500 dailies -- practiced some form of civic journalism between 1994 and
2001, and nearly all credit it with a positive impact on the community.” Most all of the project
employed an "explanatory" story frame to cover public issues instead of a more traditional
"conflict" frame, which often reports two opposing viewpoints. The projects also allowed
citizens to voice their perspectives.
http://www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/spotlight/index.php
The study found that:
1. Some form of civic journalism was practiced in at least a fifth of all American
newspapers, in almost every state and in every region. This figure is the most
conservative possible, and we believe the actual number may be closer to double.
2. There is a clear pattern of development in civic journalism content, as journalists
learned in what appear to be phases. Civic journalism generally started with elections,
moved fairly quickly to coverage of general community issues and problems, and then
began to address specific community issues.
3. There is a parallel development of technique. Civic journalism coverage was
"invented" through a series of practical experiments in the early 90s. It was extended
through the attempt to develop daily and weekly routine from the mid-90s on. And with
the advent of the Internet, new interactive approaches to civic news coverage emerged
starting in the late 90s.
4. The goals of news organizations show a strong commitment to the traditional public
news values of informing the public and, to a lesser extent, the civic and democratic
values of problem-solving and increased deliberation.
5. New ways of reporting the news have emerged that help citizens deliberate on
important problems, address and solve them, and increase their voices in the community
and in the pages of the papers.
6. A substantial minority of papers, about 35%, continued their civic journalism
involvements for three or more years, with almost 20% practicing for more than four
years.
7. Finally, there is significant (but not conclusive) evidence of impact in communities
where civic journalism is practiced. About a third of all cases showed some
community/newspaper partnerships. More than half reported evidence of improved public
deliberation. Other results included: use of projects by others, improved citizens skills,
new civic organizations formed, and increased volunteerism.
For a discussion of the relationship between the news and a local community, see the
following chapter “Community as the Context for News” from the book by Cheryl Gibbs and
Tom Warhover
Getting the Whole Story: Reporting and Writing the News, Guilford Press.
http://www.guilford.com/cgibin/cartscript.cgi?page=excerpts/gibbsEX.html&cart_id=143466.8629
See also Kathleen Hall Jamieson, The Interplay of Influence: News, Advertising, Politics, and
the Mass Media, Wadsworth.
Activity: making editorial decisions. Students could assume the role of editors of their local
school or community papers. They must then decide on whether they should include or exclude
the previously developed events from their paper.
For teaching units from The Media and American Democracy site on “newsworthyness” and
media ethics issues
http://www.teachingdemocracy.gse.harvard.edu/
New York Times Lesson Plans: “Nothing but the News: Exploring and Creating "Important"
News Stories”
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20020405friday.html
Teaching The News Itself
One strategy for teaching the newspaper as a media form is to use it to have students keep
informed about current news events/information.
The New York Times Learning Network
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/
CNN: For Your Information: ways of integrating current events into teaching
http://fyi.cnn.com/fyi/
USNews Classroom
http://www.usnewsclassroom.com/
Scholastic News for students (grades 5-8)
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/
Newsweek for students
http://school.newsweek.com/
Education Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/classroom/
Education World: Ten activities for teaching with newspapers
http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson139.shtml
Students should also be aware of the range of different types of local newspapers,
including local/suburban weekly papers such as those in Minnesota:
http://www.mnnews.com/webs.html
specialty newspapers such as the Asian-American Press:
http://www.mnnews.com/special.html
college/university papers:
http://www.mnnews.com/college.html
Analysis of Newspaper Sections and Functions
Students need to understand the functions of different sections of the newspaper. One
useful site to do that is the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s “Walk Through the Newspaper” site
http://www.startribune.com/education/walk.shtml
which takes students through the following sections of the newspaper:
The different kinds of news
Get acquainted with the different kinds of news and news stories.
The different levels of news
Familiarize yourself with the different levels of news stories.
Editorial and commentary
Learn the components of the editorial and commentary pages.
Sports
Acquaint yourself with the components of the sports section.
Comics
Familiarize yourself with the comics section and the nationwide distribution of comic
strips.
Business and stocks
Learn about business news and stock market listings in the Business section.
Advertising
Get acquainted with the different kinds of advertising.
In analyzing the typical newspaper, students could then examine aspects of newspaper
design and layout by comparing different newspapers, using even on-line versions, although the
differences between the original paper versions are more pronounced. They could identify the
uses of certain typeface/type styles, the font size and nature of headlines, the “grid” (the number
of columns, the size and number of pictures, and how the news is organized in a paper. They
could also identify instances of design that are effective in terms of ease of reading versus less
effective in terms of hindering their reading.
Photography. Photography also plays a major role in news reporting. Photos should function to
aptly illustrate the content and gist of a story. On the following PBS site, Jeff Mermelstein, an
award-winning photographer shares his thoughts on photojournalism, particularly photos he took
of Ground Zero that appeared in The New York Times and elsewhere.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/mediamatters/303/photo.html
The site contains two photo editors commenting on Jeff Mermelstein's photos, as well as a
photographic tour with Jeff as he talks photos in different parts of Manhatten.
For a Power Point presentation of various design features, “Attracting Readers Through
Effective Design” by Michael T. Shepard:
http://highschooljournalism.org/teachers/tipsattracting.htm
Shepard cites a study on how readers process information on a newspaper page that
employed devices tracking readers’ eye movements (“Eyes on the News”, by Dr. Mario Garcia
and Dr. Pegie Stark, Poynter Institute for Media Studies).
Readers process photographs 75 percent of the time
Readers process headlines 56 percent of the time.
Text is processed only 25 percent of the time.
Larger photos attract more readers – pictures 3 columns or wider are
processed 92 percent of the time.
Mug shots are processed less than half of the time.
Informational graphics are read 73 percent of the time.
Jim Miller identifies instances of effective versus ineffective newspaper design on the Air
Force Reserve news
http://www.afnews.af.mil/products/primer/processb2.htm
Effective Newspaper Design
Photographs and line art draw readers into the newspaper and entice them to read stories
from beginning to end. Varied camera angles, leading lines, dramatic cropping, and
dominant and supporting photos stop readers in their tracks. Photographs feature no more
than three people to identify. Good stand-alone on the job photos usually focus on one
person showing most of his or her face.
Layout and design elements step readers through the newspaper on an organized, easy-tofollow path. Headline, photo, art, and copy placement follow conventional newspaper or
magazine form. Reader "speed bumps" (spot color, screens, pull quotes, drop heads, and
other devices) are infrequent to provide impact when necessary.
Ineffective Newspaper Design
Photographs include close-ups taken from too far away, feature a cast of thousands, and
look like they were taken from a speeding car. Cropping is an agricultural term. Pictures
in a photo feature are as close to the same size as possible so readers will view each one
with equal dismay. The editor omits cutlines entirely or merely lets readers guess who is
in the picture. Line art does a better job as filler than as a magnet to stories.
Readers jump from news to feature to editorial, to news to feature to editorial, to news to
feature to editorial, and so on. Readers struggle through numerous page jumps, copy set
wider than the eye was meant to scan, paragraphs that contain as many sentences as
possible and a mine field of dingbats, fillers and trapped white. Headlines are all caps,
down style, flush right and centered—all under the same department heading. Graphic
devices, such as spot color, are applied in much the same manner as a 5-year-old putting
on lipstick for the first time — messy and lots of it.
Students could also analysis the use of various formats or design features employed in
newspapers or news websites. Students could go on the Newseum site of daily front pages from
193 papers from 27 countries http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/
and could compare differences in newspapers’ or websites’ uses of picture sizes, organization of
sections, uses of certain fonts/typeface, the number of columns, mastheads, headlines, graphs,
charts, and ads.
Students could analyze the quality of photojournalism on the Newseum site,
“Photojournalist of the Month,” examining the photos of award-winning photojournalists:
http://www.newseum.org/photojournalist/archive/archive.htm
For further reading:
Newton, J. H. (2001). The burden of visual truth: The role of photojournalism in
mediating reality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Genre features. Students could also examine the genre features employed in a news report. For
example, while stories typically follow the traditional expository format of the “5-w’s”: who,
what, where, when, and why, writers may employ narrative to frame their stories in an unfolding
narrative sequence in an attempt to engage their audiences. Many reports often begin with
setting the scene in which the reporter describes himself in the context of an event or story: “I’m
walking down the street of a quiet, suburban neighborhood in which everyone knows everyone
else. No one ever believed that one of their neighborhoods would have committed such a
horrific crime.” This use of what Norman Fairclough (1995) describes as the “narrativization” of
the news focuses more on the dramatic aspects of new events and less on analysis of ideas or
larger institutional forces. However, newspapers readers often are more engaged with such
stories, particularly because they are familiar with this genre format on television news, another
instance in which television has changed the newspaper.
Essay: News as narrative/uses of narrative form
http://www.transparencynow.com/news/2newsform.htm
Drawing on their analysis of the narrative development in stories or novels, students
could then analyze the story development techniques employed in news stories, which build
around the dramatization of the unusual or extraordinary aspects of a news event. For example,
they could determine how the story “sets the scene” through placing the events in a particular
context or setting. They could then note the use of language such as repetition of words (“it was
very, very dark that night”) or asides (you wouldn’t believe what happened next”)—devices
employed by storytellers to build suspense in their audiences.
Lesson: Traci Garnder, Novel News: Broadcast Coverage of Character, Conflict, Resolution, and
Setting
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=199
Writers may also employ the genre of the editorial or op-ed essay, or letters to the editor,
as distinct from the news report/story. In doing so, a writer employs various genre features by
clearly formulating an opinion or thesis regarding an issue and provide supporting evidence or
data to support that opinion or thesis. Students could analyze the effectiveness or
persuasiveness of an editorial in terms of the clarity and the quality of the argument.
Students could also examine the degree to which an editorial or op-ed essay clearly
formulate their argument and opinion, as well as providing supporting evidence or research. For
example, some op-ed pieces formulate an opinion, but provide little evidence or research,
assuming that their audience will simply respond to the opinions, as opposed to considering the
evidence or research provided.
For newspaper editorials:
http://www.headlinespot.com/opinion/oped/
http://www.toad.net/~andrews/columns.html
Webquest: writing editorials on the role of imperialism in Africa
http://users.erols.com/sespec/webquests/imperialismafrica/ImperialismInAfrica.htm
Webquest: creating a newspaper on the Protestant Reformation
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/tips/t4prod/gelfandwq1.html
“You Be the Editor:” making editorial decisions about specific stories
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/you_be_the_edito
r.cfm
Another genre includes the political cartoon. Students could analyze examples of
political cartoons in terms of the techniques employed—exaggeration of physical features, visual
portrayal of an issue, parodying of language/social practices, and portrayal of a certain attitude or
stance:
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/cartoons/
http://www.cartoonweb.com/
Webquest: analysis of political cartoons:
http://www.lex5.k12.sc.us/chs/politicalcartoonpainter82000.htm
Studying the language use in news. Students could also study the use of language in news.
Applying semiotic, poststructuralist, and critical discourse analysis, they could analyze the uses
of:
- categories/labels to describe participants
- syntax: active vs. passive
- formal vs. informal verbal style
Writers also employ language or style in certain ways that reflects their orientation or objectivity.
Writers may use metaphors or hyperbolic language to describe an event in a manner that
represents a particular attitude toward s that event. For example, in writing about the
Palestinian/Israeli conflict, a writer may describe one side’s bombing or attack as an “incursion,”
“deadly destruction,” or “massacre,” descriptions that reflect increasingly stronger beliefs or
ideological orientations towards an event. For a Webquest analysis of how news coverage of
different perspectives on the Arab/Israeli conflict:
http://www.rapides.k12.la.us/ash/galinsky/galinskysite046.htm
Students could note patterns in the language use of a story and then infer the writer’s
particular perspective or ideological orientation towards an event. This includes the types of
categories or labels employed to describe participants. For example, in describing a protest
march, a writer may describe the participants as “vocal protestors” or as an “unruly mob,”
different categories reflecting different perspectives. They could also examine the uses of
syntax, for example, writers’ uses of the active versus passive voice. Writers who wish to
portray participants an assuming an active role will place the participants in the subject/topic
position. In reporting on a protest march, the writers may state that “The protestors charged the
police line” to focus on the protestors as active agents. Or, they may state that “The police line
was charged by the protestors” to emphasize the role of the police.
Students could study uses of language by creating their own parody of news articles
similar to those found in The Onion, a parody of current news coverage:
http://www.theonion.com/
Students could also infer the nature of the intended audiences in terms of the level of an
audience’s sophistication or prior knowledge. Writers may include or omit certain information
given their assumptions about their audiences. And, they could determine whether a writer is
attempting to gain an audience’s identification with a certain beliefs or perspective.
For rhetorical analysis methods in analyzing the news:
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~mabunce/rhetanal.html
http://www.rhetorica.net/
http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/023.shtml
For resources on feminist rhetorical analysis:
http://mattlevy.home.mindspring.com/rhetcomp/feministrhet.html
Students could compare language use in the different stories about the same event. For
example, tabloid or weekly newspapers may employ sensational/dramatic language, as compared
to more “objective” language in mainstream newspapers. Students could compare the following
two stories on an attack by an Islamic Jihad group on Israelis in Hebron that resulted in the
deaths of 12 Israelis.
The first report appeared in The Sun, a British tabloid:
TWELVE Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed and 15 injured yesterday when
Palestinian gunmen opened fire on people leaving a prayer meeting.
Extremists from the Islamic Jihad group also hurled grenades after worshippers
left Sabbath prayers at a shrine in Hebron.
In the carefully planned ambush, soldiers rushing to their aid were also shot in a
90-minute fire fight. An Israeli spokesman said the Palestinians had carried out a
“Sabbath massacre” threatening peace hopes.
The Israeli regional brigade commander was among the wounded.
Troops hunted for the terrorists, and TV reports said a gun battle erupted as
soldiers surrounded a Palestinian home.
The Israelis were emerging from prayers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine in
central Hebron revered by both Muslims and Jews.
The gunfire came from a nearby hilltop area. Earlier this week a Palestinian
gunman killed five people — including two young boys — on a West Bank kibbutz.
The second report was from the New York Times:
Israel Weighs Response After 12 Killed in Hebron Ambush
By JAMES BENNET
EBRON, West Bank, Saturday, Nov. 16 — Twelve Israelis were killed here
Friday night when Palestinian snipers ambushed Jewish settlers walking home from
Sabbath prayers and then attacked the policemen, security guards and soldiers who
rushed to the rescue, the Israeli Army said.
In a gunfight that raged for more than three hours as Israeli rescue workers
struggled to evacuate the wounded from a dusty, exposed alley, the commander of Israeli
forces in this divided city was one of those killed. Fifteen people were wounded, hospital
officials said. How many of the dead and wounded were civilians and how many were
security forces was not clear early this morning.
After midnight, blazing white flares dropped by an airplane drifted over Hebron,
illuminating the otherwise dark city. Sporadic gunfire echoed off the stone houses as
soldiers in battle gear hunted the killers and their accomplices.
Soldiers shot dead at least three Palestinians whom they identified as the killers.
Lit by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, two bullet-riddled bodies lay in the dirt
near the site of the ambush as soldiers continued to search nearby houses.
Bloody army gear, including a knapsack and a camouflage blanket, lay bundled to
the side of the lane that became a killing field. A jeep belonging to the border police, its
bulletproof windows cobwebbed by gunshots, was loaded onto a truck.
Over the mosque loudspeakers in Gaza City on Friday evening, Islamic Jihad
claimed responsibility for the attack. Leaders of the group called it a blow against
occupation and retaliation for Israel's killing last week of Iyad Sawalha, a local leader of
the group in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Israeli officials held the Palestinian leadership of Yasir Arafat responsible. "The
pattern is very clear now," said Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.
"Every time either an American emissary comes to achieve a cease-fire or Israel eases up
on the conditions to make life easier for the Palestinian population, there is a terrorist
attack. The Palestinian leadership is holding its own citizens as hostages in order to
implement its political aspirations."
In an enclave surrounded by barbed wire, cement blocks and soldiers, about 450
Jewish settlers live inside Hebron, surrounded by 150,000 Palestinians.
The attack Friday night began on Israelis who live just outside Hebron, in the
settlement of Qiryat Arba, the Israeli Army said. It started after they had finished praying
at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, sacred to three religions as the tomb of Abraham.
In a small group, the worshipers walked under a bone-white moon from Hebron's
Jewish enclave along a road that winds down into a gully planted with olive trees, still in
the Israeli-controlled section of the city. The road then climbs uphill past Palestinian
houses toward the gate of Qiryat Arba.
Accounts of the attack varied slightly. But Israeli officers here said that at 7:15,
snipers began shooting from the gully, firing at the worshipers and at a border police jeep
that was accompanying them.
As security guards rushed from Qiryat Arba, 200 yards away, the Palestinians fell
back down the narrow alleyway, drawing their pursuers into what soldiers said appeared
to have been a carefully planned trap. The guards came under withering fire and grenade
attack from close range as they entered the alley, soldiers said.
Israeli soldiers, led by the local commander, arrived at the scene and also entered
the alley. Officers here said that it was then that the force's commander was shot.
June Leavitt, a resident of Qiryat Arba, said her daughter, Miriam, 17, returned
early from praying at the tomb on Friday evening. "She had a bad feeling," Mrs. Leavitt
said.
She said the family had just sat down to eat when the gunfire erupted. "It took a
long time to evacuate people, because there was a lot of fire," she said.
The Jewish area of Hebron was already marked with memorials to Israeli soldiers,
settlers and visitors shot dead as they walked, prayed and played here. But this attack was
the most lethal on Israelis in Hebron in the two-year-old conflict.
Israeli forces have repeatedly seized Palestinian areas of the city, only to
withdraw eventually, to the settlers' consternation.
Just Friday morning, a senior Israeli military official said the army had succeeded
in securing Hebron and other southern West Bank cities, and as a result was easing
restrictions in those areas. "We succeeded to clean these cities of terrorists," he said,
referring also to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jericho. He said the army still needed to
concentrate on the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin.
Israeli officials immediately labeled Friday night's attack the "Sabbath massacre."
The killings evoked a notorious ambush in Hebron in 1980, also on a Sabbath eve, in
which six Jews were killed.
Hebron has been a flashpoint for decades. In 1994, a doctor from Qiryat Arba,
Baruch Goldstein, originally of Brooklyn, fired on Muslims at prayer there. He killed 29
and wounded 150 before he was beaten to death.
In 1929, Arab residents of Hebron went on a rampage against the city's small
Jewish population, killing dozens. That riot began on a Friday afternoon and lasted into
Saturday.
Early today, hours after the attack, officials said the Israeli Army conducted a
helicopter raid on Gaza City, striking a metal shop. No injuries were reported.
Friday night's violence, the deadliest Palestinian attack in three weeks, came as
Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction was in negotiations with the militant group Hamas to achieve a
limited ban on suicide bombing. The ban would apply only to attacks within the pre-1967
borders of Israel, not to attacks on soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But Islamic Jihad has not taken part in the talks, and leaders of the group
interviewed Friday night said they rejected any such ban.
"We're going to continue resistance everywhere," Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, a
political leader of Islamic Jihad, said by telephone from hiding in the Gaza Strip. "We are
not committed to any kind of agreements."
He said of the Hebron attack, "We are congratulating the Islamic world — all
Muslims — for such a successful operation."
Even Palestinians who oppose attacks in pre-1967 Israel overwhelmingly support
attacks on settlers and soldiers in the West Bank, regarding such violence as lawful
resistance to occupation.
Israel does not recognize such distinctions between its citizens on either side of
the 1967 boundaries, and, officially, neither do Islamic Jihad nor Hamas, which consider
all of Israel as occupied territory.
One of the most hard-line political leaders of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said on
Friday night that Hamas would reject even a limited ban on killing. "All of it is
Palestinian land, and all of the land is occupied," he said. "We're going to hit
everywhere."
He added, "Why are our people being killed at the same time the Israelis are
living in security in Haifa and Tel Aviv?"
Egypt has been mediating the factional talks, in hopes of achieving a bombing ban
at least during the run-up to Israeli elections, which are planned for late January.
Mainstream Palestinian officials have warned that violence now would help right-wing
Israeli candidates.
Hamas and Fatah representatives met in Cairo this week. Saeb Erekat, a close ally
of Mr. Arafat, said before Friday night's violence that it was "premature to jump to
conclusions" about the talks, but he called them significant.
Also speaking before the Hebron attack, the senior Israeli military official, who
briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, called the mere fact of the Cairo meeting
"very important."
He said Egypt was eager to calm the conflict, hoping to douse one source of
popular discontent in Egypt out of concern that the Bush administration would fan
another one with a possible war on Iraq.
The story in The Sun emphasizes the bare-bones events of the killings; it also included
two large photos of the events. In contrast, the New York Times story provided a sense of
alternative versions of the event as reflected in the statement, “accounts of the attack varied
slightly.” It also provided extensive historical and political contexts for the events. While these
two stories reflect differences in audiences, they also reflect different code systems. The code
system in The Sun’s coverage emphasizes a narrative recounting of events with little sense of the
institutional forces shaping the event. The New York Times’s coverage emphasizes the
competing institutional forces shaping the event, forces that its readers may have more
knowledge of or interest in given their own institutional status/knowledge in society.
By analyzing language use, students can then determine writers’ rhetorical strategies and
the underlying ideological orientation of a particular story as reflecting the larger perspective or
bias of a newspaper or writer.
Activity: On-line Writing Role Play
To study rhetorical strategies employed in writing, students could participate in a writing
role play at an on-line chat site such as nicenet.org or tappedin.org (see Module 1). Students
select an issue that concerns them in the school context—for example, differences in funding of
school athletics based on gender or the censoring of certain books/magazines. Or, they may
organize a role play around a political campaign/election. They then assume certain roles
associated with this issue or election. They then adopt a role and write messages or on-line
messages targeted to other roles in an attempt to persuade them to support their position or cause.
They can also write letters to the editor of the newspaper. At the end of the role play, a panel of
students assuming the roles of school board members or voters make a final decision based on
the messages they have received. Students adopt the roles of a television reporter and a
newspaper reporter and seek to determine what is going on in the role play by posing questions
of different roles and then posting summary “news flashes.”
The purpose of this activity is to provide texts for students’ analysis of writers’ use of
rhetorical strategies and arguments within the context of a shared activity or community.
Because they are familiar with that community as constructed through language, they can
analyze how language is used to construct roles, establish status/power, gain alliances, seek
others' identification with one's cause, influence actions, and project certain persona.
After completing the role play, they reflect on:
1. intentions or purpose in writing the message—what were you trying to say to your audience
and what were you trying to do (the speech acts you were performing such as asserting a
position, making a request, attempt to persuade, threatening, challenging, etc.).
2. perceptions of the intended audience you were addressing: their own purposes or agendas,
status/power within the role play, alignments to groups, or beliefs in your ability to perform
certain acts.
3. use of language/style to create a certain persona or role that would appeal to this intended
audience (see the references to language use in the handout--the mock grant proposal for an
inner-city ice cream stand.) This includes the use of various slogans or euphemisms--"big
government," "Washington," "corporate greed," "liberal," "it's your money, not the
government's," "accountability," etc.
4. use of rhetorical strategies to gain the intended audience’s support or identification with your
cause/beliefs (establishing a shared relationship—"As a loyal constituent who has voted for you
in the past…; as someone who has made significant financial contributions to your campaign…"
This includes creating various categories that audiences may or may not identify with and then
equating those categories with certain positive or negative practices. For example, "you the
people" is used to seek identification with voters in opposition to "big government" whom people
are supposed to dislike.
5. use of evidence or support for your arguments, opinions, or generalizations--the degree to
which your arguments were valid and employed any supporting evidence versus misleading or
distorted evidence.
6. the extent to which your messages did or did not influence or shape others’ actions, beliefs, or
opinions and reasons for those effects.
7. which roles in the role play your perceived as assuming the most power or influence
Differences in Types and Uses of News
Audiences may different in their perceptions of what constitutes “news” depending on
their preferred means of accessing the news. There has been a decline in the number of local
daily newspapers—currently about half the number from those published in 1910. As reported
by the Newspaper Association of American, the percentage of readers who read daily
newspapers declined from 81% in 1964 to 58% in 1997.
http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=1613&SID=1022
Most audiences acquire their news from television news and/or radio as opposed to
newspapers. However, audiences are turning away from TV or radio news as well as newpapers
to acquire news from the Web (for a list of Web-based news sites):
http://socialstudies.com/c/@DDmr3U.9NvGbA/Pages/article.html?article@news
Students could also compare and constrast the wide range of different types of
newspapers—school/college, local community, tabloid, regional, and national newspapers. For a
large number of news/news analysis links designed for CI5472:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~rein0012/News/news.html
They could also examine how newspapers differ according to:
- the type of town or community they represent. For example, the some 200 Minnesota
newspapers reflect a range of different size communities and regions:
http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Newspapers/By_Region/U_S__States/Minnesota/Compl
ete_List/
- the country represented:
136 front pages from newspapers in 21 countries
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/
5000 newspapers from around the world
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
- the cultures and groups who create newspapers:
http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Newspapers/Cultures_and_Groups/
- differences between mainstream and tabloid newspapers:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/News_and_Media/Magazines/Tabloids/
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/
or alternative weekly newspapers:
http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/newspapers/alternative_newsweeklies/
- differences in the political ideology reflected in the newspapers, for example
The Weekly Standard, a conservative paper
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
versus Mother Jones News, a liberal/left paper
http://www.mojones.com/motherjones.html
On-line News
One of the major shifts in news is the recent increased use of on-line news, particularly
amongst younger audiences.
For links to all Twin Cities news outlets
http://www.cursor.org/twin_cities.htm
For links to all top on-line newpapers
http://newslink.org/toptypes.html
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/
USAToday
http://www.usatoday.com/
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.ajc.com/
The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/
The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/
The Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Time Magazine
http://www.time.com
Yahoo News Online
http://news.yahoo.com/?u
Part of the increased used of on-line news is related to an overall increased use of the
Internet. A summer, 2003 survey by Yahoo indicated that audiences ages 13-24 reported higher
uses of the Internet than television in terms of overall time use (results that may be biased given
the sponsor of the study, Yahoo). This study reported that the average weekly uses (1) 16.7
hours online (excluding email), (2) 13.6 hours watching TV, (3) 12 hours listening to the radio,
(4) 7.7 hours talking on the phone, (5) Six hours reading books and magazines (personal, not
scholastic).
http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_news.cfm?newsID=213162
Another study conducted in 2002 by researchers at the University of California at Los
Angeles found that reading the news is the third most popular Internet activity, with 51.9% of
users going online to get news information. A primary reason for use of on-line news was that
they obtained the information quickly and efficiently on their own terms. At the same time,
users also relied on other sources for news. Only about half of users believes that the news
information was reliable and accurate depending on the site, with sites operated by television,
radio, magazine, and newspaper organizations being perceived as more reliable and accurate than
sites operated by individuals or other organizations.
http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/pages/internet-report.asp
Web-based news provides for user selection/control of stories/information. Users can
therefore focus their attention on accessing only the information relevant to their own interests,
purposes, and needs. Users can seek further information or previous stories to explore
background context about the original story. Stories can also be continually updated to provide
the most current information. In some cases, Web-based news sites are interactive, with users
completing survey votes, providing e-mail responses, or participating in listserve discussion or
Weblogs related to a story.
On the other hand, the fact that users can selectively choose the information they want
means that they may only be exposed to that selected information. They are therefore not
exposed to other information they might have been exposed to had they been reading a
newspaper or watching a news broadcast. They may also not be exposed to alternative beliefs
and opinions on newspaper editorial pages.
At the same time, the Web-based news has served to “re-mediate” (Bolter & Grusin,
2000) television and newspaper news
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/%7Ebolter/remediation/index.html
as evident in how cable television news provides a constant stream of news items on the bottom
of the screen or newspapers continually reference Web sites. Web-based news also provides
users with links to other related sources or articles.
Despite the initial pessimism about the success of on-line versions of newspapers,
newspapers have received increased revenues from on-line advertising. Moreover, on-line
newspapers have increased in use and popularity. However, some on-line newspapers are
beginning to restrict access to only newspaper subscribers.
This “re-mediation” of the newspaper has also led to changes in newspapers and other
news outlets. Audiences can participate in an interactive mode with some news sites in which
they engage in a simulation, survey, or game related to an issue or share views with others. The
Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland gives out The Batten Awards
every year to honor examples of what it perceives to be uses of technology to involve people in
the news. In 2003, it give an award to the Minnesota Public Radio's “Budget Balancer” site:
http://news.mpr.org/features/2003/03/10_newsroom_budgetsim/
On this site, audiences had to decide on how to balance the state’s budget in terms of cutting
certain programs and/or raising taxes given a four billion dollar deficit. (For a discussion of the
innovative nature of this site see:
http://www.j-lab.org/budget_article.html
For the others 2003 award-winning sites:
http://www.j-lab.org/coolb2003.html
In a study conducted for the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Pew Center for
Civic Journalism, and the National Conference of Editorial Writers, by the Campaign Study
Group, “Journalism Interactive: New Attitudes, Tools and Techniques Change Journalism's
Landscape,”
http://www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/research/r_interact.html
editors report an increased demand for “interactivity” with readers, a finding consistent with the
notion of audiences’ increasing participation as active agents in the “mediascape” described in
Module 1:
In looking for ways to foster greater interaction:
*
Eight out of 10 newspapers represented in the study provide readers with one or
more options for obtaining the e-mail addresses of reporters.
*
Nearly eight out of 10 have established e-mail, voice-mail or Web site tip lines.
*
More than seven out of 10 newspapers offer readers one or more avenues other
than letters to the editor for publishing their own ideas.
*
More than four out of 10 publish the telephone numbers of the reporters with
every story, and more than one-quarter post some or all of their reporters' telephone
numbers on a Web site.
*
Fifty-six percent have convened conversations about a key community issue
outside of the newsroom.
*
More than seven out of 10 editors feel dissatisfied with the current level of
newsroom-reader interaction.
*
Forty-five percent of all editors surveyed say that their newsrooms use
the tools and techniques of civic journalism. Sixty-six percent say they either
embrace the label or like the philosophy and tools, suggesting that there are
even more practitioners.
*
Eighty-seven percent of the editors surveyed agreed that newspapers should have
a broader community role beyond just printing the news.
*
When asked about six specific roles that a newspaper might play in its
community, editors ranked the role of "news explainer" above all others. Following, in
order, were the roles of "news breaker," "investigative watchdog," "catalyst for
community conversation," "community steward," and "disseminator of just the facts."
When combined, the percentage of editors who prize the non-traditional roles of
conversation catalyst and community steward actually topped the number who place their
highest value on the investigative role.
On-line news can also be tailored to specific audiences. Students could contrast news
devised specifically for a student audience, for example the CNN student news
http://learning.turner.com/newsroom/index.html
and news designed for an adult audience on the same site:
http://www.cnn.com
On advantage of using on-line newspapers is that students can readily compare the
differences in the same stories across different forms, determining differences in the depth,
quality, nature of information, and understanding gained. For example, in the following
Webquest, students compare the same story as reported by three different wire services:
http://www.scs.unr.edu/~kgibson/work/cep610webquest.htm
They could also compare same story coverage or editorials in different types of papers
from “liberal” to “conservative” or ”urban” to “small-town” papers. In making these
comparisons, they could examine the nature and type of information that is included or excluded.
In studying op-ed pages, they could determine the types of political or ideological perspectives
most versus least frequently included.
Unit: comparing news across different media
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/news_lesson1.cf
m
For further reading:
Gunter, G. (2003). News and the Net. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Web-based Political Lobbying
One of the important recent developments in politics in the increased use of web-based
political lobbying by organizations such as MoveOn, http://www.moveon.org/
who alert members through e-mails about certain issues and then have them go to web sites to
send messages to Congress on that issue. One such issue for which they lobbied was the vote in
the House of Representatives in July of 2003 to block implementation of the FCC’s attempt to
allow a single corporation to own television stations that reach up to 45 percent of American
viewers.
For an analysis of the role of these organizations, particularly MoveOn, by John Nichols
in The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=843
Weblogs
Another recent development noted also in Module 9 is the increased use of “Web logs,”
more commonly referred to as “blogs”—on-line personal commentaries often related to recent
news events, and, in some cases, written by reporters during their spare time.
One of the reason for the increased use of blogs is that participants are not constrained by
concern with having to conform to the commercial or political pressures associated with
mainstream media outlets, as well as constraints on length of articles or TV news broadcasts.
Participants also can continually reference intertextual links by including URL’s to provide
readers with background or alternative perspectives through links to on-line news stories or to
other blogs.
For summaries of blog reports:
http://www.cursor.org/toc.htm
For links to Twin City blog sites:
http://www.cursor.org/twin_cities.htm
The site contains a video clip in which some bloggers share their thoughts about blogging.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/mediamatters/303/blogs.html
One survey conducted in summer, 2003, http://dijest.com/bc/
found the three most active blog sites that are centrally hosted are:
Registered
LiveJournal [1]
1,121,464
http://www.livejournal.com/
Active
526,535
As of
23 June 2003
Blogger [2]
1,500,000
http://new.blogger.com/home.pyra
705,000
9 June 2003
DiaryLand [3]
850,000
http://www.diaryland.com/
400,000
March 2003
Another popular site is tblog:
http://tblog.com
Another survey indicated that blog readers currently comprise only four percent of the
online community, and blog creators, only two percent.
http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/item.pl/mkt:feat_research/jup/pos=3
Web Tools for Educators, Information Today, Inc., Jan/Feb., 2004
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml
Will Richardson ’s Blog
http://www.Weblogg-ed.com
Center for Technology and Teacher Education: blogging activities
http://www.teacherlink.org/content/blog
Skip Dobson’s blog on blogging in Ohio schools
http://dodsonbrown.weblogs.com
Meg Hourihan, What We ’re Doing When We Blog
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html
Xanga
http://www.xanga.com
The Web and Politics
The Web has assumed an increasingly important role in politics. Candidates have
employed the Web to both promote their views and raise money. Web sites also provide voters
with information about different candidates, their donor contributions, and issue analysis.
Organizations and political parties sponsoring certain candidates also use the Web to promote
their causes and organize voter turnout.
Much of the appeal of the Web in political arenas is it allows for a grass-roots
participation by people who may not necessarily having been involved otherwise. People can
not only continually follow what is happening in a campaign, but also they can participate
through online input, chats, blogs, and contributions.
http://www.vote-smart.org
http://www.pollingreport.com
http://www.politics.com
http://www.purepolitics.com
http://www.cnn.com/allpolitics
http://www.pbs.org/elections/
http://www.politicalinformation.com
The Online Journalism site: Sponsored by the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review:
http://www.onlinejournalism.com/topics/index.php
For further reading on on-line journalism:
De Wold, R. (2001). Introduction to online journalism: Publishing news and information.
Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Hall, J. (2001). Online journalism: A critical primer. Sterling VA: Pluto Press.
Pavlik, J. V. (2001). Journalism and new media. New York: Columbia University Press.
The Missouri Group. (2001). Telling the story: Writing for print, broadcast, and on-line media.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Editorial Perspectives
Another key component of the news are editorials. Newspapers contain the paper’s own
editorials as well as op-ed columns reflecting alternative perspectives on the news. In many
cases, people in power often have an advantage in having their views expressed in the op-ed
editorials.
Newspapers attempt to promote expressions of alternative ideological perspectives for
their op-ed pages, in some cases, such as USA Today, providing alternative perspectives on the
same topic. Many think-tanks provide newspapers with op-ed pieces designed to promote their
particular ideological perspectives.
The editorial content of a newspaper may not necessarily be consistent with the kinds and
nature of reporting. The Wall Street Journal has a relatively conservative editorial stance, but
their news reporting is not necessarily influenced by that stance.
Editorials themselves can be newsworthy in terms of shaping events. The PBS program,
“Words of War,” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/mediamatters/303/words.html cites the example of
editorials related to the Bush administration’s policy in initiating the Iraq War:
The ongoing battle over the proposed war broke out when The New York Times ran a
story in July 2002 detailing an insider's misgivings over secret plans for the invasion of
Iraq and reached a fever pitch after Brent Scowcroft's Wall Street Journal column
criticized invasion plans.
Some believe the press was too deferential for too long. "Whenever you have a popular
president, the news media are hesitant and often inhibited in terms of raising questions
about what he says," states Michael Massing, media critic and contributor to The Nation.
On the other hand, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol claims that "we have had
more of a debate about this than most of the major foreign policy choices that
[administrations] have faced in recent years." Many have pointed out that President
Bush's speech at the United Nations was at least in part a response to the press'
contribution to the debate.
The site also contains a video clip of Doyle McManus of the L.A. TIMES commenting
on media perceptions of debate within the Bush administration, as well as examples of editorials
related to preparations for other, previous wars.
For further reading:
Gilboa, E. (Ed.). (2002). Media and conflict: Framing issues, making policy, shaping opinions.
Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers.
Newspaper Ownership
Another major trend in newspapers is the increased concentration of newspaper
ownership by corporate conglomerates. For example, the largest owner, The Gannett Company
owns 110 daily newspapers and 21 television stations. http://www.gannett.com/web/gan013.htm
The second largest owner, Knight-Ridder Digital, owns 31 daily newspapers as well as 83 local
and regional Web sites in 62 cities, including 20 of the top 30 U.S. markets http://www.kri.com/
In 2002, ten companies owned newspapers with a distribution of more than half of all readers
(Staubhaar & LaRose, 2004).
One danger in this increased concentration of ownership is the decline of any competition
for news within local markets. With the drop in the number of different newspapers in a
particular local area, there is less demand on newspapers to have to compete. Moreover, as
newspapers and television stations own each other, they may combine their operations, as is the
case with the newspaper and television station in Tampa, Florida. All of the results in a decline
in the number and nature of alternative cultural and political perspectives, as local owners are
more beholden to absent corporate owners to avoid controversy that might jeopardize profits.
This increased concentration is a result of the further deregulation of ownership rules
passed under the 1996 Communications Act by Congress, as well as efforts by the FCC in 2003
to further relax the number of newspapers and stations that could be owned by the same owner.
The current rules prevent one network from owning another network, limit the number of
stations owned by one owner, prohibit owning both a local cable and TV station, and prohibit
owning both newspaper and TV station. The corporations applied considerable pressure on the
FCC through campaign contributions, paid junkets, and intense lobbying of FCC members, to
loosen these rules, including rules related to ownership of radio stations, which, as was noted in
Module 9, has also seen an increased concentration by owners such as Clear Channel
Corporation.
For more information on newspaper ownership, the PBS program, NOW with Bill
Moyers, has been covering this issue in many of its programs:
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/bigmedia.html
For a list of which owners own what media:
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediaconsol.html
In the Education Media Foundation video, Rich Media, Poor Democracy (for a video
clip):
http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/RichMediaPoorDemocracy
Robert McChesney examines the ways in which journalism has been compromised by a focus on
sensationalism and lack of investigative reporting by the conglomerates such as Disney, Sony,
Viacom, News Corp, and Time Warner.
And, in another Education Media Foundation video, The Myth of the Liberal Media: The
Propaganda Model of News, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (for a video clip):
http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/TheMythoftheLiberalMedia
present their “propaganda model” of the news related to attempts by corporate and conservative
interests to propagate their own ideological perspectives in news content and coverage. In their
book, Manufacturing Consent, they define this model as functioning to filter the news in certain
ways:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html
A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel
effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and
power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the
government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The
essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the
following headings: (I) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit
orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (~) advertising as the primary income
source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by
government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and
agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5)
"anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact
with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive
filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse
and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they
explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.
The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the
operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating
with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose
and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values. Within
the limits of the filter constraints they often are objective; the constraints are so powerful,
and are built into the system in such a fundamental way, that alternative bases of news
choices are hardly imaginable.
For a Noam Chomsky essay on studying the news media:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html
The Noam Chomsky Archive
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
Another factor influencing the increasingly conservative ideological focus of news
editorial orientation, particularly on op-ed pages is the rise in influence of conservative thinktanks shaping news. As documented by Trudy Lieberman, in Slanting the Story: The Forces
That Shape the News (New Press, 2000), conservative think tanks and organizations such as the:
The Heritage Foundation
http://www.heritage.org/
The American Enterprise Institute
http://www.aei.org/
The Manhattan Institute
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/
The Hoover Institution
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/
The Fordham Foundation
http://www.edexcellence.net/
The Cato Institute
http://www.cato.org/
The National Taxpayers Institute
http://www.ntu.org/
The Center for Education Reform
http://edreform.com/
Center for the American Experiment (Minnesota)
http://www.amexp.org/
Minnesota Taxpayers League (Minnesota)
http://www.taxpayersleague.org/
Minnesota Education League (Minnesota)
http://www.taxpayersleague.org/educationleague.php
There are also “liberal” think tanks, although, as Lieberman documents, they have lost
the clout and influence they enjoyed in the 1970’s:
The Brookings Institute
http://www.brook.edu/
Center for National Policy
http://www.cnponline.org/
National Democratic Institute
http://www.ndi.org/
As Lieberman documents, these think tanks and organizations have acquired public
relations and promotional skills at framing issues for the media in conservative terms. They
consistently provide newspapers and policy makers with material and research, often in the form
of “research reports” or “surveys” that give the appearance of being nonpartisan and “scholarly.”
The also provide newspapers with op-ed essays, as well as spokespersons and “experts” who can
be reached for comments or quotes in news articles. Conservative critics of the Profile also cited
“failing” “report card” reports issued by The Fordham Foundation, a conservative education
organization, that argues for the need for more traditional “content” standards that could be
measured with tests, leading to increased “accountability.”
Lieberman notes that these think tanks and organizations are successful because they
formulate definite, unambiguous messages which they then repeat, particularly regarding the
“failures” of “liberal” causes, as well as the “liberal” media. (For a critique of the idea that the
media are “too liberal,” see Eric Altermann, What Liberal Media: The Truth about Bias and the
News, Basic Books http://www.whatliberalmedia.com/ )Through this repetition, they can frame
issues in their own terms. As a result, legislators have been able to pass various policies
consistent with a more conservative agenda.
These think tanks and organizations received support from corporations to lobby for their
interests, corporations who would prefer not to known as directly lobbying for their own
benefits. They are largely funded by corporations who prefer that groups other than themselves
promote their agendas. For example, when the Clinton health care model was proposed in 1993,
the Heritage Foundation launched a major campaign to discredit the plan through providing
newspapers with editorials and through television ads. Much of the funding for this work
emanated from the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations who would be adversely affected
by a national health insurance plan.
Lieberman cites the example of an attack on the Federal Drug Administration which
succeeding in loosening FDA regulation of drug advertising and testing of new drugs. Various
think-tanks began to circulate stories to the media about drugs being “withheld” from the market
by FDA delays and regulations, drugs that would save people’s lives, but were not available due
to “deadly overcaution.” They also criticized the FDA for its “bureaucratic delay” in testing
drug safety. And, they posited the need to cut back on labeling of supplements, an emerging
business. They provided newspapers with “reports” on drugs and health issues that cited their
own “polls” of “doctors” who complained the that FDA approval process was too slow. All of
this had a major influence on public opinion regarding the FDA, which was perceived to be
preventing useful drugs from coming onto the market.
They also had a major hand in writing a bill in Congress that loosed FDA regulations,
“The FDA Modernization and Accountability Act of 1997,” that passed Congress. After the bill
went into effect, the FDA had to recall five different drugs that were prematurely approved and
turned out to be dangerous. There was a marked increase in drug advertising, particularly on
television, a 150% increase from 1997 to 2001, in which there was 2.7 billion in drug
advertising, some of which had previously had not been allowed to air on television. The
advertising itself was often misleading, now that restrictions had been lifted. This resulted in
patients telling doctors that they “need” new drugs and an increase in drug sales.
In The Educational Media Foundation video, Constructing Public Opinion: How
Politicians and the Media Misrepresent the Public, Justin Lewis (for a video clip):
http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/ConstructingPublicOpinion
describes the ways in which the media use polling data to not simply reflect public opinion, but
to also shape and construct public opinion in ways that are consistent with the agendas of power
elites and the corporations that own the media.
The Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch site http://www.prwatch.org/
analyzes government and political public relations campaigns.
Media ownership and intellectual property. Another important issue related to news and media
ownership has to do with the ways publishing corporations limit distribution of content through
copyright laws. While copyright is an important legal protection, at the same time, copyright law
can be used to limit distribution and authors’ right to circulate that information. These issues are
discussed in a free online book copy of Lawrence Lessing’s Free Culture: How Big Media Uses
Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (Penguin Press).
http://www.free-culture.org/freecontent/
Freedom of the press. Another primary issue has to do with the declining freedom of the press
due to government attempts to control, limit, or censor news. A global survey of freedom of the
press in 193 countries conducted in 2003 by Freedom House, "Freedom of the Press 2004: A
Global Survey of Media Independence," found that freedom of the press declined throughout the
world. The study indicated that 73 were rated “free,” 49 “partly free,” and 71 “not free.”
Some of these declines were related to a decline in democratic governments in countries
such a Bolivia, Russia, and even Italy, in which Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns Italy's
three largest private television stations. The worst
offenders were Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea and Turkmenistan.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/8543604.htm>http://www.thestate.com/mld/th
estate/news/nation/8543604.htm
News Bias
An important focus for analysis of the news is new bias—the degree to which a writer
adopts an “objective,” “un-biased” stance as a “neutral” journalist who is presenting different,
alternative perspectives on a topic or issue. In some cases, writers may present only one, biased
perspective or leave out information related to alternative perspectives. They may also
emphasize certain aspects of an event while disregarding other aspects of an event.
Media-Awareness: Bias in the News
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/bw_bias_in_the_
news_lesson.cfm
The FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) site provides some criteria for detecting
bias in news:
http://www.fair.org/activism/detect.html The following is an edited version of these criteria:
Who are the sources?
Media over-rely on "official" (government, corporate and establishment think tank)
sources.
Is there a lack of diversity?
FAIR's 40-month survey of Nightline found its U.S. guests to be 92 percent white and 89
percent male. A similar survey of PBS's NewsHour found its guestlist was 90 percent
white and 87 percent male.
From whose point of view is the news reported?
For example, many stories on parental notification of abortion emphasized the "tough
choice" confronting male politicians while quoting no women under 18--those with the
most at stake in the debate. Economics coverage usually looks at how events impact
stockholders rather than workers or consumers.
Are there double standards?
Youth of color who commit crimes are referred to as "superpredators," whereas adult
criminals who commit white-collar crimes are often portrayed as having been tragically
been led astray. Think tanks partly funded by unions are often identified as "laborbacked" while think tanks heavily funded by business interests are usually not identified
as "corporate-backed."
Do stereotypes skew coverage?
Does coverage of the drug crisis focus almost exclusively on African Americans, despite
the fact that the vast majority of drug users are white? Does coverage of women on
welfare focus overwhelmingly on African-American women, despite the fact that the
majority of welfare recipients are not black? What are the unchallenged assumptions?
Often the most important message of a story is not explicitly stated. For instance, in
coverage of women on welfare, the age at which a woman had her first child will often be
reported—the implication being that the woman's sexual "promiscuity," rather than
institutional economic factors, are responsible for her plight.
Is the language loaded?
For instance, media often use the right-wing buzzword "racial preference" to refer to
affirmative action programs. Polls show that this decision makes a huge difference in
how the issue is perceived: A 1992 Louis Harris poll, for example, found that 70 percent
said they favored "affirmative action" while only 46 percent favored "racial preference
programs."
Is there a lack of context?
Coverage of so-called "reverse discrimination" usually fails to focus on any of the
institutional factors which gives power to prejudices such as larger issues of economic
inequality and institutional racism.
Do the headlines and stories match?
Usually headlines are not written by the reporter. Since many people just skim headlines,
misleading headlines have a significant impact.
Are stories on important issues featured prominently?
Newspaper articles on the most widely read pages (the front pages and the editorial
pages) and lead stories on television and radio will have the greatest influence on public
opinion.
A biased/slanted analysis of an event can be evident in how writers or their editors select
or omit certain topics or quotes, formulate headlines, use photos, or employ data such as statistics
or crowd counts:
On the one hand, some journalists argue that it is essential for writers to adopt an
“objective,” “un-biased” stance in order to maintain a sense of credibility with readers. If
readers believed that the writer was reporting events based on their own ideological perspective
or political agenda, they would discount the information presented. On the other hand, other
journalists argue that achieving total “objectivity” is difficult if not impossible, particularly for
reporters who are covering controversial or political events, and that writers should make explicit
their own perspectives or agendas in their reporting.
A Teacher Teaches About Bias
Heather Johnson, a teacher at North St. Paul High School, in North St. Paul, Minnesota,
whose advertising unit is contained in Module 6, teaches her students to analyze the news for
instances of bias related to race. To begin her instruction, she asks students to examine common
features inherent in news reports related to bias:
Here is one exercise. Write the following on the chalkboard:
"Police said the suspect was described as a black man in his 20s..."
"Indian Found Murdered in New Town"
"Detectives are investigating the death of an Asian employee of a brokerage firm whose
body was found by the company's owner yesterday...."
Ask your students:
 What do these news stories have in common?
 When is race an appropriate element in a story?
 Are the racial identifications used in these stories relevant? Why or why not?
 What are the problems surrounding unwarranted use of racial identity in crimerelated stories?
Based on the student’s responses, she then provides them with some concepts for
critically examining bias and then asks students to apply that concept to a story about race; note
the way in which she uses web sites as resources.
Bias through placement
Readers of papers judge first page stories to be more significant than those buried in the
back. Television and radio newscasts run the most important stories first and leave the
less significant for later. Where a story is placed therefore influences what a reader or
viewer thinks about its importance.
Unwarranted use of racial identity is hardly limited to crime stories. One way for
reporters to check whether race or ethnicity is a proper identification factor in a story
might be to ask whether the individual's race would be relevant if he or she were white.
Would the headlines above have identified these people as 'white'?
Distribute "Crime has no culture or race" to students.
Crime has no culture or race by Susan Riley The Ottawa Citizen
<http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/> January 12, 1993
Reprinted with permission
If racism was always stark, violent and overt, it would be easy to recognize and
easier to deal with.
But unfortunately, racism can be mild and unremarkable, part of the daily texture
of our lives.
Over the holiday, for example, three men were stabbed in a late-night brawl in the
Saigon Capital restaurant on Somerset Street. The restaurant is Vietnamese: those
involved in the fracas were of Asian origin.
Does this make it "Asian crime" as headlines in our newspaper and elsewhere
suggested? Does the fact that some extortion was involved make the crime
particularly Asian? And what Asians? Vietnamese? Chinese? Indonesian?
Or was it merely crime? Is any attempt to define it further careless prejudice or is it a
vital aspect of competent police work? Last fall, when Ottawa high school students
were involved in a drunken encounter with Hull police, no one talked about "white
crime."
To be fair, a story in the Citizen concluded that there is no crime wave within
Ottawa's Asian community. It also documented real concerns in Asian communities
in Toronto and Vancouver, where thugs and drug-peddlers prey on their own kind and
the larger society.
But this still isn't Asian crime. It is crime within the Asian community. The
distinction is critical.
The Citizen story also quoted a Vietnamese-born lawyer, Nhung Thuy Hoang, who
defends Asian-Canadians accused of various crimes. The most common charges
according to her? Theft and wife assault.
These don't sound like Asian crimes: on the contrary, they are common to almost
every culture. Imagine the uproar if we started referring to wife abuse as "male
crime".
For all that, the Asian community does pose a special challenge to police forces, not
because Asians are more mendacious by nature, but because their language and
culture is so foreign.
In Vancouver and Toronto, police have had special Asian investigative units since the
`70s. Newspapers occasionally feature lurid accounts of their struggles with "Asian
youth gangs" that operate protection rackets, smuggle drugs and manage prostitutes.
(Again the language is loaded. If a group of Asian boys wearing leather, chains and
aggressive attitude shoves you of the sidewalk, is it an Asian youth gang or just a
bunch of punks?)
Ottawa, too, has an Asian unit, formed in 1987, the only squad devoted to one ethnic
community. Its professed aim is to assist, rather than target, Asian-Canadians.
Nhung Thuy Hoang applauds this approach, noting that "a lot of police are not very
familiar with our culture."
She recalls one client, a Vietnamese woman, who was charged when she burned dry
leaves in a city park - a common practice in her native country. Other Vietnamese are
charged with abandonment when they let their children wander at large, as they used
to in refugee camps.
Still others are mortified when their custom of showing children physical affection is
interpreted by non-Asian neighbors as child abuse.
There is, says the lawyer, no need for protection from youth gangs within Ottawa's
Asian community. But there is need for educated, sensitive policing.
What she is talking about, of course, is the other side of racism: a respectful
recognition of difference. Only when we - the police and society at large - achieve
that will "Asian crime" disappear.
In her article, Susan Riley makes the distinction between "Asian crime" and "crime
within the Asian community." What is the difference between these two terms?
Why are we so quick to label crime with terms like "Asian crime," "Black crime," "Youth
crime," etc.?
What role does culture play in our perceptions of race and crime?
Distribute "Crime not black and white" to students.
Crime not black and white by Randall Denley The Ottawa
,Citizen <http://www.ottawacitizen.com/>Thursday, July 28,
1994 Reprinted with permission
Sometimes to see an issue right way up, you need to stand it on its head. Imagine a
story that read like this:
Ottawa police are swamped in their attempts to stem a wave of crime that ranges from
fraud, to dealing drugs, to murder.
"There's one common thread in all of this," says Ottawa Police Chief Brian Ford. "In
each case, the criminals are white."
While statistics on crime are not recorded by race, Ottawa police estimate that fully
90 per cent of crimes committed locally are by whites.
Police are calling for the hiring of more white officers, to help them better understand
the customs of the white criminals.
Ford, who is white, is frank about the racial element in the crime spree. "Some of
these families have been in Canada for generations. The scary part is, the criminals
look just like you or me."
Police sources say that white criminals often wear sports gear or even business suits,
but there is no distinctive dress code that could alert potential victims to the presence
of a white criminal.
Spokesmen for local whites were shocked by the numbers, but defensive.
Jacquelin Holzman is a member of Ottawa City Council, an all white group that is
believed to exert considerable influence within the white community. She goes by the
street name The Mayor.
"Certainly the white people I know are the exception here," Holzman said.
"Land developers, lobbyists, people like that. All fine citizens. We sometimes forget
about them when the media write another story about white crime.''
The figures on white crime are "stunning, spectacular, stupendous'' said Counsellor
Richard Cannings. Cannings, who is white, is proposing a series of one-way streets
and road closings to keep white criminals out of his ward.
Some criminologists question whether race is the dominating factor in determining
criminal activity, pointing to poverty and lack of jobs.
"If government could find a way to put white people to work, many wouldn't need to
turn to crime," says Prof. John Smith.
Spokesmen for Canada's native peoples were relieved that the white crime problem
has finally been brought out into the open.
"We want genealogical testing done on these people so they can be deported to their
homelands. Let England and Ireland deal with their own problems," said one.
Sounds silly when you put it that way doesn't it? Almost as silly as having to
seriously discuss the notion that because some blacks are criminals, all blacks are no
good.
We have read in the last few days about Jamaican posses, the latest ethnic crime
threat. Now Jamaican-Canadians have to defend themselves again. Like when Ben
Johnson, the famous Canadian runner became a Jamaican again after he used steroids.
Like when Clinton Gayle, accused of murdering a Toronto police officer, became a
Jamaican although he has lived in this country since he was eight.
One has to feel sorry for Jamaican-Canadians coping with the exaggerated publicity
and no doubt fearing the white crime wave too.
By using these two examples to illustrate how to analyze for bias in terms of racial
identification, Heather is modeling this process for students in order that they can now go off and
complete the next assignment asking them to analyze similar examples in their own reading of
newspapers and magazines:
Over the next month, students are to collect newspaper and magazine stories relating to
crime. As these articles are brought to class, students will analyze and sort them under the
following categories:
 No racial identification
 Relevant racial identification
 Unnecessary racial identification
Where racial identification occurs, they will also take note of:
 Tools and techniques used in reporting the story
 The tone of the story
 The overall effect on the reader
At the end of the month, students will tally and post their total figures.
Taking Charge - Students can send their results to the magazines and newspapers they
surveyed. For articles that contained unnecessary racial identification, students may wish
to contact the editor responsible, to request an explanation of the newspaper or
magazine's rationale for making this distinction.
Students may also examine the discourses or ideologies constituting the news production
itself. The following analysis of journalists’ ideological assumptions reflects their own
discourses operating in their news reporting:
http://www.transparencynow.com/news/Ideol.htm
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public figures have an obligation to answer to journalists and answer their questions
the news media is the fourth estate, playing a watchdog role on government and power.
the most important thing journalists cover are the arenas of government and politics.
that journalists are the messenger only; that they report, rather than acting.
there is an objective account of events that all reasonable observers would agree with.
that journalists should tell both sides.
that journalists can and should leave their biases out of their stories.
that there is no staging or conspiring to improve on stories between journalists and
those they cover.
Webquest: analysis of the truth
http://valhalla.guhsd.net/library/webquest_somewhereinmid.html
Webquest: analysis of “racial hypocrisy” in news presentations
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/webracialhos.html
Students could also become familiar with different “watch-dog” organizations that
analyze or critique the news:
News links
http://www.nuatc.org/resources/weblinks/media.html
News about the news
http://www.newslab.org/
Media Channel: critiques of the news
http://www.mediachannel.org/
Minnesota News Channel
http://www.mtn.org/newscncl/
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
http://www.fair.org/
Project for Excellence in Journalism
http://www.journalism.org/
Grade the News: evaluating of Bay Area news
http://www.stanford.edu/group/gradethenews/
For further reading:
Hachten, W. A. (2001). The troubles of journalism: A critical look at what's right and wrong
with the press. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Hart, R. P., & Sparrow, B. H. (Eds.). (2001). Politics, discourse, and American society: New
agendas. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Kovach, B., & Rosnestiel, T. (2001). The elements of journalism: What newspeople should know
and the public should expect. New York: Crown Publishers.
Lex, S. (Ed.). (2001). Access denied in the information age. New York: Palgrave.
Nord, D. P. (2001). Communities of journalism: A history of American newspapers and their
readers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Sieb, P. M. (2002). The global journalist: News and conscience in a world of conflict. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Studying and Producing Classroom/School Newspapers
Having studied about newspapers, students could then create their own classroom
newspaper or contribute to the school newspaper. Students could study their own school
newspaper or other on-line school newspapers for either their classroom or for the entire school:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/K_12/Newspapers/Individual_School_Papers/
http://www.highschooljournalism.org/students/schoolinf_index.cfm
http://directory.google.com/Top/News/Newspapers/Student/High_School/United_States/
They could then analyze these papers in terms of the quality of the design features
employed: layout, columns, font size, use of photos, headlines, photo captions, white space, etc
Students could then compare the quality of the layout/design of different school papers
based on specific design features. They could then write a series of stories, essays, or even short
fiction/poems, and then create a classroom newspaper based on certain design features using
software to combine the different texts and adding headlines and photos with captions.
In helping students design a classroom paper, teachers could integrate student production
of final projects, reports, or essays into a published classroom paper for peers and parents. For
further activities related to newspaper production:
http://highschooljournalism.org//teachers/LessonPlan_Display.cfm?Type=L&LessonplanId=222
&AuthorId=111
Minneapolis Star Tribune: Writing the news story
http://www.startribune.com/education/writing.shtml
Bangkok Post: Writing feature stories
http://www.bangkokpost.net/education/tchfeat.htm
Unit: creating a school newspaper
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/letsnet/noframes/bigideas/b6/b6u3.html
Jteacher.com: lots of on-line resources related to school journalism
http://www.jteacher.com/
High School Journalism: lots of teacher units on all aspects of news
http://www.highschooljournalism.org/teachers/lessonplan_index.cfm
SNN: Student Magazine: A Canadian Magazine by Student Reporters
http://www.snn-rdr.ca/snn/moned.html
Censorship and First Amendment rights related to school newspaper. Students could also
discuss issues of school newspaper production with members of the school newspaper staff. One
major issue has to do with freedom of the press related to potential censorship of controversial
stories by the school administration. Students could examine various legal concepts associated
with First Amendment freedom of the press:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.
In writing for high school newspapers, students are often subject to potential censorship
of coverage of stories or issues that the school administration may perceive to be controversial or
challenging their school policies. Because students are also subject to their disciplinary control,
they are highly vulnerable to potential censorship threats.
For teaching units from The Media and American Democracy site on First Amendment issues
http://www.teachingdemocracy.gse.harvard.edu/
Lesson plans from Newseum for teaching about First Amendment Rights
http://www.newseum.org/educationcenter/teachingtools/index.htm
Freedom Forum: a organization addressing First Amendment issues
http://www.freedomforum.org/
Webquest: Freedom of the press related to school newspapers
http://www.plainfield.k12.in.us/hschool/webq/webq22/free.htm
Lots of journalism units/activities
http://www.edhelper.com/cat162.htm
http://highschooljournalism.org//teachers/lessonplan_index.cfm
Studying Television News
Students could also study television news, contrasting it with other sources for
news. Television news, particularly local news, has become a major revenue source for local
television stations. It has therefore assumed an increasing prominence in terms of local stations’
promotion and function within a local community. And, most Americans acquire their news
from television news, although, as previously noted in terms of increased used of web-based
news, is changing. One study, for the Local TV News Project—2002, reported by Todd Belt,
“Viewers Keep
Disappearing,”http://www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/localTV/2002/disappearing.
asp
found a decline in audience viewing of local television news broadcasts:
In 1998, our first year of studying the ratings trends of local newscasts, two thirds of the
stations in our study were experiencing declines in viewership. By 2002, that number had
increased to 76%. Between November 2000 and November 2001, when the aftermath of
September 11th dominated the airwaves, local news viewership fell seven percent even
while network news gained viewers.
But the viewership declines are not the same across the board: there are differences by
network affiliation, market size, and time slot.
To begin with, one of the three major networks - ABC - is experiencing bigger ratings
losses than its competitors. In our sample, 82% of stations affiliated with ABC lost
viewers, compared with 72% of those affiliated with CBS and 70% of those with NBC.
One strong possibility for this decline is the well-publicized problems ABC has had in
prime time since its acquisition by Disney in 1996.
The second trend we found was that stations in larger markets were more likely to be
losing viewers than those in smaller markets. Dividing the country into four parts
according to market size, we found that in the top fourth, comprising the eight largest
markets, 78% of stations are losing viewers. In the second-largest markets, the figure is
80%. But in the next size category, the number of stations losing viewers drops to 70%.
And in the nation's smallest markets, the figure is 64%.
One partial explanation may be that larger percentages of households subscribe to cable
in the larger markets, meaning there is more competition.
Nonetheless, as news directors work their way up to larger markets where the stakes of
their decisions are greater, their problems are compounded because the competition is
greater.
Finally, late-evening newscasts were more likely to be losing viewers than early-evening
programs. In our sample, 76% of newscasts airing in 10 or 11 p.m. time slots lost
viewers, compared to 71% at 5 or 6 p.m. Perhaps not coincidentally, the later newscasts
were found to suffer from lower quality, as well. On the other hand, people may simply
be going to bed earlier and watching the early morning news instead on the late evening
broadcast.
The demographics of news audiences have also been changing. While younger
audiences may still be reading newspapers, they are less interested in viewing network news or
watching programs such as ABC’s Nightline. Because producers prefer a younger audience
given their attraction for advertisers, the content of television news, particularly for cable-news,
has focused more on topics of interest to a younger audience. And, given a younger audience’s
preference for Web-based news, newspapers and TV news have shifted the appearance and
layout of their news.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march02/news.html
Audiences may also differ in how they are using the news. In some cases, they may
simply be listening to or viewing the news as a backdrop distraction while engaging in other
tasks or household activities. They may also link certain times of the day with ritual
consumption of news—reading a newspaper at breakfast or watching the evening news before
going to bed. Or, they may experience the news simply as a form of entertainment.
Students could go to sites of television news for students and note how the news on those
sites is geared or selected for a student audience:
ABC News: for elementary and middle school students
http://abcnews.go.com/abcnews4kids/kids/index.html
CNN Student News
http://fyi.cnn.com/fyi/
News Currents: for middle school students
http://www.newscurrents.com/intro/index.html
In other cases, audiences may have certain specific deliberative uses for the news. For
example, given a specific issue or topic related to their own lives—a political campaign or the
health of their business, audiences may focus attention on acquiring information necessary for
engaging in these activities. The extent to which they experience a sense of power or agency to
influence their lives may influence the degree to which they attend to certain stories. Audiences
who have a sense of power related to influencing events may read stories quite differently than
those with little sense of power.
Characteristics of Television News
Television news needs be highly entertaining and visual in order to maintain audience
attention. Much of the “news” content consists of summaries of events, but those summaries are
accompanied by often dramatic video clips and bulleted lists of headline summaries. Moreover,
in contrast to the BBC “newsreaders,” national news anchors themselves such as Dan Rather,
Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Paula Zahn as well as local anchors are often celebrity stars
whose own perspectives, comments, and asides become a part of the broadcast.
To enhance their celebrity status and role in entertaining audience, anchors engage in
“happy talk” banter with other anchors or weather/sports reporters on the set. Their engagement
with audiences is maintained rhetorically through direct address—“you’re really enjoy the story
about the escaped tiger coming up in our next segment”—as well as direct eye contact with
audiences. “On the scene” reporters or correspondents functions as subordinate extensions of
these anchors, “reporting in” to them and then receiving the anchor “thanks for your report.”
To analyze these elements of presentation, log onto a on-line news site such as CNN
http://www.cnn.com/ and play a video clip of a news story. Focus on the ways in which the
story is presented and framed. As with newspapers, there is use of the narrativization of events
(Fairclough, 1995) in which the dramatic aspects of an event—a murder, political scandal,
natural disaster, business collapse, etc., becomes the primary focus, as opposed to background
context or social/political issues. Those news events that lend themselves best to compelling
narratives—dramatic, unusual crimes, scandals, or natural disasters are more likely to be given
air time, as opposed to topics related to abstract, theoretical issues related to political, social, and
cultural issues.
For video clip examples of different types of news stories, go to the NewsLab site
http://www.newslab.org/ and click on “Links” for a list of the video clips.
In watching a news clip or the entire news, consider how much and what kinds of
conceptual content you are acquiring from the news. The news is also highly segmented based on
an unfolding flow of stories organized down to the second. Most stories last for less than a
minute, a use of time, a pace that differs from the slow, unpredictable flow of time in everyday
worlds.
The high speed at which stories are reported with an emphasis on a multi-media
presentation may ironically detract from a substantive understanding of the news content one
may acquire from reading a newspaper account.
Television news also continually promotes and advertisers itself, forecasting up-coming
stories within a newscast or on later newscasts in order to attract and maintain audience attention.
They also promote their larger community function as providing a valued service to the
community not only through their news presentation, but also through hosting community and
charity events.
One of the underlying assumptions behind their promotion is the belief that their “live,
up-to-the-minute” news is valued because of its immediacy, as opposed to the less immediate
reporting of newspapers. (This sense of immediacy has been eclipsed by on-line news.)
However, simply because a reporter arrives on a scene and gives an “immediate” report does not
necessarily mean that this reporter provides any more insightful understanding of an event than a
reporter who spends more time and analysis reflecting on different aspects of an event. The
assumption that the immediacy of reporting an event means that audiences will be better
informed about that event is therefore highly problematic.
Television news also tend to select those stories that have visual, dramatic content—fires,
crime, natural disasters, embarrassed politicians, etc., as reflected in the slogan “If it bleeds, it
leads.” They are less likely to want to cover stories related to theoretical, abstract analysis of
issues of unemployment, poverty, housing, crime, education, religion, etc. because they simply
do not have the time to devote to such analysis.
Moreover, coverage of local events often fails to provide a range of different perspectives
about an event, as well as information about background institutional factors shaping that event.
Such coverage is evident on the PBS NewsHour broadcast that generally focuses in depth on 3-5
topics, devoting about 10 – 15 minutes on each topic with background interviews, information,
and analysis.
However, there is some debate as to whether audiences would view substantive coverage
of local event. In a PBS NewsHour analysis of WBBM, a Chicago station that made a failed
attempt to provide in-depth coverage of local news, audience ratings declined when in-depth
coverage was provided, leading the station to abandon what they perceived to be a journalistic
experiment.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/wbbm/index.html
It may be the case that audiences are not accustomed to substantive coverage on a local
news broadcast, and prefer the familiar fast-paced, superficial format. Or, they may not be open
to analysis which may challenge the status quo.
In his documentary, Bowling for Columbine, about gun violence in America,
http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/ Michael Moore argues that the heavy emphasis on crime
and violence in American television news has created a sense of fear in the American public to
the point that they believe that they need to not only own guns, but use them to protect
themselves. He contrasts American attitudes towards fear of crime with Canadians’ lack of fear,
which he attributes to their low-keyed television news broadcasts. It should be noted that Moore
presents no empirical evidence for his claims, other than the fact that Canadians own just as
many guns as Americans but commit far few murders.
Lesson: Crime in the News
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/crime/crime_in_the_news.cfm
For further reading:
Alteide, D. L. (2002). Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis. New
York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Lipschultz, J. H., & Hilt, M. L. (2002). Crime and local television news: Dramatic,
breaking, and live from the scene. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Tovares, R. D. (2002). Manufacturing the gang: Mexican American youth gangs
on local television news. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
For video:
British Film Institute. (2002). Images and reality. [video]. London: British Film Institute.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/resources/teaching/secondary/imagesreality/
The relationship of television news and local community. Many local television news
broadcasts promote themselves as more than providing news information. They perceive and
portray themselves as serving as a synthetic, central nexus of the community through organizing
discussion forums or news conferences, or sponsoring charity events. Local news anchors
emerge as celebrities in the community. And, politicians and community organizations build
their public relations and events around “getting on the news.”
Television news also frames how people perceive their local community as mediated by
television news. The heavy emphasis on “urban crime” often frames perceptions of urban
communities as “crime-ridden.” emphasis on sensationalistic content raises a major issue about
the function of television news in contributing to a local community’s larger good. Some
stations have begun to consider deciding on story selection based more on relevance to the
community, as opposed to sensational appeal to audience. However, as was the case with a
Chicago news station that attempt to focus more on substantive news content with little increase
in their viewing audience, these experiments are not always that successful.
This raises the larger question as to whether the function of television news may actually
not be to inform, but to perform a cultural function with the context of the domestic world of
providing a ritual-like reassurance that “all’s well” in the world—that despite all of the crimes,
accidents, and disasters reported in the broadcast, that the overall community is or will still be
intact. This promotional sense of a synthetic community constructed through and with the
participation of television news serves to provide audiences with a false sense of comic relief
that institutions and communities will be preserved. Thus, television news frames or packages
the seemingly chaotic world into a larger ritual experience which itself provides an appealing
reassurance to its audiences. As is Michael Moore’s speculates in Bowling for Columbine, this
analysis is more cultural hypothesizing requiring further careful ethnographic analysis.
Selecting News Stories
One of the major challenges facing local news directors is the selection of news stories in
terms of potential audience interest and appeal. Students could view the video clip from the
PBS documentary program, Local News, a series on a local Charlotte, North Carolina news
broadcast. In this series, News Director is under a lot of pressure to improve the news
broadcast’s low ratings. In this clip, he is shown as having to make decisions about a story about
a local school bomb threat based both on the significance/relevancy of the story, as well as it’s
appeal to the viewing audience
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/behind_news.html
The news director constantly monitors local news on competing stations, comparing it
with his or her reporters' coverage, and continually re-evaluates what viewers need and
want to hear about. Amidst the drive to find breaking news no other station is covering,
and to best the investigative work of other stations' reporters, the news director must be
sure his station doesn't miss anything relevant and appealing to local viewers. "We've got
a lot to prove," begins Keith Connors, WCNC News Director, as he delivers an
inspirational speech to his team. "You know the world is watching all that you do! We've
got to connect with that audience."
In Local News, reporters are switched and fired, stories are slashed, and relationships
with investigative sources are challenged in an attempt to keep ahead of the competition
and give viewers compelling reports. When a hurricane hits the North Carolina coast, it
leads the news for hours, because ratings charts showed viewers felt very threatened by
the storm and wanted to see what was coming.
The news director's role -- while deciding which stories to air -- is to inspire and drive his
team to go the extra mile to get that report. Aside from the basic instinct of reporters to
dig for news, they must also be mindful of what the viewers want and feel is appropriate.
If the reporters, the news director, and station management fail in this task, viewership
will decrease, precipitating a drop in advertising that could crush a local station. So the
news we see on television is usually a complex mix including responsible coverage of
current events and headline-grabbing sensationalism.
In the Local News episode "To Work a Miracle," WCNC holds a staff meeting to discuss
how they should cover a reported bomb threat at a local school. They debate whether to
go on-air and talk of the treats, possibly raising public alarm, or to hold off and wait for
more concrete information. This is the process that most big news stories go through
before they make it into our homes. Reporters and management have to think carefully
about the impact of their work, and they must decide what level of priority to assign each
story. "Journalism is the process of editing what is acceptable and unacceptable. What
happens in situations like Columbine happens because nothing has been thought through.
There is no plan," says news director Connors. "You want to win on a big story. When
they find what could be an explosive at a school the week after Colorado, it's a big story."
Reliable sources are particularly important in ascertaining what news is fit to air. The fire
department may report that there is a fire on a particular block. At first, it may seem like a
good piece of breaking news, until it's revealed by a source that it is just a small kitchen
fire. It is the reporter's sources who can confirm the importance of stories.
At the end of the day, however, the news selection process is a difficult balancing act
between what the public wants to know and what it needs to know. "If this was only all
about a number, to have a rating, to get a dollar, well then it's a shallow, vacant,
meaningless pursuit," says Connors.
In responding to this clip, students could examine whether they agree with the
News Director’s judgment regarding the station’s coverage of this event as “news.”
This news director’s decisions reflect the issue of journalistic quality and relevancy
which are being challenged by business needs to show high viewer ratings and please corporate
owners. Analysis of local television news by The Project for Excellence in Journalism
http://journalism.org/resources/research/reports/localTV/default.asp
examines the content of the highest-rated local news broadcasts in 20 cities in terms of:
community relevance, focus on the significant, covering a broad range of topics,
authoritative sourcing in stories, presenting more than one point of view, citing multiple
sources, level of enterprise, professionalism--or understandability of a story-- and level of
sensationalism--defined as the repetition of gore, violence, thrilling action or implied
disgrace, with the intention of luring an audience to the story rather than to convey
information.
In their 2002 report,
http://journalism.org/resources/research/reports/localTV/2002/public.asp
the Project found that there was a relationship between the quality of news and viewer ratings.
47 percent of stations with the highest quality rating had a higher percentage than in any other
ratings grade. They also isolated specific aspects of quality that were most likely to predict high
viewer ratings. Some of these aspects included the following:
Investigation stories. News with higher viewership news had quality of original, investigation
stories that requires extensive research, as opposed to a lot of “on-the-spot” breaking stories.
Focus on community. They also found that stories about local community issues, including
finding local examples of how national or state issues impact the local community, for example,
how the “No Child Left Behind” legislation influences local schools. Unfortunately, as the
report notes, local community stories on national issues are three times more likely to not include
a local context and consequences than stories with local context and consequences.
Story length. They found that longer stories also resulted in higher viewership. Longer stories
are more likely to contain alternative perspectives, longer interviews, more visuals, and more
specifics. They also allow viewers to digest and reflect on the story content as opposed to quick
information summaries.
Sources. And, they found that stories with cited, multiple, and highly knowledgeable sources
resulted in higher viewership than stories with anonymous sources or no sources.
They also found that in 2002, three/fourths of stations were experiencing declines in
viewers, although these declines varied according to market size and news time slots. One
reason for this is that corporate owners, concerned with profits from advertising, which is linked
to viewer ratings, may assume that, contrary to the Project for Excellence study, that sensational,
“breaking news” style attracts more viewers. As evident in a documentary on this topic
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/ratings.html
stations rely on ratings data to attract advertising. The higher the ratings, the more they can
charge for their advertising.
The ratings for national network news (as well as all other programs) are based on data
collected by the Nielsen Media system http://www.nielsenmedia.com/
which is based on a random sample of 5,000 households nationwide. The system is based simply
on the amount of time devoted to particular shows and who is watching as recorded on meters
that send in information to Neilsen’s computers. Audiences also keep diaries of their viewing
habits during a specific week.
Despite owners’ and editors’ beliefs about the use of sensationalized formats, research by
The Project for Excellence in Journalism http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/ratings.html
posit that:
"Many of the conventional ideas about what works in TV news -- high story count, flashy
production, emotion over substance, targeting -- are demonstrably wrong."
"These false ideas are being driven by outdated beliefs, and by following the interests of
advertisers rather than viewers. And they are institutionalized by short-sighted profit
demands that force news directors to cut the very things that build viewership over time - such as enterprise reporting and building staff," says the report.
One reason for this focus on bottom-line profits is the increasing influence of large
conglomerates who may be primarily concerned with profits as opposed to news quality. For
example, General Electric owns NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC; TimeWarner own CNN News;
Disney owns ABC News, Viacom owns CBS News, and Murdoch News owns FOX News.
These corporate owners are often more concerned about gaining profits than on news quality.
Because both national network and local news divisions must demonstrate high levels of profits,
they often employ methods that will result in higher ratings and more advertising revenue.
On the following PBS Newshour site,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/conglomeration/map.php
you can click on any one of 50 news market areas to determine who owns the local television
stations. For the Minnesota market, which ranks 13th in the nation with 1,573,640 households,
1.5% of U.S. households.
Channel
City
Network/Owner
2
KTCA
St. Paul, MN PBS Twin Cities Public Television
5
KSTP
St. Paul, MN ABC Hubbard Broadcasting
7
WCCO
Alexandria, MN
CBS Viacom/CBS Station Group
7
KBSU
Bemidji, MN
PBS Bemidji State University
7
KCCO
Alexandria, MN
CBS Viacom/CBS Station Group
9
KAWEBemidji, MN PBS Lakeland Public Television
9
KMSP
Minneapolis, MN
UPN News Corp./Fox Television Stations
10
KWCM
Appleton, MN PBS West Central Minn. North Educational TV Co.
11
KARE
Minneapolis, MN
NBC Gannett Co.
12
KCCW
Walker, MN CBS Viacom/CBS Station Group
17
22
23
26
28
29
41
42
43
45
KTCI
St. Paul, MN PBS
KAWB
Brainerd, MN PBS
KMWB
Minneapolis, MN
KFTC
Bemidiji, MN Fox
WHWC
Menomonie, WI
WFTC
Minneapolis, MN
KPXM
St. Cloud, MN PAX
KSAX
Alexandria, MN
KRWF Redwood Falls
ABC
KSTC
Minneapolis, MN
Twin Cities Public Television
Lakeland Public Television
WB Sinclair Broadcast Group
News Corp./Fox Television Stations
PBS Univ. of Wisconsin/Ed. Comm. Board
Fox News Corp./Fox Television Stations
Paxson Communications
ABC Hubbard Broadcasting
Hubbard Broadcasting
Independent Hubbard Broadcasting
The Local News documentary demonstrates that focusing on “bottom line” profitability
creates a highly competitive workplace
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/behind_business.html
In Local News, when news director Keith Connors compares each day in the newsroom
to a war, he means that reporters must fight to keep their stories, to protect their jobs, and
to remain competitive in the market. If an anchor's appearance, personality, or credibility
does not match audience expectations, he or she may be cut, as was the case with WCNC
anchor Alicia Booth, who was replaced by another anchor and reassigned as a field
reporter.
Such tactics on the part of station management may seem unfair, or even shallow, but a
key factor in their decision making is economics. As the very large profits of local
television stations have declined with the advent of cable and the Internet, the owner's
first response often is to tighten the newsroom's belt. "During the last four years, the
percentage of TV stations reporting budget increases has slid from 72 percent to 66
percent ... At the same time, the percentage of stations reporting budget decreases has
grown from 7 percent to 20 percent. Budget tightening is primarily in smaller markets,"
according to the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA). Most local
news operations are in these smaller markets. Complicating the drive for local news
operations to excel amidst tough competition is a simple economic factor: it is difficult to
produce audience-grabbing broadcasts at a station that does not have enough money for
equipment and staff.
Bill Moyers PBS NOW: Sinclair Broadcasting's censorship and media consolidation in general.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0510-10.htm
Disney's control of information distribution
http://www.cnn.com/money//05/05/news/fortune500/disney_moore.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
Accuracy/Completeness of News Coverage
Another concern has to do with the degree to which reports are accurate and complete.
In the PBS program, Local News, the television news station staff met together on a regular basis
in order to share their perceptions of an event, sharing that insured that different perspectives
were applied to a story and that the information collected was accurate.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/behind_community.html
In Local News, this technique was used in several news meetings as WCNC team
members shared their opinions and discussed the dynamics of the desegregation issue in
each of their communities. By so doing, the team was better able to understand the hearts
and minds of the people they were covering. Such meetings may also alert reporters to
their own misconceptions and biases, and give them ideas about how to approach a
community that may, at first, seem inaccessible. In covering ethnic communities, one of
the biggest challenges is finding an angle that goes beyond the superficial. "... A
journalist needs powerful tools -- the strong narrative, the increased sophistication, the
kind of sensitive and honest reporting that peels another layer off the onion," says CJR.
Another related issue has to do with the degree of balance—the extent to which
different perspectives or sources are include so that there is a “balanced” understanding all sides
of an issue. Again, however, it may be difficult to achieve such balance when certain people
with different, alternative perspectives may not have the right or the power to speak on an issue.
It is often the case that in national stories, government officials, think-tank spokespersons, or
familiar spokespersons (often white males) are far more likely to be quoted than people outside
of institutions of power.
In Local News, the station often presented these events over others because of their visual
appeal to audiences who prefer such content:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/behind_leads.html
Crime reporting has risen dramatically in newsrooms across America, and some studies
suggest viewers want more of these stories. Mediascope, a non-profit media research and
policy organization, released a report in which it stated, "Market research suggests that
stories of crime and violence increase newscasts' ratings." This finding drives news
directors to deliver more crime-related stories to their audiences. As fascinating as crime
may be for some viewers, is it right that a local news station air the gory details of a
tragic event, possibly jeopardizing an ongoing police investigation, and violating
suspects' rights? How much does the public need to know?
For reporters, the struggle over how far to pursue a story may present serious ethical and
even moral complications. Investigative reporting, on any level, requires asking invasive
and sensitive questions of people who may not want their privacy invaded. In one episode
of Local News, reporters Alicia Booth and Glenn Counts are assigned to report the story
of a young boy who was murdered. Back in the newsroom, pressure was laid on staff to
comb the affected community and gather leads and sound bites. The strong need among
stations to compete for viewers and ratings compels news directors to push reporters to
their field research limits.
One limitation of these brief, visual reports on highly visual, dramatic events is that there
is often little or no contextual analysis of causes/institutional factors shaping events. Thus,
audiences acquire little analysis of the influences of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, or
lack of education on crime. As noted in Module 5 on media representations, audiences may
then perceive urban areas as crime-ridden and dangerous.
They may also not acquire an understanding of and knowledge about a range of different
issues in terms of the larger factors and forces shaping those issues—education, the environment,
economic development, housing, health care, etc. As voters who need to be informed citizens
making decisions about candidates’ stands on these issues, they may be more likely to respond to
candidates’ personality or celebrity image than to their positions on various issues.
Events are also framed in terms of a dramatic, narrative form that highlights conflicts or
tensions, the “narrativization” (Fairclough, 1995). By framing events in a narrative form, the
focus is primarily on dramatizing events for the purpose of engaging or entertaining audiences.
Events are also linked to visual content, requiring reporters and editors to decide on
what visual material provides the most effective representation of an event or analysis. Students
could analyze how broadcasts use visual content to portray concepts or ideas, in some cases,
oversimplifying these concepts or ideas. For an analysis of how visuals are used in the news:
http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/carnaval/
It is also assumed that immediacy and portraying an event as “live,” enhances the quality
of a news broadcast or coverage of an event. News programs often promote themselves in terms
of their capacity to capture “up-to-the-minute” or “breaking” news as soon as certain events
occur. The assumption that immediacy necessary results in being well-informed about an event
may be problematic in that often initial impressions or “live” interviews “on the scene” may not
necessarily result in the most thorough, comprehensive understanding of an event. Careful
investigation of an event often takes days of shifting through evidence and interviewing people.
An analysis by Wally Dean, “Branding Lite,” by the Local TV News Project – 2002, a
project involving studies of local news broadcasts
http://www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/localTV/2002/branding.asp
examined the uses of “branding,” a practice of continually alerting audiences of “breaking
news.”
Amid 24-hour cable and the news crawl, stories journalists once labeled "Developing
Story" are now "Breaking News." Indeed, the data show that stations more often give
major "breaking news" treatment to events that are, in fact, commonplace.
In this year's study, when dealing with spontaneous news events - as opposed to
"daybook" stories - reporters were almost three times more likely to be on-scene at an
everyday incident (28 percent), like a car accident, as they were to be covering significant
breaking events (10 percent), such as a sniper shooting.
And for all that breaking news has become a marketing brand for stations and a
priority for their newsrooms, genuine breaking news - covering an unplanned event as it
unfolds - accounts for a tiny percentage of news content, just 2 percent of stories. That
amounts to one story a week.
A similar kind of hyperbole is evident, though less common, in investigative
reporting.
While three quarters of news directors say they do investigative work, a
significant number of newsrooms affix the label "investigative" to such pressing public
dangers as mold and dog food.
A look at station Web sites reveals that one newsroom dispatched its I-Team to
report on "The cold, hard, facts about soft serve yogurt," and "A camera that can see
through clothes." At another station, a five-person I-Team churned out stories on "Sprayon Makeup," "Hair Cloning," and "Tongue Piercing."
Sometimes, the "investigative" label was applied to spot news simply because a
station sent a reporter from its investigative unit to cover it. One station's Web site, for
instance, boasts how its "Investigative Reporter" revealed "Twelve arrested at 'Swingers
Bar'" and "Pitbull bites boy's diaper, kills his dog."
This is branding lite.
The research team felt that the mislabeling of the term "investigative" is the
significant exception in local TV news rather than the rule. A review of the investigative
work described by news directors in the survey data and a review of those stations' Web
sites suggest that serious investigative work outweighed the faux by better than two to
one.
But even the best journalists are affected by the false branding efforts of a few.
Real breaking news refers to something important happening right now. Genuine
investigative journalism adds a dimension beyond disclosure; it engages the public to
come to judgment about something that the news organization feels may be wrong, or at
least important and needing scrutiny.
Article on how WCCO frequently uses concept of “breaking news”
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/entertainment/columnists/brian_lambert/3489598.htm
Consistent with the question as to what constitutes the significance or relevance of these
dramatic, visual stories, stations may consider whether or not they actually contribute to the
larger good of the community. One station in Austin, Texas now considers the extent to which
certain events are relevant to the community as opposed to a story’s sensational appeal.
One aspect of television news is the continuous flow of reporting carefully organized and
editing according to defined segments. Audiences may therefore become caught up in the flow
of on-going events, often focusing on the visual display of images, as well as a use of bulleted
lists, graphics, and sound effects.
This rapid-fire delivery often leaves little or no time to reflect on the content or implications of
the information provided. In conducting their analyses of the 12 minutes of local news, students
also often report that they have little opportunity to reflect on the information provided to them
in any thoughtful, systematic manner.
Another key component of television news is the role of the anchor person(s), frequently
a male and a female. These anchor persons assume a celebrity status in the community and are
often the focus of stations’ promotional campaigns. The anchors frequently address the
audience as “you” and maintain direct eye contact with the audience, attempting to build a
rhetorical bond with the audience. They also engage in “happy-talk” banter with co-anchors or
other reporters as a form of entertainment. Audiences may also judge the anchor in terms of
personality or style, as opposed to their primary function of simply reading news copy. This
contrasts with the traditional role of the host on PBS Newshour, NPR’s All Things Considered,
or the BBC News.
Correspondents function as extensions of anchor, who “report in” to the anchor “on the
scene.” These correspondents capture witnesses or interviewee’s perspectives on events, often
selecting those who provide the most effective sound-bite quotes for the brief 1-3 minute stories.
This raises questions about how and why certain interviewees may be selected and who those
interviewees may represent. In some cases, as in 60 Minutes news documentary shows,
interviewees may be put “on the spot” by questions that they attempt to evade or not answer,
creating a dramatic tension between their elusive non-verbal behavior on the screen and their
words.
Newsroom for a local news broadcast (from PBS’s Local News)—requires Flash plug in
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/newsroom.html
Analysis of TV news
http://www.newslab.org/
News interviews. The nature and quality of news interviews varies considerably. In local news,
while an actual interview may have lasted ten minutes, only 40 seconds of that interview ends up
in a story. This provides little sense of context, alternative perspective, or an interviewee’s
beliefs and attitudes about a topic or issue. In contrast, interviews with authorities, politicians, or
experts on the PBS NewsHour may last for 10 or 15 minutes, providing more opportunities for
interviewees to express their ideas and opinions.
For examples of extended interviews on the NewsHour:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/
The quality of interviewer questions may also influence the quality of the interview data.
Reporters who are able to pose follow-up questions in a tactful manner may elicit more
information than with a series of different, unrelated questions. Some reporters, particularly on
“investigatory” news programs, may pose leading “why-are-you-beating-you-wife” questions
that box in interviewees, who may then appear embarrassed or guilty of actions they may not
have committed.
For further reading:
Clayman, S., & Heritage, J. (2002). The news interview: Journalists and public
figures on the air. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Television News Development
National television news has developed over time from only a 15 minute broadcast in the
1950s to their current 30-minute broadcasts. Some local news broadcasts are now one to two
hours in large markets. Cable news networks broadcast 24 hours a day.
As previously noted, the “re-mediation” of television (Bolter & Guerin, 2000) has meant
that television news has increasingly incorporated the look of a computer screen with a running
black bar along the bottom of the screen with news headlines and multiple-windows on the same
screen.
Some critics argue that the increased amount of news broadcasting has not necessarily
improved the quality and substantive nature of the news. Having to fill 20 hours a day, often
means that the “news” includes a lot of stories on health, media celebrities, cooking, travel,
consumer products, etc.
Cable television news broadcasts, many of whom are facing financial difficulties, often
dramatize events such as the Gulf War, the O. J. Simpson trial, the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
and other such events in a non-stop, dramatic manner. These portrayals serve to lure viewers
away from the more traditional network news by providing continuous coverage, in many cases,
about superficial, non-significant matters.
Network versus cable television news
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/arts/television/04NOTE.html
Students can study older version of the news by going to The Television News Archive at
Vanderbilt University
http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/ This site contains thousands of broadcast clips that can be
searched through a database search. Access is free, but registration is required.
TV news is also varies according to the time of day in which they broadcast their news
related to when their audiences are most likely to be viewing. One study at Ball State's Center
for Media Design conducted in 2003 based on observations, diaries, and phone interviews, found
that audiences prefer to view news in the morning, a shift from previous decades in which
audiences preferred to view evening news. The study also found that the average audience
viewed 94 minutes of news daily; audiences older than 35 were viewing three times the amount
of news than audiences 18 to 34 and four times as much television news as adolescents.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20
040420005860&newsLang=en>http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndm
ViewId=news_view&newsId=20040420005860&newsLang=en
History of the Ten O’Clock News: WGBH, Boston
http://main.wgbh.org/ton/collection_history.html
For a site on television news history included in a site on all aspects of the news created by three
female adolescents, Nico Juser, Rosa Victorio, and Caroline Van Ness:
http://library.thinkquest.org/18764/television/history.html
On-line Television News
There are also obvious differences in the nature and quality of news across different
media: television, radio, print, and Web-based news. Television news emphasizes the visual,
headline nature of events, which radio news, such as that available on National Public Radio
http://news.npr.org/
can provide without having to be concerned about visual presentation. However, there is
considerable variation in the nature of television news. Contrast the headline versions of the 24hour cable-news broadcasts/Web pages of CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/
Fox,
http://www.foxnews.com/
or MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/
with the news as presented on the PBS Newshour
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/
in terms of differences in the depth of coverage and analysis.
Local television stations have made increasing use of their own sites.
WCCO: Channel 4
http://www.channel4000.com/
KSTP: Channel 5
http://www.kstp.com/
KARE Channel 11
http://www.kare11.com/
In a study of the news content on local TV station (Pitts, 2003) found that these the web
sites provides less information than do the on-air stories. Only 36.5% of sites used video. Links
to different resources that would add to on-air news information were found on 43% of sampled
sites.
Audience participation of television news. Students could also, using the methods described in
Module 7 on media ethnography, analyze viewers’ responses to television news. They could
examine the nature of their understanding or recall of the news content, as well as the critical
stances they adopted in responding to the news. For example, in a study by Rod Doyle,
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/ryd0001.html
he examined five viewers, ages 19 and 20, with similar levels of general knowledge, to recall
stories from a news broadcast. They watched a broadcast of BBC1’s News at Ten, which lasted
approximately 25 minutes. The news items that appeared on the program were as follows:
00:42 > 06:25 minutes - Palestinian suicide bomber in Israel
06:25 > 08:49 minutes - Suicide attack on bus in Karachi
08:49 > 12:40 minutes - Stephen Byers debate
12:40 > 16:06 minutes - Arsenal new Premiership Champions
16:06 > 18:49 minutes - N.U.T want to cut working week to 35 hrs
18:49 > 19:05 minutes - Helicopter rescue in North Sea
19:05 > 19:24 minutes - 18yr old woman charged with kidnap
19:24 > 19:38 minutes - Netherlands nurse charged with murder
19:38 > 21:59 minutes - Economy debate
21:59 > 22:14 minutes - Queen continues Jubilee tour of Britain
22:14 > 24:47 minutes - Classical musicrow
Each of the stories that were recalled by each of the five:
RB Recalled: Israel Karachi Queen Arsenal Missed: Byers N.U.T North Sea Kidnap
Nurse Economy Classical
MM Recalled: Israel Nurse Queen Kidnap Byers Economy Missed: Karachi Arsenal
N.U.T North Sea Classical
RC Recalled: Israel Byers Nurse Arsenal Kidnap Missed: Karachi N.U.T North Sea
Economy Queen Classical
SR
Recalled: Israel Arsenal Byers Missed: Karachi N.U.T North Sea Kidnap Nurse
Economy Queen Classical
LB
Recalled: Israel Karachi Arsenal N.U.T Byers North Sea Kidnap Nurse Economy
Classical Missed: Queen
When asked to retell one of the stories on teachers’ working hours, the viewers varied in
terms applying their own knowledge and opinions related to own interest and previous
experience, particularly on the topic of education. They were also more likely to recall items that
were interest to them, as well as the first lead-in items.
At the same time, it is often assumed the audiences are viewing of local television news
to gain information. However, an alternative, more anthropological perspective suggests that
audiences may also be using the viewing of news are part of a larger community ritual, in which
the news has replaced the “town-crier” who’s job in the traditional community was do provide
reassurance that “all is well.” Much of local news functions to celebrate local community
events—anchors serve as MC’s and hosts for various civic causes and fund drives. All of this
creates synthetic sense of “community,” with which viewers identify as members. Viewers then
engage in a ritual-like viewing habit of participating in this synthetic community celebration at
the end of the day. Because the news attempts to emphasize positive elements of the community,
it may therefore avoid stories that serve to challenge or critiquing community beliefs and
attitudes.
For further reading on viewer processing of television news information:
Graber, D. A. (2001). Processing politics: Learning from television in the Internet
age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sports coverage
Another major focus of television news is sports coverage, particularly given the
emphasis on sports in the media and the larger culture. Students could examine the ways in
which local news sports coverage functions to promote sports broadcasting, particularly on the
same news network or station. This promotion is part of a larger influence of sports network
revenues for both professional and college sports, revenues that are often related to teams
emphasis on having winning seasons. This, in turn, can lead to sports scandals related to
attempts to violate NCAA rules on recruiting or academic support. This was evident in the
University of Minnesota academic cheating scandal reported in 1999 in which Jan Gangelhoff, a
former office manager of the University of Minnesota's academic counseling center, admitted in
a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, that she had written hundreds of papers for members of the
basketball team. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of the basketball coach, Clem
Haskins, and the University being placed on probation for four years. For a report of this story
and other sports scandals:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/mediamatters/302/full.html
For 217 links to sports news items:
http://dmoz.org/Sports/Resources/News_and_Media/
CBS Sports
http://cbs.sportsline.com/
ESPN
http://msn.espn.go.com/
ESPN/ABC Sports
http://espn.go.com/abcsports/
MSNBC Sports
http://www.msnbc.com/news/spt_summary.asp
Fox Sports
http://www.foxsports.com/named/Index/CBK
Coverage of Political Issues and Campaigns
Consistent with Noam Chomsky’s analysis in Manufacturing Consent, one of the major
criticisms of television news is that it presents only the perspective of those in power, excluding
alternative, dissident voices.
In his essay, “On party, gender, race and class, TV news looks to the most powerful
groups,” (Power Sources, May/June, 2002), Ina Howard
http://www.fair.org/extra/0205/power_sources.html
reports on an analysis of the sources used on the big three networks’ evening news shows in
2001:
Instead of a liberal bias, the study found, source selection favored the elite interests that
the corporate owners of these shows depend on for advertising revenue, regulatory
support and access to information. Network news demonstrated a clear tendency to
showcase the opinions of the most powerful political and economic actors, while giving
limited access to those voices that would be most likely to challenge them.
On the partisan level, the news programs provided a generous platform for sources from
the Republican Party-- the party in power in the White House for almost the entire year-while giving much less access to the opposition Democrats, and virtually no time to third
party or independent politicians. Based on the criterion of who got to speak, the broadcast
networks functioned much more as venues for the claims and opinions of the powerful
than as democratic forums for public discussion or education.
In 2001, the voices of Washington’s elite politicians were the dominant sources of
opinion on the network evening news, making up one in three Americans (and more than
one in four of all sources) who were quoted on all topics throughout the year. Of sources
who had an identifiable partisan affiliation, 75 percent were Republican and only 24
percent Democrats. A mere 1 percent were third-party representatives or independents.
The three networks varied only slightly in their selection of partisan sources. CBS had the
most Republicans and the fewest Democrats (76 percent vs. 23 percent); NBC (75
percent vs. 25 percent) and ABC (73 percent vs. 27 percent) were marginally less
imbalanced. CBS had the most independents (1.2 percent), followed by ABC (0.7
percent) and NBC (an almost invisible 0.2 percent).
Howard also reports that the study found that women were under-represented in terms of
sources quoted:
While women made up only 15 percent of total sources, they represented more than
double that share-- 40 percent-- of the ordinary citizens in the news. This reflects a
tendency to quote men as the vast majority of authoritative voices while presenting
women as non-experts; women made up only 9 percent of the professional and political
voices that were presented. More than half of the women (52 percent) who appeared on
the news were presented as average citizens, whereas only 14 percent of male sources
were.
Howard also notes that people of color rarely served as sources:
Among U.S. sources for whom race was determinable, whites made up 92 percent of the
total, blacks 7 percent, Latinos and Arab-Americans 0.6 percent each, and AsianAmericans 0.2 percent. (According to the 2000 census, the U.S. population is 69 percent
non-Hispanic white, 13 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black and 4 percent Asian.) A single
source who appeared on NBC (7/26/01) was the only Native American identified as
appearing on the nightly news in 2001-- 0.008 percent of total sources.
Howard’s report demonstrates that those in power are given far more access and air time
than those out of power. Moreover, ordinary people, labor unions, working-class people, and
women/minorities are largely excluded.
Local television news often provide little or no coverage of political races, in contrast to
coverage by newspapers. A study of 122 stations in the top 50 markets in October and
November, 2002, by the Lear Center for Local News at the University of Wisconsin
http://www.localnewsarchive.org/index.html
Found that there were four times as many political ads as there was coverage of candidates. In
each broadcast, there was an average of 39 seconds of political coverage compared to an average
of 1 minute of political ads. To some degree, given the lack of coverage, candidates may need to
rely on advertising to convey their messages, providing a lucrative revenue source for stations
during political campaigns. (Attempts to include a measure that would have forced local stations
to provide free advertising time to candidates was removed from the Campaign Finance Law
passed in 2002 due to strong lobbying by the industry.)
For a history of campaign ads produced by the Museum of the Moving Image:
http://www.ammi.org/livingroomcandidate/
The study also found that, of the little political coverage that did occur, most of the focus
was on strategy and the horserace aspects of a campaign, as opposed to coverage of issues. 40%
of the exposure to candidates consisted of sound bites, which averaged 11.2 seconds—suggesting
largely superficial information about a candidate’s stand on issues. Races for Congress were
given little attention. Only one in five campaign stories were devoted to Senate races and one in
ten, to House races, while 28% of ads were for House races.
For a Newseum interactive site on news coverage of political campaigns:
http://www.newseum.org/everyfouryears/index.htm
Under-representation of women and minorities in television news. As with print news, critics
have also examined the under-representation of women and minorities in the television news
industry. For example, during the filming of the Local News documentary, a veteran AfricanAmerican female reporter loses her job, for reasons that are not made explicit in the
documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/behind_women.html
One analysis of news anchors in the top National Public Radio stations
http://www.fair.org/extra/0209/white-noise.html
found that 73 out of 83 were non-Latino whites (88 percent). Fifty-seven of the daytime
hosts and anchors were male (69 percent).
Six of the hosts were African-American, two were Asian-American and two were
Arab-American. (Hosts who appeared on multiple stations were counted once for each
station.) Just one Latino host appeared during any station's daytime broadcasts, while no
Native American hosts showed up in the survey.
While the stations reached a population that was, on average, 19 percent AfricanAmerican, their daytime hosts and anchors averaged just 7 percent African-American.
More strikingly, the cities served by the radio stations studied were on average 25 percent
Latino, but only 1 percent of the hosts and anchors at the stations studied were Latino.
The stations reached a population that averaged 9 percent Asian-American, but
only 2 percent of their daytime hosts and anchors were Asian-American.
Sixty-eight percent of hosts and anchors were male, serving areas that were, on
average, 49 percent male.
Lots of sites on demographics of news people
http://www.missouri.edu/~jourvs/
http://www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/localTV/2002/chart.asp
For an interview with Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes about his journalism career
http://www.usaweekend.com/02_issues/020217/020217bhm_news.html
For further reading:
Torres, S. (2003). Black, white, and in color: Television and black civil rights.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
News coverage of wars. In conducting critical analyses of the news, students could examine the
role of the press in covering wars, particularly given instances of coverage of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Students could go onto the Newseum site on the “War in Iraq”:
http://www.newseum.org/frontpages/wariniraq.htm
and examine some of the issues associated with the news coverage of that war, for example, the
issue of the Pentagon’s approved use of “embedded reporters.” They could also go the
Newseum site on “War Stories”:
http://www.newseum.org/warstories/index.htm
One of the limitations of coverage of the Iraq War was that, according to Susan Moeller
(2004) is that reporters were highly controlled in terms of the sites to which they had access as
“embedded” reporters:
In contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many reporters made careful
distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD, in 2002 and
2003 many stories stenographically reported the administration's perspective and gave
too little critical examination of the way officials framed events, issues, threats and policy
options. The media tended to report uncritically the Bush administration's conflation of
all "weapons of mass destruction" into a single category of threat - a conflation that
equates the destructive power of, say, chemical weapons with that of nuclear weapons.
In the period before the Iraq war, pressure to respond to crises patriotically - and the lack
of much congressional opposition - limited the assessment of White House policy and the
consideration of other policy options. According to recent books by Bob Woodward,
Richard Clarke and Ron Suskind (with former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill),
several top officials entered office in 2001 determined to make war.
A Project LookSharp publication, Media Construction of War, contains 49 full-color
covers and photographs from over 40 years of wars starting with World War II from Newsweek
Magazine (available from the Center for Media Literacy:
http://www.medialit.org/pdf/MCOWflyer.pdf
And, in the PBS program, Media Matters, the issues of coverage of the war in
Afghanistan is explored in terms of the tight government control of information provided to
reporters:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/mediamatters/302/journalists.html
And, an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, “Being There Suddenly the Pentagon
Grants Access to the Action, But the Devil's in the Details,” by Andrew Bushell and Brent
Cunningham http://www.cjr.org/year/03/2/embed.asp
argue that the use of “embedded reporters” in the Iraq War was highly problematic.
BBC teaching activity on reporting on war:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/teachers/citizenship_11_14/subject_areas/conflict_resolution/
newsid_2858000/2858007.stm
News reports on the Iraq War from the Newseum site
http://www.newseum.org/frontpages/wariniraq.htm
Articles on war coverage on the FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) site:
http://www.fair.org/international/iraq.html
Channel One news broadcasts. Many school districts provide students with daily 12-minute
broadcasts of Channel One news broadcasts http://www.channelone.com/ that is beamed via
satellite to 12,000 schools. In return, schools receive free video equipment, which they often
need given budget-cutbacks.
The Center for Analysis of Commercialism in Education at the Arizona State University
http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/ceru.htm reports that commercialism in schools has increased as
much as four times in the past decade, often due to the lack of funding.
In an analysis of the news content, Mark Miller (“How to be Stupid: The Lessons of
Channel One” EXTRA! May, 1997) http://www.fair.org/extra/9705/ch1-miller.html
found that the “news” content is just as superficial as local television news, consisting of
headline summaries of factual information that serves as “content” for commercials:
Its real function is not journalistic but commercial, for it is meant primarily to get us
ready for the ads. What this means is that the news must, on the one hand, keep us sitting
there and watching, as an M.C. has to keep his audience mildly entertained between the
acts; but it must also constantly efface itself, must keep itself from saying anything too
powerful or even interesting, must never cut too deep or raise any really troubling
questions, because it can never be permitted to detract in any way from the commercials.
Its aim must be, in short, to keep our eyes wide open and our minds asleep, so that the
commercial will look good to us, sound true to us, and thereby work on us.
If the news on Channel One often seems perplexingly abstract, offering no clear
impression from those many sudden, pointless names and numbers, that perplexity
enhances the effect of the commercials. So brightly focused and so dazzlingly insistent,
each stands out luminous and sharp in the bewildering murk of factoids like a high-tech
lighthouse in a blinding fog. The routine horror of the news on Channel One also
indirectly bolsters the commercials, which proffer their young viewers a fantastic antidote
to all those tragic woes and bloody dangers. Skeletal and nearly bald, a real teenager with
leukemia suffers through the agonies of chemotherapy-just after a fictitious teenaged girl
(full-bodied, and with all her hair) finds happiness by using Clearasil. Buildings explode
and people mourn in Bosnia (with its "brutal and complex story of ethnic hatreds and
violent nationalism")-and then we see the Buffalo Bills, locked up and deprived of lunch
by their demanding coach, chomp with furtive relish on their Snickers bars ("Hungry?
Why wait?"). And so on.
Surely all the mass advertising on the TV news thus benefits from such delicious contrast
with the uglier images of telejournalism (as long as those other images are not too ugly).
The ads on Channel One would seem to be especially powerful, however, because they
thrive by contrast not just with the news before and after them, but with the whole boring,
regimented context of the school itself.
Imagine, or remember, what it's like to have to sit there at your desk, listening to your
teacher droning on, with hours to go until you can get out of there, your mind rebelling
and your hormones raging. It must be a relief when Channel One takes over, so you can
lose yourself in its really cool graphics and its tantalizing bursts of rock music-and in the
advertisers' mind-blowing little fantasies of power: power through Pepsi, Taco Bell,
McDonald's, Fruit-A-Burst and/or Gatorade ("Life Is a Sport. Drink It Up!"), power
through Head 'n' Shoulders, Oxy-10 and/or Pantene Pro-V Mousse (". . . a stronger sense
of style!"), power through Donkey Kong and/or Killer Instinct ("PLAY IT LOUD!")
and/or power through Reebok ("This is my planet!").
Students could view examples of Channel One, as well as teacher lesson plans,
http://www.teachworld.com/
and examine the quality and nature of the stories.
They could also examine criticisms by a coalition of conservative and progressive groups
who object to the intrusion of messages and images into the school:
http://www.commercialalert.org/index.php?category_id=2&subcategory_id=32&article_id=120
The PBS NOW broadcast on the topic of Channel One
http://www.pbs.org/now/society/schoolstats.html
identified the following pros and cons related to use of Channel One:
Pros
*
Exclusive contracts, signing bonuses, and incentive programs can bring up to sixand seven-figure sums to school districts.
*
Local and national businesses become invested in the educational system.
*
Schools receive free educational media. (Channel One reaches eight million
teenagers and provides free satellite dishes and use of equipment in exchange for a
promise to show their programming on 90 percent of school days in 80 percent of
classrooms. Similarly, DirecTV hopes to bring educational programming to 50,000
schools and provide equipment to 2000 low-income schools in 2002.)
*
Advertising is already ubiquitous, so schoolchildren are seeing nothing new.
*
Incentive programs and corporate-sponsored contests provide a great way to
reward educational achievement.
Cons
*
Schools are taxpayer-funded and shouldn't promote a particular company or
product.
*
Students are required by law to attend school; thus, they provide a captive
audience for advertisers, and critics question the ethics and advisability of advertising to
young people.
*
There are health issues related to snack and soft drink sales in a population that is
increasingly overweight and unfit.
*
Schools are put in the position of advocating products to fulfill contract
agreements.
*
Incentive programs that reward educational achievement with prizes are really
attempting to encourage brand loyalty.
They also reported the following financial information:
Average expenditure per pupil in the United State, 2000: $6,911
Percentage of school budget spent on instruction, 2000: 61.7%
Percentage of school funding from local sources, 2000: 42.9%
Percentage of school funding from state sources, 2000: 49.5%
Percentage of school districts with soft drink contracts, 2000: 49.9%
Percentage of high schools with vending machines, 2000: 98.2%
Percentage of all schools offering soft drinks in vending machines, 2000: 76.3%
Percentage of all schools offering 100% fruit of vegetable juice in vending machines,
2000: 55.6%
For further reading:
McChesney, R. (2003). The problem of the media: U.S. communications politics
in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Spring, J. (2003). Educating the Consumer Citizen: A History of the Marriage of
Schools, Advertising, and Media. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Creating a Television News Broadcast
As with creating a classroom newspaper, students could also create their own television
news broadcast of stories of interest to them and their peers. They could simply video tape their
broadcasts or, by creating digital, video-streaming images, they could put clips onto a Web page.
In doing so, they are learning about various aspects of television news production, including
selecting and writing script for stories, using visual content to convey their ideas, and editing
material to capture primary content. They could then reflect on their own and others’ stories in
terms of decisions about the newsworthy nature of their stories--the significance, relevance, or
value of the story for their intended audiences.
In the Thinking Visual site, http://excellent.comm.utk.edu/~mdharmon/visual/
Mark Harmon includes specific strategies for analyzing the use of photo composition, motion,
sound, lighting, and transitions in television news broadcasts.
Lesson: Producing a news broadcast (grades 6-9)
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/video_production
_newscast.cfm
For activities involving production of a news broadcast:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20020405friday.html
My Newcast: game on creating a TV news broadcast
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/newscast.html
Webquests: Creating news broadcasts
http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~jwoehrle/webquest.html
http://jcs.k12.oh.us/teachers/jhaines/fire/
http://wneo.org/WebQuests/TeacherWebQuests/newsprogram/newsprogram.htm
http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/dailard/thenews/
Unit: Which Clip Should We Use?: developing a TV news broadcast
http://education.indiana.edu/cas/tt/v2i3/clip.html
Lesson: studying television news
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/news_lesson4.cf
m
Getting the Message Across is a valuable and accessible tape for students and others
wishing to produce effective videos. This video does not focus on the technical details of
production. Instead, it helps the video maker think about how to communicate forcefully by
telling a story well. It illustrates this message with off-the-air examples as well as taped footage.
http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/GettingTheMessageAcross
For further reading:
Attkisson, S., & Vaughan, D. R. (2003). Writing right for broadcast and Internet
news. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003.
Tuggle, C.A., Carr, F., & Huffman, S. (2001). Broadcast news handbook: Writing,
reporting, and producing. Boston: McGraw Hill.
References
Bolter, J. & Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation. Boston: MIT Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold.
Moeller, S. (2004). How the media blew the Iraq story.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/nyvpmoe213766678apr21,0,495497.story?coll=ny-viewpointsheadlines>http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/nyvpmoe213766678apr21,0,495497.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Pitts, M. (2003). Television web sites and changes in the nature of storytelling. Studies in Media
&
Information Literacy Education, 3(3).
http://www.utpress.utoronto.ca/journal/ejournals/simile
Staubhaar, J., & LaRose, R. (2004). Media now: Understanding media, culture, and technology.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.
Teaching Activity: Analysis of a Local News Broadcast
Students could view a 30-minute local commercial network news broadcasts and keep a
log of the specific stories, types of stories, and the time of stories in number of seconds. Then,
they could identify the types of content in terms of time devoted to “news,” “weather,” “sports,”
“consumer/health/entertainment feature stories,” and “ads.” Within the “news” category,
characterize the types of stories included. Finally, they could reflect on what you learned about
the world based on your results.
If they viewed several different stations on the same news day, they could then compare
the differences in station’s news in terms of their style, topic selection, self-promotion, bias,
substantive analysis, story development, etc. They could also examine difference in the stations’
news ratings and discuss differences in popularity as due to the particular personalities of the
anchors and/or the quality of their coverage. They may also note the similarities in the news in
terms of formats, stories, topics, styles, flashy weather/sports.
Students could also compare the national news coverage, particularly the difference
between the one hour PBS NewsHour and ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox in terms of the use of
alternative perspectives, explanations, interpretations, etc. not evident in the summary format on
the network news.
Students’ teaching activities developed in CI5472 in Spring, 2004.
Amanda Furth
Analyzing TV News
1) record stories covered
2) record type of stories
3) record length of stories in seconds
4) identify type of content: news, weather, sports, consumer/health/entertainment, ads
5) identify editing techniques
6) discuss hidden agenda's demonstrated through stories selected & perspectives demonstrated
Reid Westrem and Brock Dubbels
Comparing TV and Newspaper writing
My advanced students perform a daily news and announcements show on TV every day. My
beginning students need to learn how to write and perform for this show. This activity is used
after students have studied news writing for newspapers and are beginning a study of broadcast
news. It follows a brief lecture, in which the following points are made:
Writing broadcast news
1. Keep it short and simple (subject ‘ verb ‘ object).
"Police have arrested a suspect’"
-- Cut out unnecessary words.
-- Avoid long introductory or parenthetical phrases.
-- Be conversational, when appropriate.
2. Attributions go at or near the beginning.
NO: The nation’s unemployment rate will drop this year, Bush said.
YES: Bush claimed that the nation’s unemployment rate would drop this year.
4. Remember: the audience cannot see the text!
NO: The mayor said, ‘I need to take off some weight.’
YES: The mayor said he needs to take off some weight.
(Use your voice, pauses and facial expressions to signal a quote.)
e.g. The mayor said he would’ ‘hit the weights’ ‘next week.
NO: Ticketmaster said that they can’t refund tickets.
YES: Ticketmaster said that they canNOT refund tickets.
Ok, here’s the activity:
a) Obtain the text of two broadcast news reports. This can be done several ways:
-- Watch and videotape tonight’s news broadcast from ABC, CBS or NBC (5:30 pm) or CNN or
CNN Headline News. Type the text for two stories.
-- Go to CNN’s transcript page ( http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/), click on a news
reporting show (not analysis or commentary) and find stories. Or use the link that says, ‘Click
here for breaking news transcripts,’ which often provides what you’ll be looking for.
Choose stories featuring only a reading by the anchor and possibly a video clip with quotes (not
an interview with a special analyst or with a reporter on the scene). [Note: The writing for
NewsBreak is for anchors only and does not feature remote links with reporters or live
interviews, which are more complex.]
b) Copy and paste the text for the two stories into a word-processing file, such as Microsoft
Word.
c) For each broadcast report, find an article on the same topic on the website of a major daily
newspaper, such as The New York Times or Washington Post. Copy and paste the text into your
file.
d) Compare the two versions of each story:
-- Use the word-count feature to compare the lengths of each version (the newspaper article
should be much longer).
-- Compute the average length in words of the first five sentences of each story (newspaper
sentences should be much longer).
-- Note the sentence structure of each (newspaper sentences should be more complicated, often
departing from the basic subject-verb-object structure).
-- Note the use of attributions (the broadcast sentences should begin with attributions, while the
newspaper sentences should end with them, if they’re included).
e) Write a summary paragraph for each story based on your observations.
Dixie Boschee and Anne Holmgren
Students work in teams of 4. Each team member will watch 2 news television broadcasts from
the same channel. Students can choose a 5pm and 10pm newscast or 5 and 9, whatever that
channel offers, but each member must watch the same time/channel news.
During each newscast, each group member has a role:
(1) Nuts and bolts: stories told/categories/time of story
(2) Picture person: Graphics used/photos/etc. connected to each story.
(3) Prop/Set person: note differences/similarities of each set / presentator (3 men, 1 woman)
(4) How were stories treated in each newscast (e.g., if all stories are the same, did each
reporter/newscaster express the information in the same way (voice, gestures, body lingo)
When you come to class the next day, you will discuss your results and determine the following:
(1) How much time was spent on each category (e.g., sports, local news, world news, weather,
etc.)
(2) Was each story told in the same order? If not, why do you think they changed it?
(3) did the graphics/pictures/etc. help make a connection to the story being told? Did they evoke
any feelings that wouldn't have been felt without the picture/graphic?
(4) Do you feel the news was slanted in any way? Or was it told from a strictly the facts basis.
(5) is the audience the same for each newscast? if not, what makes you feel that way. If yes,
explain why you think so.
To help students practice their writing skills, they will have to answer all the questions in
complete sentences using transitions to move from one topic to the next.
Tamela McCartney and Kimberly Sy
Using the resources provided in Module 10, have your students choose 3 different media
(generally from the USA) from which they will make an analysis (Radio, Internet, Television,
Newspapers, Magazines). Using a current international news story, have the students analyze
how the story differs coming from each source. Is the coverage the same? Different? Which is
more detailed? Are any visual? How does this affect the story? Why might the coverage be
different?
Then, have the students compare the coverage from the US media to that of the media from
another country. Why might there be differences? What differences are there? What does the
difference in coverage tell you about the country from which the news originates?
Louise Covert and Becca Robertson
Currently, I live outside the metro area. The coverage of news is different here. There is more
local and rural news featured. I think it is interesting to tape news segments from this part of the
state and juxtapose these with news that my students who live in Eagan, MN typically view
when and if they watch the news.
1. We would first watch a segment of channel ll or 5 in the cities. Noting the kinds of stories in
the categories of news, weather, sports, and feature spots for the evening.
2. I would have students create a Venn diagram to look at similarities and differences between
the two newscasts.
3. Questions to ask students to prompt discussion and guide their discernment regarding the 2
different news programs:
4. What kinds of stories are featured in the metro area segments? The Rochester segment?
5. What sorts of advertisements are featured throughout each of the two programs?
6. In what ways are the anchors similar and different in these two program?
7. Is one version more sophisticated? Another more familiar?
8. What kinds of beliefs and values are communicated in each of these programs based on the
kinds of stories that are featured?
9. Why do you think there is more air-time and emphasis on weather in the Rochester
programming?
10. We would talk about the anchors--what they look like, what they are wearing, their
mannerisims and non-verbal communication with viewers and rapport with each/one another
during the news broadcast, too.
11. This would be a way to invite students to consider different viewpoints, discourses, and
stances toward news based on a specific audience.
12. We would talk about these points as a large group and share other experiences they may have
had with these differences in broadcasting in other cities, states, etc.
Jeffrey Wendelberger
The goal of this activity is to have students develop a critical understanding the of television
news. Students will watch excerpts of news programs during class, participate in discussions and
write a compare/contrast paper.
Teachers should first tape episodes of a local television news broadcast and an episode of a nonnetwork news source, such as BBC news or The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
In the classroom, show students excerpts from both news sources. The excerpts should deal with
the same subject matter. As students view the excerpts they should keep a log that tracks the
amount of time each source spends on the story, the techniques used to convey the information—
charts, interviews, video, etc.
After viewing the excerpts and gathering data, students should participate in a discussion about
the differences between the two sources and the possible reasons for those differences.
Finally, students should write a paper in which the compare and contrast the news value of the
stories from the two different sources.
Students should focus their papers around such issues as: What were the differences between the
two sources’ stories? What factors might account for these differences? What important things
would regular viewers of local news stations likely not know about the news subject? Which
news source is more likely to satisfy a democracy’s need for informed citizens?
Adam Banse and Dan Gough
Dan and I came up with an idea for teaching students how much "news" there actually is in TV
news broadcasts.
A class of 30 would be divided up into groups of five. Each group would be assigned to watch
one night of the evening news between Saturday and Thursday.
Each group member would be assigned to watch one newscast from each station: channels
4,5,9,11 or 29.
Each student will be required to take a log of the minutes of each episode and classify what was
covered.
For example, if the opening story is on Dru Sjodin and the story lasted 45 seconds, the students
would write: crime, 45 seconds. Or, if the newscasters chit-chatted with one another, they would
write: banter 27 seconds.
The students will average out their finding as a group and give a PowerPoint or whiteboard
presentation.
At the end the class will combine all of their findings and rate which stations do the best and
worst jobs of providing their audience with actual "news."
Jennifer Larson
My teaching activity will have students analyze the language used in different news reports on
the same event. The media could include TV, internet, newspaper, radio. Students will examine
the rhetoric used in each report-- the diction, imagery, selection of detail, etc.--and report on how
the different rhetoric presented the event differently. I would recommend students choose a
significant event for the week; this week a big event was the discovery of Dru Sjodin's body, e.g.
A follow up discussion could look at the way the different media forms presented each and
discuss why--going after the author's/media's purpose.
Scott Devens
This teaching activity deals with the characteristics of television news, particularly (as noted in
the module) the underlying assumption that the more immediate the coverage the better. The
activity will also include students learning about an historical event that shaped our
country/world significantly.
Basically, the gist of the lesson/unit/activity would be to analyze some of the "immediate"
television news stories from the 9/11 disaster. We would compare and contrast the initial
coverage (day of) with coverage from a couple of weeks later. Students would most likely
observe that immediate, day-of coverage was often simply a camera fixated on the smoking,
burning buildings. Was this a "better" news segment because it was happening now? Or, were
the later stories, those with more information about what actually happened recently actually
"better" news? Why do television stations constantly promote their news as "better" simply
because it is current? (to compete with other forms of media) We could also analyze why it
seemed justified for stations to just show a burning building for very long-lengths of time? Less
"important" or far-reaching stories, especially local ones, don't get that much airtime; why?
[I also tried to think of a good activity about teaching about: what really IS "news"? To me, it's
really kind of a "Zen" question. There is a book about time and place that I've used before called
"Einstein's Dreams" that might be a starting point for interesting discussions. I am thinking about
what a 1/2 hour "news" show might look like with a reporter on the scene at Walden Pond back
in Henry's time there? Isn't every news story really reporting stuff about personal decisions? Of
course, some decisions a person may make (like 9/11) may affect many, many people in a
negative or positive way. I'm trying to think of an activity that might illustrate how one person's
internal decision about just one aspect of their life would be much, much more important than
what is on the TV news. Or, how does/will the collective decisions of thousands or millions of
people to buy hybird-type automobiles affect the world? How can people balance their civic duty
of being informed of local, national and world events with the reality that each person's "world"
actually involves who and what they actually interact with each day. Maybe what I'm trying to
get at is: if a television is playing a news show in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does
the TV really make any sound? Perhaps reading a book and then linking the questions about life
in general to these more specific questions about what is "news" would be the best activity to
challenge assumptions. Or, doing some reflection after eliminating some media (like TV turnoff
week) might help, too.]
Jessie Docktor and Rachel Godlewski
An activity to help students understand how selectivity comes into play with news reporting
would be to give them a certain number of stories that they'd have to constrain into a time slot.
Students would have to decide which stories to keep or cut and how much information in each
story to
include. You could also have students look at the various arrangements of stories and headlines
on the front page of papers from around the world using the Newseum site:
http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/
Then, ask students to create a front page with numerous stories but limited space. Both of these
activities could be great lessons on appealing to an audience as well (have them think about who
reads the paper and watches the show), and could lead to a great discussion about what makes
the news and what doesn't, and why.
Amy Gustafson and Kathy Connors
There is a 1994 "Dateline" that covers a story called "Dying to Win." This program focuses on a
gymnast that had anorexia and ended up dying because she could not get help or help herself.
We would have the students watch this video and fill out a complimentary worksheet. What the
students would be looking for is bias. They would have to find bias in many different areas of the
documentary. This can be done with just about any documentary, by the way.
The students would have to find bias through the use of selection and omission, placement,
headline, photos, captions and camera angles, names and titles, statistics and crowd counts,
source control, and word choice and tone.
We would start off by defining what each of these criteria is. You can find out more about these
at
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/educational/handouts/broadcast_news/bw_bias_in_the_news.cfm
Then, watch the movie once. Have them write down notes while watching the movie. Have them
continue as you are rewinding the film. Watch it a second time so that they get all the details
down.
We would also supplement this with a longer documentary where they completed the same
exercise.
Kari Gladen and Katie Schultz
Students could do a longer (about 1-2 weeks) TV news media project focusing on a specific, ongoing news story (like the war in Iraq, the economy, unemployment rate, rising gas prices, etc.).
As a class we would choose a news story to study. The students would be split into small groups
and each group would sign up for a different news carrying station (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC,
NBC, ABC, CBS). They would then watch over a period of time to see how their chosen story is
presented by their TV station. As a part of each group project, we would ask the students to
watch for and keep a log of any attention-grabbing, sensationalist headlines they see that might
be bias toward a certain individual or group of people. In their journals the groups could also
report on what the headlines are, how consistent/accurate they appear to be in relation to the
actual story that they are covering, and the length and depth of the story’s coverage (especially
on TV). At the beginning of each class period we could have each group report what they
observed on their channel the day before. At the end of the project, we would have each group
analyze and report their complete findings to the class as a large group, discuss any differences,
and then have the students vote on which station they felt provided the most reliable and
complete reports on the issues, and which station they would trust the most if a broadcast were to
be aired about a news story related to their school or personal lives.
Katrina Thomson and Jennie Viland
We would tape a couple of morning news shows like Good Morning America and The Today
Show and then view them with students in class. Students would be provided with a guide for
viewing that they could fill in as they watch. They would then analyze the news coverage in
them according to the 7 S's of media analysis. We could also do the same kind of analysis of an
evening news show, or even CNN and then have them compare the different "genres" of news
and how they are targeted at different audiences.
Erin Warren and Erin Grahmann
Our idea is simply to have the students produce a complete newscast for class. Students could be
grouped and assigned beats: top stories, human interest, sports, entertainment, weather, etc. You
get the idea. The ultimate objective is to create class news to be taped and broadcast. Learn by
doing. As the teacher, you get to be the head mogul of your very own communications company
if you so choose; me, I'll be the shadowy string-puller shy of cameras and unnecessary media
attention.