The Culture of Journalism ch. 14

• What are the drawbacks of the informational mode of journalism?

First, we many just be producing too much information. Postmen believe that scientists, technicians, managers, and journalists merely pile up mountains of new data, which add to the problems and anxieties of everyday life. A second related problem suggests that the amount of data the media now provide has questionable impact on improving public and political life.

• What is news?

News is defines as the process of gathering information and making narrative reports – edited by individuals for news organizations – that offer selected frames of reference; within those frames, news helps the public make sense of important events, political issues, cultural trends, prominent people, and unusual happenings in everyday life.

• Explain the values shift in journalism today from a more detached or neutral model to a more partisan or assertion model.

Even though journalists transform events into stories, they generally believe that they are – or should be – neutral observers who present facts without passing judgment on them. News media outlets that hope to survive no longer appeal to mass audiences but to interest groups – from sports fans and history buffs to conservatives or liberals. Partisanship has become good business.

• How do issues such as deception and privacy present ethical problems for journalists?

Even today, journalists continue to use disguises and assume false identities to gather information on social transgression. In terms of ethics, there are at least two major positions and multiple variations. First, absolutist ethics suggest that a moral society has laws and codes, including honestly, that everyone must live by. In other words, the ends of exposing a phony clinic never justify the means of using deception to get the story. At the other end of the spectrum is situational ethics, which promotes ethical decisions on a case-by-case basis. If a greater public good could be served by using deceit, journalists and editors who believe in situational ethics would sanction deception as a practice.  

• Why is getting a story first important to reporters?

Reporters often learn to evade authority figures to secure a story ahead of the competition. There is an important role journalisms play in calling public attention to serious events and issues. It is not important for stations to run self-promotions about how they beat competitors to a story. Journalistic scoops and exclusive stories attempts to portray reporters in a heroic light: they have won a race for facts, which they have gathered and presented ahead of their rivals. With a fragmented audience and more media competition for news, the mainstream news often feels more pressure to lure an audience with exclusive and sometimes sensational stories.

• Why have reporters become so dependent on experts?

A ritual of modern journalism – relying on outside sources – has made reporters heavily dependent on experts. Today, the widening gap between those with expertise and those without it has created a need for public mediators. Reporters have assumed this role as surrogates who represent both leaders’ and readers’ interests. With their access to experts, reports transform specialized and insider knowledge into the everyday commonsense language of news stories.

• Why do many conventional journalists (and citizens) believe firmly in the idea that there are two sides to every story?

The quest for balance presents problems for journalists. In recounting news stories as two-sided dramas, reporters often misrepresent the complexity of social issues. People whose views fall somewhere between positions are seldom represented. In this manner, “balance” becomes a narrative device to generate story conflict. In claiming neutrality and inviting readers to share their detached point of view, journalists offer a distant, third-person all-knowing point of view, a narrative device that many novelists use as well enhancing the impression of neutrality by making the reporter appear value free or value less.

• How is credibility established in TV news as compared with print journalism?

While modern print journalists are expected to be detached, TV news derives its credibility from live, on-the-spot reporting; believable imagery; and viewers’ trust in the reporters and anchors. Viewers tend to feel a personal regard for the local and national anchors who appear each evening on the TV sets in the living room. The three top news outlets with the highest “positive” rating from those polled were “Local TV news”, 60 Minutes, and ABC news.     

• What roles are pundits now playing in 24/7 cable news?

Prior to cable news (and the internet), most people turned on their local and national news late in the afternoon of evening on a typical weekday, with each program lasting just thirty minutes. But today, the 24/7 news cycle means that we can get TV news anytime, day or night, and constant news content has led to major changes in what we consider news. Because it is expensive to dispatch reporters to documents stories or maintain foreign news bureaus to cover international issues, the much less expensive “talking head” pundit has become a standard for cable news channels. Such a programming strategy requires few resources beyond the studio and a few guests.

• In what ways has the Internet influenced traditional forms of journalism?

Both print and TV can continuously update breaking stories online, and many reporters now post their online stories first and then work on traditional versions. This means that readers and viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning paper or for the local evening newscast for important stories. This might allow readers and viewers to see full interviews rather than just selected print quotes in the paper or short sound bites on the TV report.

• What role do satirical news programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report play in the world of journalism?

News satires tell their audiences something that seems truthful about politicians and how they try to manipulate media and public opinions. But most important, these shows use humor to critique the news media and our political system. For example: SNL’s sketches on GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008 drew large audiences and shaped the way younger viewers thought about the election.

Media Economics and the Global Marketplace ch. 13

1.       How are the three basics structures of mass media organizations – monopoly, oligopoly, and limited competition – differ from one another?

 

A monopoly occurs when a single firm dominates production and distribution in a particular industry, either nationally or locally. On the local level, monopoly situations have been more plentiful, occurring in any city that has only one newspaper or one cable company, however many individual local media monopolies have been purchased by national and international firms. In an oligopoly, just a few forms dominate an industry. For example, book-publishing and feature-film businesses are both oligopolies. Sometimes called monopolistic competition, limited competition characterizes a media market with many producers and sellers but only a few products within a particular category.

 

2.       What are some of society’s key expectations of its media organizations?

 

Some key expectations of media organizations include introducing new technologies to the market place, making media products and services available to people of all economic classes, facilitating free expression and robust political discussion, acting as public watchdogs over wrongdoing, monitoring society in times of crisis, playing a positive role in education, and maintaining the quality of culture.

 

3.       Why has the federal government emphasized deregulation at a time when so many media companies are growing so large?

 

Although the administration of President Carter actually initiated deregulation, under President Reagan most controls on business were drastically weekend. Deregulation led to easier mergers, corporate diversifications, and increased tendencies in some sectors toward oligopolies (especially in airlines, energy, communications, and finance).

 

4.       How do global and specialized markets factor into the new media economy? How are regular workers affected?

 

The new globalism coincided with the rise of specialization. Beyond specialization, what really distinguishes current media economics is the extension of synergy to international levels. This typically refers to the promotion and sales of different versions of a media product across the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate. Regular workers were affected by finally being able to afford what they could not before.

 

5.       Using Disney as an example, what is the role of synergy in the current climate of media mergers?

 

Disney came to epitomize the synergistic possibilities of media consolidation. It can produce an animated feature for both theatrical release and DVD distribution. With its ABC network, it can promote Disney movies and television shows on programs like Good Morning America. A book version can be released through Disney’s publishing arms, Hyperion, and “the-making-of” versions can appear on cable’s Disney Channel of ABC Family. Characters can become attractions and Disney’s theme parks, which themselves have spawned Hollywood movies such as the lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.   

 

6.       Why have Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft emerges as the leading corporations of the digital era?

 

Each company has become powerful for different reasons. Amazon’s entrée is that it has grown into the largest e-commerce site in the world, shifting to distributing more digital products. Apple’s strength has been creating the technology and the infrastructure to bring any media content to user’s fingertips. Facebook’s strength has been the ability to become central to communication and social media. Google draws its huge numbers of users through its search function, has much more successfully translated those users into an advertising business. Microsoft is making the transition from being the top software company to competing in the digital media world with its being search engine and successful devices.

 

7.       What is cultural imperialism, and what does it have to do with the United States?

 

Cultural imperialism is a process where American styles in fashion and food, as well as media fare dominate the global market. Today, many international observers contend that the idea of consumer control or input is even more remote in countries inundated by American movies, music, television, and images of beauty. For example, consumer product giant Unilever sells Dove soap with its “Campaign for Real Beauty” in the United States, but markets Fair & Lovely products – a skin-lightener line – to poor women in India.

 

8.       What do critics and activists fear most about the concentration of media ownership? How do media managers and executives respond to these fears?

 

The pressing concern is the impact of mergers on news operations, particularly the influence of large corporations on their news subsidiaries. Because of the growing consolidation of mass media, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain a public debate on economic issues. Media reform groups are forming usually united by geographic ties, common political backgrounds, or shared concerns about the state of the media.