The Primary Roles of Journalism - Essay Example

News is what journalists and the media they work for say it is. Is this a fair assessment' Illustrate your answers with cogent examples: Only a few news stories get picked for publication/broadcast among numerous other pieces competing for the same space/time. The journalists in charge of deciding the news content are subject to personal biases, external coercions (both implicit and explicit) and other constraints that influence their decision making. For these reasons, there are only a minority of journalists who adhere to standards of objectivity and professional integrity, while the rest succumb to various pressures consciously or otherwise. This decline in journalistic ethos is seen across geo-political entities and cultures, making it a cause of concern for all. The primary roles of Journalism are to inform and educate the general public about domestic and international political developments. Apart from this prime role, the news media is also expected to serve as a dissenting voice against excesses of power. In other words, in an ideal world the press would act as faithful servants to the general public, earnestly endeavouring to inform and educate them. But the state of media in contemporary society is far from ideal, which is reflected in the news product (TV news programme or newspaper) as well as the processes involved in making the product (including editorial policy, government censorship, advertiser pressure, etc). Instead of the media framework being set by democratic mechanisms from the bottom-up, we actually have a system that is directed by corporate interests. It is no surprise then that the general public is increasingly growing sceptical of the motives that decide editorial frameworks. The rest of this essay will cite salient examples from scholarly journals supporting the assessment that "News is what journalists and the media they work for say it is" and that its content is selected and composed to represent the interests and ideologies of a small ruling elite, thereby making the large majority of its consumers helpless spectators (Chang, 1998). The news media, here in the UK and elsewhere in the world is predominantly "advertiser supported". In such media, it is imperative that the broadcasted programme maintains a positive audience flow. This is done by maximizing the lead-in effects of national programming to local news. Promotional audio-visual clips to endorse the "quality of the local newscast has been used commonly to enhance this lead-in effect". But accepted norms of journalism are breached when this practice is commercially exploited by some stations. The American Broadcasting Corporation, located in New York, for instance, created such a news item almost on a daily basis, and the story was featured and advertised in advance to attract viewers into the channel's news. Part of the carry-over process involved news teasers, "which were inserted in the commercial breaks of the lead-in program. These teasers were usually presented in visual form and related to the topics discussed in the program to highlight the relevance between the program and the local newscasts. For example, if teenage pregnancy was the topic of the show preceding the newscast, a news story about the local teen pregnancy problem would be featured in the local newscast, and a news teaser containing a visual clip from the news story (emphasizing connections between the show topic and the news story) would be used to promote the local newscast". (Chang, 1998) Where contemporary journalistic practices such as news teasers fail is in fulfilling the stated objective of the institution of journalism, namely to inform and educate citizens. The aforementioned news teasers serve to sustain audience interest, but they don't guarantee "learning or retention of the information". These by-products of commercial, advertiser supported newscasts - news teasers - mislead the audience and give them false perspectives on what is important and what is not. Coming back to the thesis of this essay, these attention sustaining mechanisms do indicate that promoting consumer culture takes precedence over ethical journalistic practices. And it further reinforces the claim that "news is what journalists and the media they work for say it is". And since television has become the leading source of news for most people, it is imperative that such practices as news teasers are abandoned for more comprehensive and relevant offering of news content (Keum, 2003). In recent decades, researchers and media analysts have studied the differences in emotional and cognitive effects that different media such as television and print elicit from the audience. Just as "news teasers" are incorporated into the news casts for benefiting commercial sponsors, the potential of the news media to affect the emotional and cognitive responses of viewers/readers can be exploited by government agencies for purposes of political propaganda. In this context, two key theoretical premises form the basis of research in this area. The first is "Medium Theory," which "assumes that differences in the formal features of electronic and print media--such as motion, combination of audio and visual tracks, and "live performance" of newsmakers on television--lead to different emotional and cognitive reactions" (Keum, 2003). The other is rooted in socio-cultural studies of televised media events, suggesting that the electronic medium's adoption of broadcasting practices that juxtapose breaking news reports with dramatic video footage would result in collective experiences of politically important news events that are decidedly different from the experiences related to the traditional medium of print. A case in point is the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The coverage of the terrorist attacks universally dramatic and emotionally evocative for an extended period of time, and saturated all mainstream media outlets. A broad-based survey by the politically independent Pew Research Centre indicates that the coverage had elicited intense and wide-ranging emotional reactions to the event. Moreover, some data have shown "that the media coverage of the attacks has been decidedly one-sided in presenting the nation, in unison, condemning the terror attacks and coping with the collective trauma" (Chang, 1998). Needless to say, the mainstream media's coverage is favourable to the vested interests in Washington D.C. For example, "Television coverage of the terrorist attacks, comprised of the networks' 90-hour-plus non-stop coverage, the repeated showing of horrific images and citizens' reactions, and news anchors' controlled but clearly visible displays of emotions as "Americans". Research has provided evidence that in terms of covering events such as terrorist attacks, television news tends to focus on stories about specific acts excluding related historical, economic, or social context. For news coverage of terrorism, episodic reports outnumbered thematic reports by a ratio of three to one". (Keum, 2003) With the introduction of a new variety of journalism through the television medium, the print medium has inadvertently improved in terms of quality and depth. For instance, newspapers, at least the leading ones, are concentrating more on providing in-depth, analytical coverage on current issues, a practice that has come to be called the "new long journalism". A typical example of this progress in the print media is the New York Times' coverage of the terror attacks. While the overall quality of content has improved in the print medium, the new avenue of journalism opened up by television has failed to meet its original objectives. Television, with its "combination of audio and visual tracks, its apparent real-life tempo, its nonlinear juxtaposition of video images taken at different times and locales, and so on, interacts with human senses in a unique way. It is thus capable of producing its own forms of thinking and communicating" (Chang, 1998). But, unfortunately, this has been misappropriated by corporate interests and government propagandists to promote their own narrow elitist agenda. In other words, the television news media does strengthen the assessment that "news is what journalists and the media they work for say it is", through the evidence presented by its one-sided, biased and politically angled news content. Further on the theoretical side, new perspective on journalistic practices is offered by such concepts as Communitarian Journalism. What follows is a discussion of its implications for press theory and practice. The term and concept of 'communitarianism' has appeared regularly in recent discourses on the subjects of political theory, social philosophy and press theory. Scholarship in the recent decade is not conclusive about the philosophical and ideological bearings of the concept, for it has been mentioned "in connection with a variety of perspectives ranging from Marxism to views sympathetic to the classical liberal tradition" (Sellers, 2006). Nevertheless, further analysis of this abstract and theoretical concept is relevant for this essay, for communitarian journalism represents a radical philosophical deviation from conventional liberalism-based notions of the role of the press in civil society (Keum, 2003). The significance of studying Communitarian Journalism arises from the fact that the journalistic enterprise, irrespective of the medium of transmission of news caters to two social entities at the same time, namely the individual citizen and his/her community at large. In other words, 'communistarianism' as a concept relevant to the theory of the press is based on "the view that liberalism does not sufficiently take into account the importance of community for personal identity, moral and political thinking, and judgments about our well-being in the contemporary world" (Craig, 1996). Given that the contemporary United Kingdom is a liberal society in many respects, the dynamics between the individual and the community plays a crucial role in deciding the quality of journalism in the country. In the United States of America, which is decidedly more liberal than the UK, "individualism" is promoted and celebrated by politicians and the media. They see individualism as lying at the core of the American identity. In this context, how balanced is the press in catering to the needs of individual identity and the larger community' This question has direct relevance for the topic of this essay, for the success of the press in balancing these twin needs would ultimately decide the quality and standards of newscasts and news reports. Consistent with the observation by John Locke, the individual human being in the twenty first century lives in a cultured centred on him/her. This autonomous citizen has the power to make "commitments based on the criterion of life effectiveness as the individual judges it" (Craig, 1996). Yet individuals living by this code of conduct are neither able to sustain private or public lives. "Indeed, only greater citizen participation in the large structures of the economy and the state will enable civil society to surmount the deepening problems of contemporary social life. In light of this fact, the consumers of news need to understand how much of their lives is lived in and through institutions and how better institutions are essential if they are to lead better lives. They held out hope that more effective thinking about institutions can help in addressing both social problems and problems of emptiness and meaninglessness in our personal lives, and help cultivate the good society they seek". (Craig, 1996) Hence, in conclusion, the stated thesis of this analytic essay does prove to be correct, namely that the news media, especially television, has lost credibility among the general population. For the citizens to regain the media, alternative forms such as "listener supported" online news portals should be encouraged. Also, the public airwaves should be opened up for community radio, which has a proven track record of promulgating democratic principles. It is a shame that media houses such as Al Jazeera, based in the Middle East are far ahead of its counterparts in the West, in terms of neutrality, objectivity and fairness. This situation calls for urgent and effective remedy (Sellers, 2006). References Chang, H. (1998). The Effect of News Teasers in Processing TV News. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 42(3), 327+. M. P., Keum, Cho, J., Boyle, H., Shevy, M. D., Mcleod, D. M., Shah, D. V., et al. (2003). Media, Terrorism, and Emotionality: Emotional Differences in Media Content and Public Reactions to the September 11th Terrorist Attacks. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47(3), 309+. Craig, D. A. (1996). Communitarian Journalism(S): Clearing Conceptual Landscapes. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 11(2), 107-118. Sellers, F. S. (2006, October/November). Embracing Change: British Dailies Are Trying a Variety of New Approaches in an Effort to Survive and Thrive in a New Media Landscape. Are There Lessons Here for U.S. Papers'. American Journalism Review, 28, 54+. Read More