Lecture Reflections: Lecture 10 (Week 11)

Agenda Setting

Within news values we have looked at models that dictate what news is in the public interest. Now we look at the model that decides how the news agenda is set and how this somewhat manages public perception of topics and events. 

Agenda setting is a theory that alludes to how the media constructs and mediates reality. In other words, our social perception of what is important and relevant in the world today is likely a perception that has been moulded according to the agenda mass media has set.

There are four main agendas within the agenda setting theory, and they are as follows:

1.       Public Agenda - Topics that the public perceive as important.

2.       Policy Agenda: Issues that the decision makers think are salient. 

3.       Corporate agenda: Issues that big business and corporations consider important (linked to advertising).

4.       Media Agenda: Issues discussed in the media as important.

And these agendas are all interrelated. 

This theory in itself is fairly obvious and many of us are aware of different agendas shown through the news with events that receive more coverage than others. This is often a characteristic remarked upon when looking at the difference in coverage on commercial media programs and public media programs; it shows what each form of media considers important. 

Some people often criticise this model suggesting that it narrows public perception or that it is a powerful tool that can be used the wrong way. It is true that the mass media not only reflect and report reality, but also filter and shape it. This can be put down to the necessity that not every event can be reported, or covered thoroughly at least, therefore the news must be culled and filtered to fit public interest. 

So why can this be a powerful or dangerous tool? The origins of the Agenda Setting theory stem from the Hypodermic Needle Model, also known as the magic bullet theory, created by Harold Lasswell in 1920.  This model proposes that “the mass media ‘injects’ direct influence into the audience” by way of reporting a topic from a preconceived standpoint.

This suggests that the notion of free thinking is not as ‘free’ as assumed by many and when used to its most controlled and conditioned potential, this model makes for very influential propaganda. 

  

A forward thinker of his time and theorist Walter Lippmann suggested that the mass media joins us all together in our thinking through creating pictures in our minds. He theorises that depending on the news value a story uses, for example terrorism, we have a consequential picture painted for us, perhaps one of violence and danger, which draws a linear type of thinking from the public. 

To counteract this conditioned thinking, Lippmann came up with the concept of

 regaining an innocent eye

whereby the audience keeps an open mind and heart, questions the perceptions we are fed and critically thinks rather than relying on the pictures and thoughts created for us.

Media agenda setting influences almost every kind of interaction society has with elite or higher powers. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw proved this when interviewing 100 undecided voters during the 1968 Presidential Campaign in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. McCombs and Shaw questioned voters on the key issues of the campaign and compared that to what the mass media had been giving prominence to in the news. The research showed that the issues the news media had considered news worthy and important, were the issues that the voters considered of high importance, therefore affecting the policy and campaign of the Presidential candidates. This shows the direct influence the media can have on the public agenda. 

There are two primary types of agenda setting. The first level of agenda setting dictates that: 

The media suggests what the public should focus on through coverage. Study of this level looks at the emphasis of the major issues and the transfer of salience of those issues. 

The second level of agenda setting theory states that:

The media suggests HOW a person should think about an issue and looks at how the media does this by focusing on attributes of an issue. 

  

When looking at what agenda setting does, we can see it at work within the social realms but also within media realms as well. On the societal level, agenda setting transfers issues of salience from the news media to the public. It also transfers issues of salience of other objects and people, for example political figures. When at work in the media, particularly in relation to the fall of print media, elite media organisations set the agenda for issues in other media. An example is the Media Reporting in action at the New York Times that is documented in the film Page One: Inside The New York Times (Andrew Rossi 2010).   

McCombs acknowledges in his work that often times agenda setting is not always a “diabolical plan to control the minds of the public” and rather the by-product of having too much news to report. Bernard Coen somewhat concurs with McCombs that the media may not always be successful in telling the public how to think but “they are stunningly successful at telling the public what to think about.” 

However a reoccurring issue in my learning about how the media interacts with the public is that we are not victims or even innocent bystanders, rather we play a rather large role in directing the news ourselves by where our computer mouse chooses to click.

Within this theory there is an agenda setting family that works to clarify the dynamics of agenda setting.

 The Agenda Setting Family:

  

1.       Media Gatekeeping:

Looks at how individuals control the flow of messages through a communication channel. This involves the way an issues is covered, and what the media chooses to reveal. 

2.       Media Advocacy: 

The purposive promotion of an important message, for example a message about health that is advocated for through the media.

3.       Agenda Cutting: 

Looks at how most of the truth or reality that is going on in the world, is not represented in the daily news, because it doesn’t rate on the public agenda as important or entertaining. 

4.       Agenda Surfing  (also known as the Bandwagon effect)

This looks at how the media follows crowd trends, where opinion on a topic may start in the public discussion media and then get picked up by other media groups as important. 

5.       The diffusion of News: 

The diffusion of news is how an important event is communicated to the public. It looks at how, when and where news is released.

6.       Portrayal of an Issue:

This looks at how an issue is portrayed in the media and states that the way an issue is portrayed, can influence how the public thinks about it. 

A point to note within the notion of different portrayals of an issue is that images can be used in a very powerful way to evoke different responses from the public, according to how they relate to the image. An example could be the Australian public opinion towards asylum seekers and, when influenced by media agenda and political agenda, how a positive or negative perception is spread through the public.

A family who have sought Asylum in Australia

A group of 'boat people' seeking asylum in Australia

Powers and strengths of the agenda setting theory: 

1.     Explanatory power

2.     Predictive power

3.     Organizing power

4.     Can be proven false ( like any good theory)

5.     Lays the ground work for other research

Weaknesses of agenda setting: 

1.     People who are well informed cannot be as easily swayed

2.     News cannot create and conceal problems

3.     People are not always ideally interested in what the news Is reporting and take a more casual approach to their perception of issues

Agenda setting is now changing dramatically because of the change in how we take in our media and our news. With the implementation of 24 hour news cycles, the media now have to ability to report on more events, however agenda setting is still in place in relation to what receives the most coverage.  It is also being transformed with the revolution of new journalists who use a smaller team of people and are more versatile and able to report news fast.

Lecture Reflections: Lecture 9

Lecture 9: News Values

 

“News values are one of the most opaque structures of meaning in modern society … Journalists speak of ‘the news’ as if events select themselves … Yet of the millions of events which occur daily in the world, only a tiny proportion ever become visible as ‘potential news stories’; and of this proportion, only a small fraction are actually produced as the day’s news …”

 

Stuart Hall 1973

 

So who and what decides which events become the news?

 

Are there defining news values that are universal, or are they specific to culture, audience and outlet?     

 

The concept of news values is dynamic, the values change according to the importance or insignificance of factors that relate to society and the world today. However there are some universal traits within journalism and communication that determine the degree of prominence a story is give in the daily news. Dr Redman asked us to step back for a minute and consider what a day’s news report or front page of a newspaper might look like if the popular news values (that measure an events newsworthiness) were not fulfilled. The news pyramid that directs the reader’s attention would cave in on itself as the most news worthy story would flop dismally. Following Galtung and Ruge’s three hypothesis theory and the exclusion hypothesis, “events that satisfy none of very few of the (news worthiness) factors will not usually become news.”

News Values Defined: Guidelines that decide news worthiness and prominence.

Impact: A news story that is going to have a high impact on a large amount of people. “News is anything that makes the reader say ‘Gee Whiz!’.” 

Audience Identification: A news story that relates to your audience, therefore appropriate to their culture, interests, location, or world news of high interest. 

Pragmatics: A news story that is practical in a reporting sense and often relates to current affairs; a story that doesn’t compromise any news ethics. 

Source Influence: the degree of influence other sources have had on the facticity of the story, the truth, how accessible a story is or how much spin is put into a story. An example of this struggle between reporting truth and source influence is the relationship between journalism and public relations. 

Other general rules within the industry, that are not necessary learned but become instinctive, are “if it bleed it leads” or “if its local it leads”. Stories that feature accidents, death, disasters and danger will lead the headlines; events such as this satisfy news factors such as negativity (bad news) and drama. These are the events that relate well to audience interest but are also stories that conflict with news ethics. This would call for consideration of how a journalist presents a story so as to fulfill these news values but also conform to ethical news reporting.  

Promotions within commercial media focus heavily on local stories and use this news value to draw in their audience by making their local community “the news, seen first on channel nine” for example. This spin on a story satisfies factors like proximity and relevance. 

When looking at how news worthiness is determined in a journalism environment, key qualities that direct this decision making are not always solely the qualities of a journalist.

“A sense of news values” is the first quality of editors – they are the “human sieves of the torrent of news”, even more important even than an ability to write or a command of language.”

Harold Evans -Editor of The Sunday Times 1967 to 1981

As evens says ‘a sense of news values’ is essential to deciding what runs as the news on any given day, he also speaks of the importance of the ‘College of Osmosis’, a concept that works around the practical learning in an industry environment to nurture the instinctive skills or ‘sense’ that direct a journalist’s decision of how to present a story.

The news values acknowledged by editors, journalists and PR personnel alike, can be conformed to a list of a dozen common factors. However, with our ever changing world and the changing of culture, what is current and interesting is not always what has traditionally been important or newsworthy. This is the reason so many professionals and academics have theorised these news values with their own interpretation of important news added to this ever expanding list.  Just a few of the foundation values and some of the newly added, and newly appropriate, values can be seen below. 

Some Newsworthiness Factors:

Some classics! 

Negativity (bad news) 

Proximity (Local News or geographically relevant) 

Uniqueness (New news or an unusual event) 

Elitism (stories that follow people, nations or organisations that are of public importance or have a great deal of power/influence) 

Continuity (a story that has been or has the potential to be of public interest for a prolonged period of time, for example the Olympics) 

And some newly relevant factors! 

Visual attractiveness (stories that can be presented in a visually attractive way, appropriate for TV reporting or online news where use of info graphics etc. can be applied) 

Celebrification of the journalist (how much involvement a journalist has in a story, programs such as ‘A Current Affair’ and ’60 Minutes’ use their journalists as a hook for a story) 

Terrorism (the us and them concept slighting altered to feature the underlying fear or scare factor of terrorism following events such as the September 11^th Attack and the 2005 London Bombings)

The Global Financial Crisis (reports of the stock market are now rarely not reinforced by results of the GFC) 

Lecture Reflections: Lecture 8

Lecture 8: Ethics 

When we think about what guides us morally in our personal life, there are many factors that direct us to right and wrong. Fear of consequence, rationality, instinctive reactions and so on can all affect our decision making. Some people may see an angel or devil sitting on their shoulders or have a Jiminy Cricket character showing them the way, but what happens when our professional duty comes into play in the journalism and communication world where the “right thing” is not always the way our moral compass is guiding us go. 

Ethics fall into place in journalism and communication to help clarify situations that cross over our own boundaries but will ultimately serve the public’s best interests.  Within the industry there are theories of ethics and codes of practice that draw the lines between professional expectations and right and wrong. Some of these theories are as follows. 

Ethics Theories

 

Deontology

 

Deontology is a theory that practices rule following.  Deontologists say that if there is a rule that says whether something is right or wrong or principles that guide you, you can ultimately do the right thing ethically by following these rules

Consequentialism

 

Consequentialism uses a ‘greater good’ ideology to determine whether something is ethically acceptable.  It focuses on getting a ‘good’ or ‘right’ outcome despite how you might get there as the end justifying the means. Consequentialists say that it is the greatest good for the greatest numbers that matters, therefore if you make a decision solely based on the outcome for the greater good, it comes under consequentialism. 

Virtue Ethics 

 

Virtue ethics follows the Aristotelian system of ethics of Virtues and Vices. This theory works with a person’s own morals and asks of a situation ‘does it align with the type of person I want to be?’ Virtues such as courage, temperance, justice and prudence all go towards forming morally good habits in a person’s character that can then determine what is right and wrong. 

There are certain codes that media professionals subscribe to that provide guidelines to what is considered ethically correct. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance is just one of many codes of ethics provided to journalists. As well as outlining their code of ethics on their website, they provide an excellent statement as to what the professional responsibilities of a journalist are in relation to ethics. 

Media Alliance Code of Ethics 

 

“Respect for truth and the public's right to information are fundamental principles of journalism. Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions, a privileged role. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, suggest and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. Many journalists work in private enterprise, but all have these public responsibilities. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be accountable. Accountability engenders trust. Without trust, journalists do not fulfil their public responsibilities.” 

I find myself questioning not only a person’s individual codes of ethics but also larger corporation’s codes of ethics that can easily fall into conflict with bias and agendas. Advertising and commercial media that is advertising funded often have ethics in communication compromised because of their own best interests rather than the public’s best interests. Many a risqué advert has met controversy or been banned because it may offend or impose upon the public’s morals or ethics. Media watchdogs can keep an eye on the level of compromise made in order to reach out to the public when a topic is considered public interest, but where does public interest end and who decides what comes under this safety blanket?

One example that jumps to mind, although not solely a journalistic or media ethical conundrum, is the Wiki-leaks scandal. The information leaked on the site is claimed to be in the public interest which could be seen as falling under the consequentialism theory of ethics, as the divulging of this information serves the greater good. However this situation also contradicts national interest and national security for countries that had confidential government information made public.  Although moral codes and conscience may have won out for Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, from a media point of view the codes of ethics that other professionals follows were compromised.  This situation highlights that in some cases, codes of ethics do fail as there is some much room for concession in some situations. 

Lecture Reflections: Lecture 7

Public Media

The forms, functions and ideals of public media, make it our ultimate public servant. It walks the line between being a government watch-dog and a public informant and keeps public interests best at heart.  

Over the years public media, namely the ABC, BBC, SBS, and PBS etc. have worked to serve their nations media needs.  In a news program form, it is serious news, considers importance over interest to be of higher value and is considered a trustworthy and validating source of news because it is checked, checked and re-checked.  It also covers other areas of media through social programs like cooking and travel shows and of course leaves room for entertainment that connects to levels of interest that commercial media are to conformist to reach out to. For example the types of comedy featured on ABC are far astray from an American style of humour. 

The most defining characteristic of public media compared to commercial media is of course the money and resources available to each form of media through government or licence funding, and advertising funding.  Although some public media channels have recently taken up advertising as a part of their funding, for example SBS and TVNZ, their core values are also what make them differ from commercial media.

Some Values and characteristics of Public media: 

• An embedded public service ethos.  
• Value for licence fee money (in countries when a television licence is required)
• Weighing public value against market impact
• Public consultation
• Universality of appeal (programs that cater for all tastes and interests)
• Special provision for minorities (for example SBS’s focus on multiculturalism)
• Special relationship to the sense of national identity and community
• Distanced from all vested interests (specifically political bias and endorsement from advertisers)
•  Programs competing for good programming rather than competing for numbers and ratings.

 

However these values are in a constant battle with the challenges that public media faces as they often risk contradiction or compromise to be able to survive. For example, what I consider two of the most important values stated above, to be distanced from all vested interests and to strive for good programming rather than good ratings, are core values that are challenged by commercialisation and funding.  For programs like the ABC who have not and will fight to not have to use advertising to sustain their programs, they are solely funded by the government. From a public point of view we idolise the ABC as a guard of truth and a protector of our public interest as they always keep a watchful eye on the government; as we learnt in our lecture “as long as the government doesn’t like the ABC, it means they are doing their job.”  Unfortunately for the ABC, the government does have a level of say as to how the funding they give to the ABC is allocated and how much that can get. The effect of a small budget at the ABC does limit how well their programs are made and how well they connect to the public. They are for the most part well put together in an informative sense but visual appeal is significantly different to commercial media with a budget that adds ‘sparkle’ to their programs.  This means that, for the ABC, the tightrope between serving the public and investigating there fund giver creates a type of media that has a margin of negative opinion; for example they are sometimes being criticised for being ‘boring’ and ‘out of touch’. 

Mark Scott says “the ABC is not accountable for profit but it is for quality”, a very effective rebuttal to the issues of getting ratings and turning a profit rather than serving their audience and the wider Australian public, the ABC did after all set out to be a “nation building project.” This foundation of the ABC and by extension public media in Australia directly correlates with the functions of public media. 

Some functions of Public Media:

• Nation building
• Connected to our national heritage
• Supports and highlights out national identity      
•  Enables national conversations

These functions differ greatly to the functions of commercial media that are centred on profit and ratings. Although the two forms of media differ greatly in orientation, they both need their varying demographics and audiences.  Public media can manage this issue and keep their audiences by continuing to be diligent in what they broadcast and who or what, if anything, it supports. Most importantly it must keep integrity in the public eye, public media must produce quality content that people want to watch, they must make themselves relevant with what they produce and essentially must engage with the democratic process and be vested in public interest. 

Although some research has shown that through programs that identify politically, through interviews and talkback for example, the ABC in particular seems to be fairly strongly left winged. However, as put by Jeremy Paxton, one can be a political person or have a political interest but is not motivated by a political party and can avoid any associated bias. The ABC drums into its news reporters that there must always be a level playing field where both sides of a story are shown and that ‘personal opinion is as taboo as product placement’.  Ultimately public media, in all its forms and functions, works to serves its central values that therefore serve the public values.