Blog #12

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

Neil Postman, social critic, as a result of developments in media technology, society has develop an “information glut” that transforms news and information into “a form of garbage.” He believed that scientists, technicians, managers and journalists pile up mountains of new data, which add to the problems and anxieties of everyday life. Related problem suggests that the amount of data the media now provide has questionable impact on improving public and political life. Many people feel cut off from our major institutions, including journalism. Some citizens are looking to take part in public conversations and civic debates to renew a democracy in which many voices participate.

·       What is news?

The definition of news is 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.

Journalists generally believe that they are or should be neutral observers who present facts without passing judgment on them, conventions such as the inverted-pyramid news lead, the careful attribution of sources, the minimal use of adverbs and adjectives, and a detached third-person point of view all help reporters perform their work in an apparently neutral way. Many modern journalists believe that their credibility derives from personal detachment, yet the roots of this view reside in less noble territory. By reaching as many people as possible across a wide spectrum, publishers and editors realized as early as the 1840s that softening their partisanship might boost sales. Today’s media marketplace offers a fragmented world where appealing to the widest audience no longer makes the best economic sense. The old “mass” audience has morphed into smaller niche audiences who embrace particular hobbies, storytelling, and politic. Partisanship has become good business, muting political learning’s to reach a mass audience makes no sense when such audience no longer exists in the way it once did, especially as in the days when only three major TV networks offered even news for one-half hour, once a day. There is a decline of a more neutral journalistic model that promoted fact-gathering, documents, and expertise, and that held up “objectivity” as the ideal for news practice. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel called the partisan news “journalism of assertion” marked by return to journalism’s colonial roots and partly by the downsizing of the “journalism of verification.” It is symbolized by the rise of the cable news pundit on Fox News or MSNBC as a kind of “expert” with more standing than verified facts. The new partisan fervor found in news, both online and on cable, has been a major catalyst for the nation’s intense political and ideological divide.

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

Journalists continue to use disguises and assume false identities to gather information on social transgressions. Absolutist ethics suggests that a moral society has laws and codes, including honesty, that everyone must live by. This means citizens, including members of the news media, should tell the truth at all times and in all cases. Situational ethics promotes ethical decisions on a case-by-case basis. Many sources and witnesses are reluctant to talk with journalists, especially about a sensitive subject that might jeopardize a job or hurt another person’s reputation. Most newsrooms frown on such deception, such a practice might be condoned if reporters and their editors believed that the public needed information. The ethics code adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists is silent on issues of deception, the code “requires journalists to perform with intelligence, objectivity, accuracy, and fairness,” but it also says that “truth is our ultimate goal.” Journalists routinely straddle a line between the publics right to know and a persons right to privacy, journalists worry that if they don’t get the quote, a competitor might. Journalists invoke the publics right to know as justification for many types of stories. In the digital age, when reporters can gain access to private e-mails, twitter accounts, and facebook pages as well as voice mail, these practices raise serious questions about how far a reporter should go for information. Media companies and journalists should always ask the question: what public good is being served here?, in the case of privacy issues. Journalisms code of ethics clashes with another part of the code: “The publics right to know of events of public importance and interest is the overriding mission of the mass media.”

·       Why is getting a story first important to reporters?

Reporters often learn to evade authority figures to secure a story ahead of the competition. The photographer’s recollection points to the important role journalism plays in calling public attention to serious events and issues. Journalistic scoops and exclusive stories attempt to portray reporters in a heroic light, they have won a race for facts. The 24/7 cable news, the Internet, and bloggers have intensified the race for getting a story first. The mainstream news often feels more pressure to lure an audience with exclusive, and sometimes sensational stories. The earliest reports are not necessarily better, more accurate, or as complete as stories written later with more context and perspective. Herd journalism is defined as when reporters stake out a house, chase celebrities in packs, or follow a story in such herds that the entire profession comes under attack for invading people’s privacy, exploiting their personal problems or just plain getting the story wrong.

·       What are the connections between so-called neutral journalism and economics?

The connections between so-called neutral journalism and economics is that they transform events into stories. They are still trying to keep the neutral mind set and not passing judgment.

·       Why have reporters become so dependent on experts?

Relying on outside sources has made reporters heavily dependent on experts. Reporters are not typically allowed to display their expertise overtly. The widening gap between those with expertise and those without it has created a need for public mediators. With their access to experts, reporters transform specialized and insider knowledge into the everyday commonsense language of news stories. Reporters also frequently use experts to create narrative conflict by pitting a series of quotes against one another, or on occasion use experts to support a particular position. The use of experts enables journalists to distance themselves from daily experience; they are able to attribute the responsibility for the events or issues reported in a story to those who are quoted. Journalists must make direct contact with a source by phone or e-mail or in person. Expert sources have historically been predominantly white and male. The late 1990s, journalists were criticized for blurring the line between remaining neutral and being an expert.

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

Balance means presenting all sides of an issue without appearing to favor any one position. Time and space constraints do not always permit representing all sides: in practice this value has often been reduced to “telling both sides of a story.” Reporters often misrepresent the complexity of social issues. Balance becomes a narrative device to generate story conflict. Many journalists claim to be detached, they often stake out a moderate or middle-of-the-road position between the two sides represented in a story. In claiming neutrality and inviting readers to share their detached point of view, journalists offer a distant, third-person, all-knowing point of view, enhancing the impression of neutrality by making the reporter appear value-free. Balanced stories like the claim for neutrality, disguises journalisms narrative functions. When reporters choose quotes for a story, these are usually the most dramatic or conflict-oriented words that emerge from an interview, press conference, or public meeting. The balance claim has also served the financial interests of modern news organizations that stake out the middle ground.

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

Broadcast news is driven by its technology, if camera crew and news vans are dispatched to a remote location for a live broadcast, reporters are expected to justify the expense by developing a story, even if nothing significant is occurring. Print reporters, slide their notebooks or laptops back into their bags and report on a story when it occurs, with print reporters now posting regular online updates to their stories, they offer the same immediacy that live television news does. The online version of a story is often posted before the newspaper or TV version appears. While print editors cut stories to fit the physical space around ads, TV news directors have to time stories to fit between commercials. TV ads, take up less than 25 percent, generally seem more intrusive to viewers, perhaps because TV ads take up time rather than space. While modern print journalists are expected to be detached, TV news derives it credibility from live, on-the-spot reporting; believable imagery, and viewers’ trust in the reporters and anchors. Since the early 1970s annual polls have indicated that the majority of viewers find television news a more credible resource than print news. Viewers tend to feel a personal regard for the local and national anchors who appear each evening on TV sets in their living rooms.

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

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 is considered news. It is expensive to dispatch reporters to document 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. Cable channels have built their evening programs along partisans lines and follow the model of journalism as opinion and assertion: Fox News goes right with pundit stars like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Today’s cable and Internet audiences seem to prefer partisan “talking heads” over traditional reporting, this suggests that in todays fragmented media marketplace, going after niche audiences along political lines is smart business-although not necessarily good journalism. On cable and online, are highly partisan pundits who may have strong opinions and charisma but who may not have all their facts straight.

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

Online news has added new dimensions to journalism, from mainstream print and TV reporters and editors. Both print and TV news can continually update breaking stories online, and many reports now post their online stories first and then work on traditional ones. This means that viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning paper are for the local evening newscast for important stories. To enhance the online reports, which do not have the time or space constraints of television or print, newspaper reporters increasingly are required to provide video or audio for their 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. Print reporters can do e-mail interviews rather than leaving the office to question a subject in person.

·       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 opinion, these shows, The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, use humor to critique the news media and our political system. The Colbert Report satirizes cable “star” news hosts, and the bombastic opinion-asserted culture promoted by their programs. Parodies the narrative conventions of evening news programs, the clipped eight-second “sound bite” that limits meaning and the formulaic shot of the TV news “stand up” which depicts reporters on location attempting to establish credibility by revealing that they were really there. On the Daily Show, a cast of fake reporters are digitally superimposed in front of exotic foreign locales. Steward exposes the melodrama of TV news that nightly depicts the world in various stages of disorder while offering the stalwart, comforting presence of celebrity-anchors overseeing it all from their high-tech command centers. With fake anchors, Stewart displays a much greater range of emotion a range that could match our own than we get from our “hard news” anchors. Newscasts still limit reporters stories to two minutes or less and promote stylish anchors, a sports guy, and a certified meteorologist as familiar personalities whom we invite into our homes each evening. Journalism needs to break free from tired formulas.