Twelfth Lecture: Page One (Film)

Page One Trailer:

For the lecture today, we watched the documentary Page One. Page One follows a few of the New York Times reporters for a year observing their daily lives in the newspaper industry. Traditional journalism such as newspapers are going bankrupt and jobs are being lost because of the uprising in social media and blogging. However, the New York Times are not going down without a fight. 

The main individuals who are followed is columnist David Carr, editor Bruce Headlam, and social media fanatic Brian Stelter. David Carr is heavily featured in the documentary for being a very interesting character in the business. He comes with a past and doesn't let that stop him from doing what he loves, it is a very inspiring story for people who don't have their lives together. Gives them some hope that maybe they can get out of the gutter and follow their passions too. David Carr is not a big fan of social media such as twitter and blogs; he is an old fashion guy and not ready for the new media era.

It is a very interesting film and I very much recommend it to people who want to know what goes on in traditional journalism or feel they have a career in it. It really opened my eyes to what I want to do in live and that is to make people aware of the world and the people around them. Human beings are a selfish bunch and we tend to only look out for our own. I would like to help and change that.

Eleventh Lecture: Investigative Journalism

“Isn’t all journalism meant to involve questioning investigation of facts and opinions presented to us?” - Ross Coulthart


Investigative Journalism is to discover the truth and where the truth is not being told. To be an investigative journalist, I think one must be:
- Intelligent: think on your feet
- Informed: know the subject your investigating
- Intuitive: go with your gut feeling
- Inside: gather connections and sources on the inside
- Invest: devote all your time to the story


Investigative journalism has a deeper meaning and purpose to it than just getting all the facts. It is about doing critical and thorough job of the story. Investigative journalism exposes the city's immoral behaviours to the society for them to respond. It provides a voice for stories that cannot get the attention they need and make people aware of them and who are responsible for them not being heard.


There seems to be some threats to the future of investigative journalism such as social media. I have been thinking for awhile a career path for myself and am now concerned about taking the path of investigative journalism.




Note: I was ill on day of lecture, no lecture notes were taking. Reason (excuse) for why blog is so short.

 

Tenth Lecture: News Values

"News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as 'newsworthy'." - A Boyd (1994)


News values or newsworthy is the amount of good coverage a media outlet gives a news story. From the amount of coverage it gets, the amount of attention by the audience is effected.
There are four general news values that are guidelines to what makes a good news story. There are as follows:
1. Impact - a good story makes a ready say, "Gee Whiz!'
2. Audience identification - "news is anything that's interesting that relates to what's happening in the world, whats happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to you audience.” -  Kurt Loder (American Journalist)
3. Pragmatics - moral and factual stories, practical current affairs, and everyday stories.
4. Source influence -  “Journalism loves to hate PR … where for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet journalism has never needed PR more and PR has never done a better job for the media.” - Julia Hobsbawm, UK PR executive


The upside down pyramid is at work again for news values: 

The news values 'impact' and 'audience identification' are used very frequently to get the audience's attention. The sayings, 'If it bleeds, it leads" and "If it's local, it leads" and terms for these news values.
There are twelve factors of newsworthiness:
- Negativity
- Closeness to home (Proximity)
- Recency
- Currency
- Continuity
- Uniqueness
- Value
- Description
- Simplicity
- Personality
- Expectedness (Predictability)
- Elite Nations
- Exclusivity
- Size 


It is very interesting to me how media outlets categorise what is newsworthy and what is not. Could we be missing out on some very good awareness news stories just because they don't fit under any of those categories?

Ninth Lecture: Agenda Setting

“The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” - Bernard Cohen (1963) 

Media plays a large role in agenda settings by constructing the social world. The social construction of reality is one's conception of reality constructed through the process of communication.
"Agenda setting is the process of the mass media presenting certain issues frequently and prominently with the result that large segments of the public come to perceive those issues as more important than others. Simply put, the more converge an issue receives, the more important it is to people." - Coleman, McCombs, Shaw, Weaver (2008)
In agenda settings there is four agendas; public agenda, policy agenda, corporate agenda, and media agenda. Public agenda is topics that the public see as being important. Policy agenda is affairs that decision makers, such as legislators, think are important. Corporate agenda releases topics that are only important to big businesses and corporations. Media agenda reports only issues discussed in the media. All four agendas are interrelated:

There is two assumptions that are made about media agenda setting. The first is that mass media filters and shapes what they report about reality. The other is the media only concentrates on a few issues, which leads the public to believe they are more important than other issues.
There is some functions that agenda setting has, called the agenda setting family.
They are as followed:
- Media gatekeeping: when the media chooses to expose an issue to the public, this can be seen on Fox news and NBC news.
- Media advocacy: when a message such as health is promoted through the media.
- Agenda cutting: when some issues are not represented and take the backseat to issues that involve celebrities.
- Agenda surfing: when the media follows stories that have already been covered in opinion-leading media.
-The diffusion of news: is how the media decides how to communicate the release of news. The how, where, when is all very heavily manipulated.
- Portrayal of an issue: the public will perceive an issue a certain way by the way the media portrays it.
- Media Dependence: when a person  becomes dependent upon media for information they become very receptive to media agenda setting. A common media dependency is to Facebook.
I am very addicted to Facebook, but I don't depend upon it for my information about news and politics.


Lecture Nine Readings:


- The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media - Maxwell E. McCombs, Donald L. Shaw
- Agenda Setting - Renita Coleman, Maxwell McCombs, Donal Shaw, David Weaver

Eighth Lecture: Public Media

Public media soul purpose is to serve and engage the public. It used to be known for being associated with being supported by taxpayers, but in recent times even though it may be for profit, the profit goes towards serving the public.
Public media is in support of democratic processes and is not bought like commercial media. According to BBC public media should have "public value". Public value is:
1. Embedding a 'public service ethos.'
2. Value for licence fee money.
3. 'Weighing public value against market impact.'
4. Public consultation such as Twitter.

Some of the major public media companies are:
- Nationally: ABC, ABC radio, SBS, and Triple J

ABC produces the news, kids shows, radio: local, nation, classic; triple J. The shows are mostly dramas, comedies, documentaries, reality television shows, commentary shows, and entertainment.
SBS produces a few different channels (SBS ONE, SBS TWO), SBS radio, world news, shows such as 'Rockwiz', 'Fat Pizza', 'The World Game', and 'Go Back To Where You Came From'. SBS used to be a fully public funded company, but now includes advertising, this i called "hybrid" funding when the company is publicly funded 80% and 20% is advertisement.

- Internationally: BBC, PBS, and TVNZ

Public media has many functions for serving the public. Public media is nation building, it unites all people around the country. It relays our national heritage by broadcasting events such as ANZAC day and producing documentaries about the countries history and natural environment. Public media also functions to show our national identity and national conversations; who we are and sport.
Robert Richter, a director, a producer, and a writer, says public media is important because it is the last bastion of long-form investigative journalism. It "is such a special vehicle for voices to be heard ... [for] visions and viewpoints ... ignored by commercial media."
Commercial media is corrupt and biased towards its visions and viewpoints, public media has those public values and serves to tell the public everything. Public media is independent, it is not owned by the government. However, the government allocates funds to public media. This causes tension between the government and public media, public media is 'biting the hand that feeds it.'

Eighth Tutorial:

In the tutorial today we talked about the murder/suicide case in brisbane. Journalists in recent times have only just started reporting suicides. Suicides used to be called 'police incidents', there used to be a rule about not reporting suicides and how they occurred. It was a way of stopping people from copying other people's suicides. However, by not reporting these suicides there is no awareness to the public that this is going on. Also, by not reporting it the statistics of the matter is unknown and no action is being done about it.
We also talked about how there is a higher risk for young men in rural areas to commit suicide by gun, rope, and car. The reasons thought for this is because of the isolation. They are out in the middle of no where with little to do but work. There is also pressure for them to take over the family business such as the family farm.
People need to be made more aware of these situations, so action can be done.

Seventh Lecture: Commercial Media vs Public Media

In the lecture, we were introduced to commercial vs public media and mostly focussed on the commercial media aspect. Commercial media is the eyes and ears for advertisers.
Commercial media is profit-driven media production, producing profitable programs audiences like and selling advertisements for gain. It is also a not government funded, thats why they need business to generate 'audiences' or it will fail.

The major players of commercial media:

• News Limited produces newspapers, cable television, films, magazines, books, and sports.
• Fairfax media produces newspapers and digital media.
• Nine Entertainment Co. produces free to air TV, magazines, digital media, and events.
• Win produces free to air TV, radio, sports, and tele-comms.
• Southern Cross produces free to air TV and radio.
• Seven West Media produces free to air TV, newspapers, magazines, and digital media.
• Ten Co. produces free to air TV.

Commercial Media has a form which has three sections where they get their profits. There is subscriptions such as Foxtel, where people pay an amount of money to get certain television channels with particular programs they are interested in. Sponsorship is another section where companies such as Nine Entertainment Co. sponsor an event and get profit from it. The other section of the form is subsidised companies which are given money from the government. In my opinion, companies that get money from the government are more biased on the information they give there audiences. Examples of this would be production of news from companies such as Nine, Seven and Ten. Commercial media functions has propaganda, as I said biased information and there is a social aspect.

Bruce brought up a very interesting question in the lecture, he said “can commercial media deliver on both commercial (profit) and special ('public trust') functions? (or is it really just about the mighty dollar?)
To keep it even, or under control, commercial media has formal state requirements they have to follow and are also overseen by the state government. To also assure this commercial-social function there is an "ethical wall" in place. What the editor of The Guardian says about the function of commercial media is as follows: The 'first duty [of the media] is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred." What he is saying is, it is their job to give the right facts and not their judgment on the matter.