LO1: Understand the news industry. [Merit grade]

LO1: Understand the news industry.

The modern new indusry consists of many different forms of media these include print, Online and brosadcast journalism.

Print media forms of journalism would consist of newspapers, magazines and journals. Large names in this field consist of those such as The Guardian, The Daily Mail and the Sun.  Print media is a traditional Pre web 2.0 form of news distribution however it is becoming more and more irrelevant as many traditional newspapers are choosing to swap the costs of producing and distributing newspapers to instead publish the news they find to specialised websites which are becoming much more accessible use to black box technologies (a technology capable of performing multiple functions such as smart phones, tablets and computers)

The print media market has many issues however which are not shared by many others (especially web enabled citizen journalism.) Firstly, the companies which publish the news within these industries are rarely public service (not supported in anyway by the government) and therefore have no obligations to report the whole truth behind their coverage. This has resulted in most print organisations now having a strong political bias such as the Sun and Mail being right wing while the Guardian and Observer foster a left-wing ideology.

Radio and Television broadcasting are another form of pre- web 2.0 reporting which again is being phased out by the rise in internet journalism (however not as quickly as print media is)

Notable names within Broadcasting journalism would be BBC News (Both the television show and radio station), SKY News, and ITV news. A definite advantage to broadcast journalism within the United Kingdom would be that the BBC (British Broadcasting corporation) are run under a public service structure meaning that they are given funding through the taxpayer (in this case the BBC are funded through the public purchasing Television licences) with the understanding that the content which they present will have no significant bias and will be as close as possible to an accurate portrayal of real life events. This means that being informed by the BBC is likely the most accurate (Non internet enabled) way of being presented with the news.

Web 2.0 introduced the British Isles with an internet access which could access interactive features such as video and advertising which naturally provided large media conglomerates with a whole new way of reaching their audience. This means that large well known organisations have expanded into web journalism such as The Sun, The BBC and The Guardian.

This is not the only exiting feature of internet journalism however, as that its easy now for normal people (as appose to professional Journalists) to give their interpretations of the news in a possess known as citizen journalism. Several of the pioneers of this process have been The Huffington post and Buzz feed which have found much success in internet journalism and becoming large companies while doing so. Small companies such as these offer much less biased coverage of stories as that the people creating them usually have little to gain from manipulating stories however it is important to remember that this is defiantly something that changes as these companies expand and become worth large businesses, for example both Buzz Feed and The Huffington Post are now understood to be fairly left leaning in their coverage of the News.

There is one large problem with online consumption of the news (specifically through social media such as Facebook, Reddit and Twitter) That being “Fake News” or what the communities of these respective website has dubbed “Clickbait”. This consists of an organisation publish a misleading or in some cases completely false headlines in an attempt to garner views from people who are invested in the stories (for this reason the stories usually concern a well-known celebrity. This means that people who consume their news fully through social media are likely to believe some form of untrue story.

News conglomerates:

A news conglomerate (much like any other type of conglomerate structured business) is made up of one parent company which owns several smaller subsidiaries and can therefore take part in vertical and horizontal integration, however as appose to any other type of conglomerate a news business of this type holds a large amount of power through the subtle political bias that may be prevalent in their work.

The best example of a news conglomerate would be Rupert Murdoch's infamous "News Corp" empire, which controls many news publications and broadcast programs such as Sky News, Fox News, The News of The World, The New York Post, Wall Street Journal and The Sun.

The Difference between The coverage of "Water Sports Gate" by The Sun and "Buzz Feed"
The stand out news story of January 2017 was that of Russia's alleged Donald Trump Blackmail document which was leaked on the web by independent news website Buzz Feed Inc. (a Left wing news organisation) Buzz Feed writes its articles is a peer to peer fashion (wherein an article is written as if the writer is speaking to a friend) for example the article where they exposed "water sports gate" is entitled "These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia"

Gate keepers and Protective coverage:

Gate keeping is a term coined by Shoemaker and Vos (2009) the process of one individual within the news provider (the editor) will act as a gatekeeper. This meaning that they will go through the large amount of stories brought to the attention of the provider and choose which ones are interesting enough to be featured in their work.

The gatekeeping process is usually where the editor will instil the sources political bias and ideological angle through the inclusion of stories that can be tilted in order to make “Folk Devils” (Stanley Cohen 1972) of particular demographics while including stories which make their target audience appear to be the “politically correct” and therefore validate their opinions making them think that the new source is the only one to report on stories correctly and therefore resulting in more sales for the overarching association.

The Process of Gatekeeping is most easily observed when comparing two publications of opposite political bias (One right wing and one left) as that the differing beliefs of the reasons events taking place in the world between these two groups will lead them to push their narrative through the stories, which they focus on.  

Protective Coverage is the process of journalistic censorship wherein the gatekeeper may choose to not cover a particular story due to it being potentially harmful to person in a station of political power or the audience itself (for example a serious security threat.) However this process is rarely upheld now due to the rise of sensationalist media in the 1970s meaning that journalists will attempt to publish these stories instead of hide them as that they are the stories that people have an interest in reading

However as can be assumed, along with the rise of internet journalism has become a much more difficult strategy of censorship to uphold as that now it is practically impossible to keep people from accessing any story they want to (whether it is from one organisation, it’s rival or some form of citizen journalist.) In 2003 Singer analysed how gate keeping could be utilized online however only came to the conclusion that the rise of Web 2.0 (Tim o’ Sullivan) meant the time had come for journalists to relieve themselves of the burden of being a gate keeper. Instead, simply provide a story’s “Baseline” so that discussion could take place based on the truthful facts provided to the participants. The fact that Gate keeping and protective coverage cannot be done online is of course a benefit to this medium as that is allows the reader to observe stories as they want to, hear opposing opinions quickly and engage in critical thought instead of being indoctrinated by the belief system of whatever newspaper or television program they choose to read or watch.

What is citizen Journalism?

Citizen Journalism is any way in which anyone other than a trained reporter reports on the news. This is typically less biased as that it is not important for anyone who doesn't have a major sway over national or international events to try and impact on the public opinion.

Dan Gillmor:           

The Home Page of Dan Gillmore's website.

Dan Gillmor is an American writer who has written many books bout citizen journalism such as "We The Media" and "Mediaactive". In his work Gillmor mainly focuses on the recent failures of modern journalism (Corruption and Political Bias) and ways that citizen journalism will cleanse reporting of these issues.