Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
each day's hard copy. Increasingly, all mainstream newspapers (not just the
'popular press' or tabloids) are blending 'news' with other content, such
as 'lifestyle' sections about holidays and 'celebrity gossip'; however, news
stories and associated content (e.g. editorials) still rightly tend to dominate.
The journalists who research and write these stories, and the editors who
select and edit them for publication, have long operated with a code of
ethics intended to structure their professional activities. As communications
scholar Robert Cox notes,
The values of
objectivity
and
balance
have been bedrock norms of journalism for
almost a century. In principle, these are the commitments by the news media to
provide information [to the public] that is accurate and without reporter bias
and, where there is uncertainty, to balance news stories with statements from
all sides of the issue.
(Cox, 2010: 165)
'Objectivity' here means that journalists commit to reporting events, or the
words and deeds of their sources, free from any personal prejudice or any
perceived 'agenda' pursued by their employers. 'Balance' means ensuring
more than one side of any story is reported if there are doubts or debates
about an occurrence, project or discovery. Together, these norms imply that
news journalists and editors aim, however imperfectly in practice, to act as
'honest brokers' between the events and sources that are deemed newswor-
thy and various publics. To the extent that people trust the news media,
it's arguably because these norms are seen to be adhered to most of the
be operating within the meta-genre of 'realist' representation. They're per-
ceived by their audiences to be in the business of reporting
actualities
(and
future
probabilities
- not mere possibilities). The views and values contained
in editorials and columns are understood to be somehow distinct from the
'truth-orientated' content of daily news stories. However, journalist norms
and conventional perceptions of newspaper practices must reckon with a
range of pressures and demands that are typically hidden from public view.
Study Task:
Think of a newspaper, maybe one you read regularly. Aside
from the norms just described, what do you think influences the content of
the reported 'news'?
News is a competitive industry: newspapers have to sell, which raises ques-
tions about how they maintain an edge over rival publications. Space is also
limited. For instance, a news broadcast on television is rarely more than 30
minutes long. Additionally, what
counts
as 'news' is, as media analysts have
known for decades, highly partial. For instance, nearly 50 years ago, Johan
Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965) famously suggested that the following criteria
