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most Western newspapers have grown in size over the past 20 years, while
the number of journalists they employ has flatlined or even decreased. This
has meant there's (1) less space for long-term, in-depth investigative report-
ing, (2) more demand for journalists to cover several 'beats' (economics,
industry, law and order, etc.), often forcing them to take what authoritative
or very vocal sources say at face value, and (3) expectations that journalists
write two to three times more stories than their forebears of the 1980s (see
Lewis et al. (2008) for evidence of this in the British newspaper industry).
Many journalists are now spread thin and are often reactive to events and
sources.
Because of all this, there's a constant filtering of what gets to become
'news' and how it's reported to those consuming it (for more on the latter,
see Box 7.2) . To reach again for a metaphor I elaborated on at length late
in Chapter 4 , news journalists and editors together construct the news, selec-
tively and actively re-presenting real world events (and information from
sources) in line with their professional norms, and in response to many
organisational pressures. To cite Brian McNair again,
News is still what news always was: a socially constructed account of reality
rather than [a carbon copy]
of reality itself, composed of literary, verbal and
pictorial elements which combine to form a journalistic narrative disseminated
through print, broadcast or online media. No matter how 'live' the news is, and
regardless of how raw and visceral the account of events being brought into our
living rooms appears to be, it's still a mediated version of 'reality'
...
...
(McNair, 2006: 6)
This (arguably) contradicts the assumption that most people would make
that 'the news' precedes its reporting, as if it's simply waiting to be relayed by
assiduous news outlets. However, in itself, the manufacture of the news is
neither surprising nor, from a public perspective, especially alarming. After
all, journalists and editors shouldn't be parrots: choices must be made about
what stories to cover and how. It is therefore the quality of these choices that's
at issue, not the fact that newsmakers have to make them in the first place.
BOX 7.2
NEWS MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS: 'FRAMES' AND
'CULTURAL PACKAGES'
For several decades now, professional media analysts have been inter-
ested in how the news media - indeed, the mass media more generally -
'frame' particular issues, topics and problems for audiences. According
to Robert Entman, in a review of framing research,
To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and
make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way
 
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