Institutional constraints or voluntary deference? Marginalized critical news content, spiked stories, series and careers subjected to the Buzzsaw

Journalism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 1260-1278
Author(s):  
Andrew Kennis
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Propaganda Model ◽  
Indexing Model

This article focuses on all reported post-Cold War instances of several antidemocratic phenomena that occur within the US news media industry: the spiking of news stories and investigations with critical inclinations, demotions to enterprising journalists or editors, cancellations of TV programs due to critical content and forced resignations of journalists, independent and wire-based stories being overlooked by mainstream media, and investigative series whose story follow-ups are being marginalized out of existence or spiked. The reported occurrences are based on a plethora of evidence and documentation: testimony by journalists and/or their newsroom colleagues, audio-recorded conversations between editors and journalists, documented pressure by advertisers and powerful public officials, and documented meetings between editors and high-powered officials that led to spiked stories and/or follow-up reporting. This evidence shows a clear pattern of institutional constraints that result in varying forms of censorship. The focus on these repressive occurrences is of significant theoretical importance and is not only an attack on journalists but an attack on democracy as a whole. The most important theoretical tension between two models of media analysis – the indexing and propaganda models – is a conflicting attribution of culpability for poor media performance and the subsequent lack of news media independence. This article represents an attempt to unveil and subsequently address this underlying theoretical tension by criticizing the disproportionate fault attributed to journalists themselves by the indexing model as well as the underestimation by the propaganda model of the role of ‘crude intervention’ resulting from institutional constraints.

scholarly journals Invisible Women? Comparing Candidates’ News Coverage in Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
pp. 223-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarja Lühiste ◽  
Susan Banducci
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Underrepresentation Of Women

Past studies, largely based on the United States, have argued that differential coverage of men and women candidates could explain the lack of women in elected political office. We investigate, first, whether a gender bias exists in coverage of candidates and, second, the possible mechanisms underlying any differences in the amount and tone of candidates’ news media coverage. Using data from the 2009 European Election Study Media Analysis, drawn from media coverage in 25 EU member states during the European Parliament election campaigns, we find that, similar to previous research, there is evidence of a gender gap in the amount of media coverage. Even for highly prominent and competitive candidates, the gender bias in media coverage remains. However, this bias in media coverage largely reflects the parties’ preselection of viable candidates and that where there are remedies in place to address the underrepresentation of women (i.e., quotas), women candidates actually have lower visibility in campaign coverage. We also find that, though women candidates are more often the subject of valence evaluations in news stories, male candidates are more negatively evaluated in news stories.

scholarly journals Impartiality (Journalistic Reporting Styles)

10.34778/2s ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
News Media ◽  
Television News ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Editorial Policy ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Eine Analyse ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Media Performance

Impartiality is a journalistic norm that requires journalists to not express their opinions within factual-based news stories and to report fairly and balanced on opinions and viewpoints from others (e.g., Bentele, 1988; Donsbach & Klett, 1993; Hackett, 2008). Based on the impartiality standard, journalists should only express their own opinions in news formats that are intended for this purpose and appropriately labelled (e.g., commentaries). Field of application/theoretical foundation: The journalistic norm of impartiality is often analysed in the context of studies on media performance (e.g., Fahr, 2001; Maurer, 2005; Seethaler, 2015). Here, elite media outlets are often compared with popular media outlets. An increasing convergence between these types of media may also be a sign of an increasing tabloidization of elite media. However, increasingly opinionated news stories can also be regarded as an indicator of a more interpretive journalism. References/combination with other methods of data collection: Content analyses can be combined with survey data on the editorial policy/ ideological orientation of the respective media outlets (e.g., see Kepplinger, 2011 with his research on instrumental actualization). Example study: Seethaler, 2015   Information on Seethaler, 2015 Authors: Josef Seethaler Research question: The study is a cross-media analysis of media performance in Austria. Furthermore, media performance indicators are evaluated from the standpoint of different models of democracy (representative liberal, deliberative, participatory). Object of analysis: 1) newspapers (paid press: Standard, Presse, Kleine Zeitung, Kronen Zeitung, Kurier, Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, Salzburger Nachrichten, Tiroler Tageszeitung, Vorarlberger Nachrichten); 2) newspapers (free dailies: Heute, Österreich); 3) public service/commercial and national/regional radio stations (Ö1, Ö3, FM4, KRONEHIT, ORF – Radio Niederösterreich, Radio Oberösterreich, Radio Steiermark, Radio Wien, 88.6 Wien, Antenne Steiermark, Life Radio Oberösterreich, Radio Arabella Wien, Radio Energy Wien); 4) national public service (ORF eins, ORF 2, ORF III) and commercial (ATV I, ATV II, PULS 4, ServusTV) TV stations; 5) online (derstandard.at, krone.at, oe24.at, orf.at, gmx.at) Time frame of analysis: four artificial weeks (without Sundays) in 2014   Info about the Variable The degree of the appearance of the journalist’s point of view (in factual news formats) is evaluated on a 5-point-scale ranging from “explicitly personal” (1) to “purely distanced-impartial” (5). Variable name: Unparteilichkeit "Impartiality" Level of analysis: article Values (in German): 11) explizit persönlich gefärbt; 2) eher persönlich gefärbt; 3) sowohl persönlich gefärbt als auch distanziert-unparteiisch; 4) eher distanziert-unparteiisch; 5) ausschließlich distanziert-unparteiisch Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: six coders, Fleiss’ Kappa: 0.97 Codebook (in German) available under: https://www.rtr.at/de/inf/SchriftenreiheNr12015/Band1-2015.pdf see also DFG-Project “Media Performance and Democracy” (https://en.mediaperformance.uni-mainz.de/)   References Bentele, G. (1988). Wie objektiv können Journalisten sein? [How objective can journalists be?]. In L. Erbring (Ed.), Medien ohne Moral. Variationen über Journalismus und Ethik (pp. 196–225). Berlin: Argon. Donsbach, W., & Klett, B. (1993). Subjective objectivity: How journalists in four countries define a key term of their profession. Gazette, 51(1), 53–83. Fahr, A. (2001). Katastrophale Nachrichten? Eine Analyse der Qualität von Fernsehnachrichten [Disastrous news? An analysis of the quality of television news]. München: R. Fischer. Hackett, R. A. (2008). Objectivity in reporting. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication (pp. 3345–3350). Malden et al.: Blackwell. Kepplinger, H. M. (2011). Journalismus als Beruf. Wiesbaden: VS. Maurer, T. (2005). Fernsehnachrichten und Nachrichtenqualität: Eine Längsschnittstudie zur Nachrichtenentwicklung in Deutschland [Television news and news quality: A longitudinal study on the development of news in Germany]. München: R. Fischer. Seethaler, J. (2015). Qualität des tagesaktuellen Informationsangebots in den österreichischen Medien. Eine crossmediale Untersuchung [News media quality in Austria: A crossmedia analysis]. Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH. Retrieved from https://www.rtr.at/de/inf/SchriftenreiheNr12015/Band1-2015.pdf

scholarly journals ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’—Australian media industry attitudes to regulation and accountability reforms

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Lidberg
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Media Reporting ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
Independent Media

When the Australian Independent Media Inquiry (IMI) published its report most mainstream media reporting focused on the suggested statutory-based News Media Council and largely ignored any discussion of the underlying issues—public trust in journalism and news media and accountability for its practices. The aim of this study was to capture the attitudes held by the media industry toward these issues. Based on a content analysis of 33 submissions to the IMI and the Convergence Review it can be concluded that only 15 percent of the submissions addressed trust or media accountability issues. Furthermore, the submissions illustrate a disconnect between the attitudes held by some media proprietors and the trust deficit reality displayed in multiple studies of the public’s attitudes to journalism and news media.

Gatekeeping Fake News Discourses on Mainstream Media Versus Social Media

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 687-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Al-Rawi
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Propaganda Model ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Negative Role

This study analyzes mainstream media (MSM) coverage of fake news discourse and compares it with social networking sites (SNS) users who reference the term “fakenews” in their tweets. The study employs computational methods by analyzing over 8 million tweets and 1,350 news stories using topic modeling. Building on the theory of (networked) gatekeeping and Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model, the results show that SNS users follow networked gatekeeping practices by mostly associating fake news references to the alleged bias of MSM. On the other hand, MSM coverage tends to link fake news to SNS’s negative role in spreading misinformation. I argue here that there is a networked flak activity on Twitter which is defined as a collective negative response to MSM in order to discipline it, change its tone and editorial stance, or undermine the public’s trust in it.

How to Tell the Truth without Outraging the Press?

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chinese News Media

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 

2004 News Media Industry

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wallace Beard ◽  
Jean Benfer ◽  
Joseph Bohr ◽  
Robert Castellvi ◽  
Jill Chambers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry

Political corruption in Zimbabwe: News media, audiences and deliberative democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110224
Author(s):  
Mthokozisi Phathisani Ndhlovu ◽  
Phillip Santos
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Ruling Party

Even though corruption by politicians and in politics is widespread worldwide, it is more pronounced in developing countries, such as Zimbabwe, where members of the political elite overtly abuse power for personal accumulation of wealth. Ideally, the news media, as watchdogs, are expected to investigate and report such abuses of power. However, previous studies in Zimbabwe highlight the news media’s polarised and normative inefficacies. Informed by the theoretical notion of deliberative democracy developed via Habermas and Dahlgren’s work and Hall’s Encoding, Decoding Model, this article uses qualitative content analysis to examine how online readers of Zimbabwe’s two leading daily publications, The Herald and NewsDay, interpreted and evaluated allegations of corruption leveled against ministers and deputy ministers during the height of factionalism in the ruling party (ZANU PF). The article argues that interaction between mainstream media and their audiences online shows the latter’s resourcefulness and, at least, discursive agency in their engagement with narratives about political corruption, itself an imperative premise for future political action.

Constructing undesirables: A critical discourse analysis of othering of Fulani nomads in the Ghanaian news media

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132098209
Author(s):  
Mark Nartey ◽  
Hans J Ladegaard
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Analysis Framework ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Content Organization

The activities of Fulani nomads in Ghana have gained considerable media attention and engendered continuing public debate. In this paper, we analyze the prejudiced portrayals of the nomads in the Ghanaian news media, and how these contribute to an exclusionist and a discriminatory discourse that puts the nomads at the margins of Ghanaian society. The study employs a critical discourse analysis framework and draws on a dataset of 160 articles, including news stories, editorials and op-ed pieces. The analysis reveals that the nomads are discursively constructed as undesirables through an othering process that centers on three discourses: a discourse of dangerousness/criminalization, a discourse of alienization, and a discourse of stigmatization. This anti-nomad/Fulani rhetoric is evident in the choice of sensational headlines, alarmist news content, organization of arguments, and use of quotations. The paper concludes with a call for more balanced and critical news reporting on the nomads, especially since issues surrounding them border on national cohesion and security.

scholarly journals The People’s Champions? Populist Communication as a Contextually Dependent Political Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 107769902199864
Author(s):  
Iskander De Bruycker ◽  
Matthijs Rooduijn
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Eu Policy ◽  
News Stories

This article conceives of populist communication as a contextually dependent political strategy. We bridge actor- and communication-centered approaches by arguing that the context of issues conditions the extent to which parties employ populist communication. We draw from a content analysis of 2,085 news stories in eight news media outlets and Eurobarometer data connected to 41 EU policy issues and analyze statements from 85 political parties. Our findings show that populist parties are more prone to express populism on salient and polarized issues. Issues important to civil society groups, in contrast, make non-populist parties more inclined to express such communication.

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