Can the Neoliberal Subject Condemn [Him]self?: Locating Masculinity at FOX News in Bombshell

Director Jay Roach’s 2019 film Bombshell draws on a series of real-life sexual allegations against FOX News founder Roger Ailes, depicting the climate in the newsroom and portraying a number of FOX personalities. As a film marketed for mass audiences, it is crucial to question the extent to which the film successfully serves to critique sexism in the FOX News newsroom. The purpose of this paper is thus to examine the portrayal of masculinity and sexism and FOX News in Bombshell. To explore the dynamic of this newsroom, this paper centers on interrogating Bombshell against the notion of a “feminist film”. I first attempt to analyze and locate gendered dynamics within Bombshell, then reflect on portrayed gendered dynamics with reference to the history of FOX News and the way competing masculinities work in the news organization. The FOX News newsroom is unique in the ways varying dynamics of gender manifest within its locale: in front of the camera, a kind of neoconservative “traditionalist” morality and gender order; behind the camera, an “amoral” gender dynamic that aligns with neoliberal free-market principles. I then explore how a gender order is upheld in contradiction, often by the very subjects who are subjected under a masculine-dominant gender order. I question the possibility of any future of gender egalitarianism at FOX News, and conclude by arguing that Bombshell misses the mark in interrogating a gender order, instead problematically framing sexism as chiefly upheld by individuals.

Proximate or Primary Source? How Multiple Layers of News Sources on Social Media Predict News Influence

News shared on social media presents multiple layers of sources, from reputable news organizations to individual users who share news on social media. A web-based experiment investigated (a) whether the influence of a primary news source (news organization) on viewers decreases as it becomes less proximate with the presence of a more immediate source (individual user who shared news), and (b) if so, how the evaluations of both sources, along with a varying degree of issue relevance, affect viewers’ agreement with news position. Participants read one news article either shared on Facebook by a well-known celebrity or directly posted onto a news website. The perceived credibility of news organizations predicted viewers’ agreement with the news position, but only when the news was presented on a news web page so that the news organization was shown as the proximate source. When multiple sources were displayed, the influence of news organization credibility disappeared when the given news lacked personal relevance.

News Organizations in Colombia Building Consensus through Social Media: A Case of Digital-Native La Silla Vacía

Correlation of different segments of society is a major function of mass media and works by broadening individual’s perspectives and creating common ground between these different segments Little is known about how consensus building works in the networked, digital environment or how it works in Latin America. This study explores the premise on a social media page from a digital-native news organization in Colombia, La Silla Vacía, on the salient issue of Venezuela. It found that the news organization did provide a common ground within its comments, bringing men and women closer together in consensus (rs = 0.76, n = 10, p < 0.05) of the priorities of topics relating to Venezuela (substantive attributes). The study did not find a significant correlation between the topics prioritized by the posts and the topics prioritized by the comments. Audiences focus on Venezuela in relation to the local Colombian presidential election while the news organization focused on the country in relation to refugees and the political transition happening in Venezuela.

Flowline at Work

This chapter explores the use of metaphor to change temporal structuring of work practices in a news organization—from deadline to flowline. Deadline has been an ingrained institutionalized norm in the newspaper industry, representing a traditional temporal configuration that enables coordination and production of the printed newspaper. At present, it is out of sync with how news is produced and published online on a continuous basis throughout the day and night. To assist a news organization in making the shift towards an open-ended, near-future-oriented workflow, an action-research project was initiated for collaboration, co-construction of metaphors, and intervention in the newsroom. The chapter highlights the performative qualities of metaphors as enablers for transformative change and suggests that metaphorical events, understood as temporally enacted performances, have the potential to enact and spur sequences of change by creating new temporal structures and possibilities for action not previously imagined.

Framing Standing Rock: Market orientation and television news

This article analyses news coverage by CNN and Democracy Now! of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Through an ethnographic content analysis (ECA) of a strongly and weakly market-oriented television news organization, we examine frames, sources used and time devoted to the story, to understand how market orientation may influence the journalistic decisions of television news outlets. We find that although both outlets framed the story primarily through the lens of protest and violence, the ways in which this was done differed significantly.

Conclusion

The conclusion to this book examines the labor of relinquishing the story. Despite their active role in conceptualizing the story at its beginning and assisting with the construction of the story at every turn, fixers say that they are denied ownership of the final product in any significant sense. Sometimes, the journalist or news organization will invoke the very fact that the fixer is getting paid in order to justify the separation of the fixer from the final product of his or her labor. Some of my interviewees suggest that this especially seems to happen when a fixer takes issue with the journalist’s interpretation of what is “true” or what is most newsworthy. Once the story is finished, news fixers rarely receive substantial credit for their role in reporting the story. Some of my interviewees say that this does not bother them, while others assert that the inability to get a byline hurts their chances for upward mobility in the international reporting industries. Still, very few news fixers appear to feel comfortable with actively contesting this problem. Thus, the conclusion of this book argues that the labor of relinquishing the story is also the moment in which the fixer—sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly—acquiesces to his or her own erasure from the practice of international news reporting.

Glocalization and international news-photo production: News images from Israel made for global news markets

This article focuses on news photos’ glocal production mechanisms as they are produced in Israel by the three largest international news agencies (Thomson Reuters, AP, and AFP). Designed to make locally manufactured news photos internationally appealing, these mechanisms are required by the agencies if they are to survive in a complex business environment. Yet this environment also mobilizes forces which define the international news organization – not as a unified industrial unit, but as an arena in which different forms of social power constantly struggle. Combining in-depth interviews and interpretive methods while focusing on significant examples in the agencies’ processes of production and organizational structures, the article explores (a) the glocal mechanisms that are activated in the production processes of news photos from Israel by international news agencies, (b) the forces that affect their execution, and (c) how these powers reflect on the international news organization.