CONCEPT OF NEWS
1. News is surprise, an unexpected happening – Lord Northcliffe
2. News is anything you did not know yesterday – Turner Catledge
3. When a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news – Charles A. Dana
4. News is anything that will make people talk – Charles A. Dana
5. News is a chronicle of conflict and change – John Chancellor
6. News is the timely report of events, facts or opinions that interest for significant number of people – Billiam L. Riwarsa
7. News may be defined as an accurate, unbiased account of the significant fact of a timely happening that is of interest to the readers of the newspapers that prints the account. – Willian S. Mollsby
8. News is the timely report of facts or opinion of either interest or importance or both, to considerable member of people. – Michel V. Charnley
9. The rise and falls of governments, Wars, Stories of peaceful international relations, the doings and movements and sayings of famous people, man-made disasters – those are essentially what news is – Reauter (News Agency)
10. News is people – Harold Evans
11. News is news when it is new – M.V. Kamath
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Propoganda
Propaganda, dissemination of ideas and information for the purpose of inducing (to persuade or influence sb to do sth.) or intensifying (to increase in degree or strength) specific attitudes and actions. Because propaganda is frequently accompanied by distortions of fact and by appeals to passion and prejudice, it is often thought to be invariably false or misleading. This view is relative, however. Although some propagandists may intentionally distort fact, others may present it as faithfully as objective observers. A lawyer’s brief is as much propaganda as a billboard advertisement. Education, whatever its objective, is a form of propaganda. The essential distinction lies in the intentions of the propagandist to persuade an audience to adopt the attitude or action he or she espouses.
Propaganda may be disseminated by or for individuals, businesses, ethnic associations, religious organizations, political organizations, and governments at every level. Thousands of special-interest groups disseminate propaganda. Among such groups are patriotic and temperance societies, fire-prevention and traffic-safety committees, leagues promoting conservation or the prevention of cruelty to animals, labor unions, and chambers of commerce. No matter what its objective, propaganda attempts to persuade through rational or emotional appeal or through the organization of personal opinion. Efficient use of the communication media is central to these efforts.
II RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA
One of the earliest uses of the word propaganda was in connection with religious missionary activity. A notable propagandist was Saint Paul, who established the first Christian churches in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. Such evangelists spread Christianity beyond the Roman world as Saint Augustine, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who introduced it into Britain, and by Saint Boniface, who converted Germanic tribes. In modern times Roman Catholic missionary activity has been conducted by several well-known religious orders, notably the Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuits). By skillful propaganda the Jesuits were able in the 17th century to reclaim for the church large areas of central Europe that had been lost to Protestantism during the Reformation. In 1622 Pope Gregory XV established the Congregation of Propaganda to direct these activities of the Roman Catholic church. Protestants have been equally zealous in spreading their doctrines. The Protestant reformers of the 16th century were effective propagandists, and missionaries have carried the Protestant faith to every part of the world. See also Missionary Movements.
III POLITICAL PROPAGANDA
Declaration of Independence In the Declaration of Independence, American colonists proclaimed their freedom from British rule and provided a rationale for their revolt. The document, written principally by American statesman Thomas Jefferson, was intended to solidify support among colonists, as well as to justify the controversial American cause to foreign nations. Its eloquent language and passionate appeal made it a masterpiece of political propaganda.Hulton Deutsch
Propaganda for distinctly political ends is as old as history. The Bible, for example, relates that the Assyrian king Sennacherib attempted to terrify the Kingdom of Judah into surrendering by the use of threatening propaganda (see 2 Kings 18-19). Julius Caesar wrote De Bello Gallico (On the Gallic War) to enhance his reputation in Rome and to speed his rise to power.
The quality of the propaganda literature of the American Revolution is outstanding. Before the Revolution the letters circulated by the patriot Samuel Adams and such pamphlets as Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania by John Dickinson sought to inform and unify American opinion in the quarrel with Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, was a masterpiece of rational propaganda intended to crystallize public opinion at home and justify the controversial American cause abroad. During the period when that cause seemed closest to military defeat, the radical writer Thomas Paine wrote a series of pamphlets titled The Crisis, which rallied and sustained American morale for the long struggle. After the war, when controversy raged over the adoption of the federal Constitution, the articles written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, and known collectively as The Federalist (see Federalist, The), explained the new constitution and persuaded Americans to ratify it (see Constitution of the United States). The Federalist was also an effective propaganda instrument among the citizens of the new American nation.
IV LITERARY PROPAGANDA
Propaganda by individuals has sometimes taken literary forms. Many classics of philosophy, history, religion, and economics, as well as novels, poems, and plays, have been written in part with propagandist intent. The histories of the French author Voltaire, the pamphlets of Martin Luther, and the works of Karl Marx are examples. Propaganda for social justice was carried on by the British statistician Charles Booth and by the American social-settlement worker Jane Addams. In American literature, an outstanding novel of propaganda is Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. By her depiction of black slavery in the South, Stowe contributed to the growth of the abolitionist movement before the American Civil War (see Abolitionists).
V WARTIME PROPAGANDA
Anti-German Propaganda Governments often use propaganda during wartime to unify citizens against an enemy. This poster for U.S. Liberty Bonds from World War I depicts Germans as barbarians. The U.S. Committee on Public Information, an official propaganda agency, effectively utilized the motivational power of propaganda to mobilize Americans to buy the bonds.Corbis/The National Archives
Massive modern propaganda techniques began with World War I (1914-1918). From the beginning of the war, both German and British propagandists worked hard to win sympathy and support in the United States. German propagandists appealed to the many Americans of German descent and to those of Irish descent who were traditionally hostile to Great Britain. Soon, however, Germany was virtually cut off from direct access to the United States. Thereafter British propaganda had little competition in the United States, and it was conducted more skillfully than that of the Germans. Once engaged in the war, the United States organized the Committee on Public Information, an official propaganda agency, to mobilize American public opinion. This committee proved highly successful, particularly in the sale of Liberty Bonds. The exploitation by the Allies of President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which seemed to promise a just peace for both the victors and the vanquished, contributed greatly toward crystallizing opposition within the Central Powers to continuation of the war.
After World War I propaganda achieved great importance as an instrument of national policy in the totalitarian state. Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union deliberately molded public opinion through government propaganda agencies. In Germany, Adolf Hitler established the extremely powerful ministry of propaganda headed by Paul Joseph Goebbels. Completely dominating all public utterances in Germany, this agency instigated the so-called war of nerves. Before each new aggressive move by Germany, as, for example, against Czechoslovakia in 1938, the German press and radio publicized alleged evidence of persecution of German minorities in the victim country. Incidents were manufactured and exploited to justify German intervention, and the German war machine was depicted as invincible. The technique proved effective in dividing populations, weakening the power of the victim to resist, and causing its allies to hesitate. As the European crisis intensified, German agents in France spread propaganda of defeatism. Through books, pamphlets, and venal newspapers and in the legislature and the army, they encouraged dissatisfaction with the government, distrust of allies, and fear of German military power. These divisive efforts hastened the collapse of French resistance when the German army finally struck in May 1940.
Joseph Goebbels German Nazi Party member Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister in 1933, which gave him power over all German radio, press, cinema, and theater. Goebbels directed virulent propaganda campaigns against the Jews and other “non-Aryan” groups.Culver Pictures
The propaganda aspects of World War II were similar to those of World War I, except that the war was greater in scope. Radio played a major role, and propaganda activities overseas were more intense. Both Germany and the United Kingdom again sought to sway American opinion. German propagandists played on anti-British sentiment, represented the war as a struggle against communism, and pictured Germany as the invincible champion of a new order in world affairs. German agents also gave their support to movements in the United States that supported isolationism. German propaganda efforts again proved ineffective, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; the evidence of German aggression was too clear, and American sympathies were increasingly on the side of the United Kingdom. After the United States entered the war, the Axis powers sought to weaken the morale of the Allied armed forces and civilian populations by radio propaganda. The British traitor William Joyce broadcast from Germany under the sardonic name “Lord Haw Haw”; the American poet Ezra Pound broadcast for the Fascist cause from Italy; U.S. forces in the South Pacific became familiar with the voice of Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino, a native Californian of Japanese descent, who broadcast from Japan as “Tokyo Rose.”
Allied propaganda efforts were aimed at separating the peoples of the Axis nations from their governments, which were solely blamed for the war. Radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped from the air carried Allied propaganda to the enemy. The official U.S. propaganda agencies during World War II were the Office of War Information (OWI), charged with disseminating information at home and abroad, and the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), charged with conducting psychological warfare against the enemy. At Supreme Headquarters in the European theater of operations, the OWI and OSS were coordinated with military activities by the Psychological Warfare Division.
VI COLD-WAR PROPAGANDA
In the period of the Cold War, a marked conflict of interests between the United States and the Soviet Union following World War II, propaganda continued to be a significant instrument of national policy. Both the democratic and Communist blocs of states attempted by sustained campaigns to win to their side the great masses of uncommitted peoples and thereby achieve their objectives without resorting to armed conflict. Every aspect of national life and policy was exploited for purposes of propaganda. The Cold War was also marked by the use of defectors, trials, and confessions for propaganda purposes.
In this propaganda war the Communist nations seemed initially to have a distinct advantage. Because their governments controlled all media, they could largely seal off their peoples from Western propaganda. At the same time, the highly centralized governments could plan elaborate propaganda campaigns and mobilize resources to carry out their plans. They could also count on aid from Communist parties and sympathizers in other countries. Democratic states, on the other hand, could neither prevent their peoples from being exposed to Communist propaganda nor mobilize all their resources to counter it. This apparent advantage for Communist governments eroded during the 1980s, as communications technology advanced. Inability to control the spread of information was a major factor in the disintegration of many Communist regimes in Eastern Europe at the end of the decade.
The United States Information Agency (USIA), established in 1953 to conduct propaganda and cultural activities abroad, operates the Voice of America, a radio network that carries news and information about the United States in more than 40 languages to all parts of the world. In 1978 USIA functions were taken over by the International Communication Agency; its name was changed back to the U.S. Information Agency in 1982. In 1967 it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had for many years covertly supported numerous American and foreign labor, student, and political organizations, such as Radio Free Europe, the efforts of which benefited U.S. foreign policies.
VII OTHER PROPAGANDA
Cigarette Advertising Television has received much criticism due to the significant amount of advertising used during regular programming, especially with regard to addictive substances such as cigarettes and alcohol. Special interest groups along with the Federal Communications Commission (the federal broadcasting agency) have attempted to regulate such advertising. Today, cigarette commercials can no longer be aired on television, although printed materials, such as newspapers and magazines, continue to advertise them. This 1956 magazine ad typifies the attempts by cigarette manufacturers to glamorize smoking.A.T. Co. Product of The Amer. Tobacco Co.
In recent years the growing sophistication of propaganda techniques has been evident in election campaigns; these include the propaganda of the deed (influencing public opinion by actions rather than words), the use of television, the manufacture of news by staged events, the skillful recruitment and use of opinion leaders, and the adjustment of appeals to group interest. The civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s benefited from the propaganda effects of protest marches, assemblies, picketing, sit-ins, and “freedom rides.” Large business corporations and commercial interests, such as railroads and oil companies, have also carried on extensive propaganda campaigns through advertising and other techniques in attempts to develop public support for legislation favorable to their interests.
The technological advances of the mass media…are expanding the outlets available to ropagandists.
In the 1970s and 1980s, various kinds of propaganda became tools for such diverse special interests as antinuclear-energy groups, women’s rights activists, pro-abortion and antiabortion forces, gun-control lobbies, adherents of capital punishment, senior citizen groups, and the Moral Majority, a conservative secular political organization founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell. The technological advances of the mass media, especially those of the electronic media, are expanding the outlets available to propagandists and are likely to have a significant impact on propaganda efforts in the future.
Propaganda may be disseminated by or for individuals, businesses, ethnic associations, religious organizations, political organizations, and governments at every level. Thousands of special-interest groups disseminate propaganda. Among such groups are patriotic and temperance societies, fire-prevention and traffic-safety committees, leagues promoting conservation or the prevention of cruelty to animals, labor unions, and chambers of commerce. No matter what its objective, propaganda attempts to persuade through rational or emotional appeal or through the organization of personal opinion. Efficient use of the communication media is central to these efforts.
II RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA
One of the earliest uses of the word propaganda was in connection with religious missionary activity. A notable propagandist was Saint Paul, who established the first Christian churches in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. Such evangelists spread Christianity beyond the Roman world as Saint Augustine, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who introduced it into Britain, and by Saint Boniface, who converted Germanic tribes. In modern times Roman Catholic missionary activity has been conducted by several well-known religious orders, notably the Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuits). By skillful propaganda the Jesuits were able in the 17th century to reclaim for the church large areas of central Europe that had been lost to Protestantism during the Reformation. In 1622 Pope Gregory XV established the Congregation of Propaganda to direct these activities of the Roman Catholic church. Protestants have been equally zealous in spreading their doctrines. The Protestant reformers of the 16th century were effective propagandists, and missionaries have carried the Protestant faith to every part of the world. See also Missionary Movements.
III POLITICAL PROPAGANDA
Declaration of Independence In the Declaration of Independence, American colonists proclaimed their freedom from British rule and provided a rationale for their revolt. The document, written principally by American statesman Thomas Jefferson, was intended to solidify support among colonists, as well as to justify the controversial American cause to foreign nations. Its eloquent language and passionate appeal made it a masterpiece of political propaganda.Hulton Deutsch
Propaganda for distinctly political ends is as old as history. The Bible, for example, relates that the Assyrian king Sennacherib attempted to terrify the Kingdom of Judah into surrendering by the use of threatening propaganda (see 2 Kings 18-19). Julius Caesar wrote De Bello Gallico (On the Gallic War) to enhance his reputation in Rome and to speed his rise to power.
The quality of the propaganda literature of the American Revolution is outstanding. Before the Revolution the letters circulated by the patriot Samuel Adams and such pamphlets as Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania by John Dickinson sought to inform and unify American opinion in the quarrel with Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, was a masterpiece of rational propaganda intended to crystallize public opinion at home and justify the controversial American cause abroad. During the period when that cause seemed closest to military defeat, the radical writer Thomas Paine wrote a series of pamphlets titled The Crisis, which rallied and sustained American morale for the long struggle. After the war, when controversy raged over the adoption of the federal Constitution, the articles written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, and known collectively as The Federalist (see Federalist, The), explained the new constitution and persuaded Americans to ratify it (see Constitution of the United States). The Federalist was also an effective propaganda instrument among the citizens of the new American nation.
IV LITERARY PROPAGANDA
Propaganda by individuals has sometimes taken literary forms. Many classics of philosophy, history, religion, and economics, as well as novels, poems, and plays, have been written in part with propagandist intent. The histories of the French author Voltaire, the pamphlets of Martin Luther, and the works of Karl Marx are examples. Propaganda for social justice was carried on by the British statistician Charles Booth and by the American social-settlement worker Jane Addams. In American literature, an outstanding novel of propaganda is Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. By her depiction of black slavery in the South, Stowe contributed to the growth of the abolitionist movement before the American Civil War (see Abolitionists).
V WARTIME PROPAGANDA
Anti-German Propaganda Governments often use propaganda during wartime to unify citizens against an enemy. This poster for U.S. Liberty Bonds from World War I depicts Germans as barbarians. The U.S. Committee on Public Information, an official propaganda agency, effectively utilized the motivational power of propaganda to mobilize Americans to buy the bonds.Corbis/The National Archives
Massive modern propaganda techniques began with World War I (1914-1918). From the beginning of the war, both German and British propagandists worked hard to win sympathy and support in the United States. German propagandists appealed to the many Americans of German descent and to those of Irish descent who were traditionally hostile to Great Britain. Soon, however, Germany was virtually cut off from direct access to the United States. Thereafter British propaganda had little competition in the United States, and it was conducted more skillfully than that of the Germans. Once engaged in the war, the United States organized the Committee on Public Information, an official propaganda agency, to mobilize American public opinion. This committee proved highly successful, particularly in the sale of Liberty Bonds. The exploitation by the Allies of President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which seemed to promise a just peace for both the victors and the vanquished, contributed greatly toward crystallizing opposition within the Central Powers to continuation of the war.
After World War I propaganda achieved great importance as an instrument of national policy in the totalitarian state. Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union deliberately molded public opinion through government propaganda agencies. In Germany, Adolf Hitler established the extremely powerful ministry of propaganda headed by Paul Joseph Goebbels. Completely dominating all public utterances in Germany, this agency instigated the so-called war of nerves. Before each new aggressive move by Germany, as, for example, against Czechoslovakia in 1938, the German press and radio publicized alleged evidence of persecution of German minorities in the victim country. Incidents were manufactured and exploited to justify German intervention, and the German war machine was depicted as invincible. The technique proved effective in dividing populations, weakening the power of the victim to resist, and causing its allies to hesitate. As the European crisis intensified, German agents in France spread propaganda of defeatism. Through books, pamphlets, and venal newspapers and in the legislature and the army, they encouraged dissatisfaction with the government, distrust of allies, and fear of German military power. These divisive efforts hastened the collapse of French resistance when the German army finally struck in May 1940.
Joseph Goebbels German Nazi Party member Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister in 1933, which gave him power over all German radio, press, cinema, and theater. Goebbels directed virulent propaganda campaigns against the Jews and other “non-Aryan” groups.Culver Pictures
The propaganda aspects of World War II were similar to those of World War I, except that the war was greater in scope. Radio played a major role, and propaganda activities overseas were more intense. Both Germany and the United Kingdom again sought to sway American opinion. German propagandists played on anti-British sentiment, represented the war as a struggle against communism, and pictured Germany as the invincible champion of a new order in world affairs. German agents also gave their support to movements in the United States that supported isolationism. German propaganda efforts again proved ineffective, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; the evidence of German aggression was too clear, and American sympathies were increasingly on the side of the United Kingdom. After the United States entered the war, the Axis powers sought to weaken the morale of the Allied armed forces and civilian populations by radio propaganda. The British traitor William Joyce broadcast from Germany under the sardonic name “Lord Haw Haw”; the American poet Ezra Pound broadcast for the Fascist cause from Italy; U.S. forces in the South Pacific became familiar with the voice of Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino, a native Californian of Japanese descent, who broadcast from Japan as “Tokyo Rose.”
Allied propaganda efforts were aimed at separating the peoples of the Axis nations from their governments, which were solely blamed for the war. Radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped from the air carried Allied propaganda to the enemy. The official U.S. propaganda agencies during World War II were the Office of War Information (OWI), charged with disseminating information at home and abroad, and the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), charged with conducting psychological warfare against the enemy. At Supreme Headquarters in the European theater of operations, the OWI and OSS were coordinated with military activities by the Psychological Warfare Division.
VI COLD-WAR PROPAGANDA
In the period of the Cold War, a marked conflict of interests between the United States and the Soviet Union following World War II, propaganda continued to be a significant instrument of national policy. Both the democratic and Communist blocs of states attempted by sustained campaigns to win to their side the great masses of uncommitted peoples and thereby achieve their objectives without resorting to armed conflict. Every aspect of national life and policy was exploited for purposes of propaganda. The Cold War was also marked by the use of defectors, trials, and confessions for propaganda purposes.
In this propaganda war the Communist nations seemed initially to have a distinct advantage. Because their governments controlled all media, they could largely seal off their peoples from Western propaganda. At the same time, the highly centralized governments could plan elaborate propaganda campaigns and mobilize resources to carry out their plans. They could also count on aid from Communist parties and sympathizers in other countries. Democratic states, on the other hand, could neither prevent their peoples from being exposed to Communist propaganda nor mobilize all their resources to counter it. This apparent advantage for Communist governments eroded during the 1980s, as communications technology advanced. Inability to control the spread of information was a major factor in the disintegration of many Communist regimes in Eastern Europe at the end of the decade.
The United States Information Agency (USIA), established in 1953 to conduct propaganda and cultural activities abroad, operates the Voice of America, a radio network that carries news and information about the United States in more than 40 languages to all parts of the world. In 1978 USIA functions were taken over by the International Communication Agency; its name was changed back to the U.S. Information Agency in 1982. In 1967 it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had for many years covertly supported numerous American and foreign labor, student, and political organizations, such as Radio Free Europe, the efforts of which benefited U.S. foreign policies.
VII OTHER PROPAGANDA
Cigarette Advertising Television has received much criticism due to the significant amount of advertising used during regular programming, especially with regard to addictive substances such as cigarettes and alcohol. Special interest groups along with the Federal Communications Commission (the federal broadcasting agency) have attempted to regulate such advertising. Today, cigarette commercials can no longer be aired on television, although printed materials, such as newspapers and magazines, continue to advertise them. This 1956 magazine ad typifies the attempts by cigarette manufacturers to glamorize smoking.A.T. Co. Product of The Amer. Tobacco Co.
In recent years the growing sophistication of propaganda techniques has been evident in election campaigns; these include the propaganda of the deed (influencing public opinion by actions rather than words), the use of television, the manufacture of news by staged events, the skillful recruitment and use of opinion leaders, and the adjustment of appeals to group interest. The civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s benefited from the propaganda effects of protest marches, assemblies, picketing, sit-ins, and “freedom rides.” Large business corporations and commercial interests, such as railroads and oil companies, have also carried on extensive propaganda campaigns through advertising and other techniques in attempts to develop public support for legislation favorable to their interests.
The technological advances of the mass media…are expanding the outlets available to ropagandists.
In the 1970s and 1980s, various kinds of propaganda became tools for such diverse special interests as antinuclear-energy groups, women’s rights activists, pro-abortion and antiabortion forces, gun-control lobbies, adherents of capital punishment, senior citizen groups, and the Moral Majority, a conservative secular political organization founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell. The technological advances of the mass media, especially those of the electronic media, are expanding the outlets available to propagandists and are likely to have a significant impact on propaganda efforts in the future.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Rise of Professional Journalism
It comes as a surprise to many to learn that the notion of objectivity or simply professional journalism is a relatively recent development in the United States. In the first one hundred-plus years of the republic, journalism tended to be highly opinionated and partisan. Indeed, the first few generations of U.S. journalists—the years from Madison and Jefferson to Jackson and Lincoln—were diametrically opposed to what many Americans think is intended by the First Amendment: a commitment to neutral, values-free news reporting. Horace Greeley did not write, “Both the East and the West have their relative merits for a recent college grad”; he wrote, “Go West, young man.” And that was not his only pronouncement. Greeley’s New York Tribune, the great American journal of the mid-nineteenth century, was never neutral. It prodded the still-new nation to address the sin of slavery, to consider the dangers of imperialism and to recognize the need to provide for the common welfare. Greeley’s writers were anything but impartial observers; one of his regular correspondents, and arguably among the greatest journalists of the nineteenth century, was a German scholar named Karl Marx. The Tribune was typical of its times and, with other newspapers of its kind, essential to the progress that America achieved in the period of transition from revolutionary republic to global superpower.
The Dark Ages
In recent journalism history textbooks, this period, especially the decades immediately following independence, has been referred to as the Dark Ages of American journalism—with the premise that the less said about it, the better. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that partisan journalism had its strengths, not the least of which was its tendency to contextualize political issues so that citizens could recognize seemingly random events as part of a coherent pattern. Such an approach tends to draw people into public life. Observers note that nations around the world with partisan press systems tend to have high voter turnouts and more passionate political cultures. In the United States, the high-water mark for partisan journalism was arguably the 1820s and 1830s, and in the northern states this era is characterized as one of broad democratic participation among those who were allowed to vote.
Partisan press systems have their clear downside, too. After all, the press systems of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were partisan. A partisan press can degenerate into shameless lying and blatant propaganda, the purpose of which is to depoliticize the citizens rather than engage them. The key to having partisan journalism promote democratic values, rather than repress them, is to have a wide range of partisan viewpoints available, and for it to be feasible to launch a new partisan newspaper or magazine if one is dissatisfied with the existing range of options. One way to view the freedom of the press clause in the First Amendment is to see that it protects the right of citizens to launch their own publications, even if they are opposed to the political views of those holding political power at the time. That radical idea was mainstream thinking at the time of the country’s founding.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, massive postal and printing subsidies assured that there was a range of newspapers and magazines in circulation far beyond what market forces would have permitted. Over the course of the nineteenth century, as publishing became an increasingly lucrative sector, market competition generated innumerable new newspapers, with publishers seeking profit as much or more than political influence. This was a classic competitive market, where new entrepreneurs could enter the field and launch a newspaper with relative ease if they were dissatisfied with the existing publications. Major cities like New York or Chicago or St. Louis tended to have well over a dozen daily newspapers at any given time, reflecting a fairly broad range of political viewpoints. The system was far from perfect, yet it worked.
But built within the commercial press system of the late nineteenth century were the seeds of its own destruction, which led to the greatest crisis in U.S. journalism until the one we are in the midst of today. On the one hand, as newspapering became an explicitly commercial enterprise, political journalism was no longer privileged per se, as the point was to generate as many readers as possible as inexpensively as possible. This led to the rise of sensationalism, blatant fabrication of stories, widespread bribing of journalists, and all sorts of other disreputable measures that undermined the legitimacy of journalism.
On the other hand, as newspapering became big business, markets became much less competitive. By the early twentieth century, there were fewer and fewer newspapers in any given community, and in many towns there remained only one or two competing dailies. Barriers to entry emerged that made it virtually impossible to launch a new newspaper in a community, even if the existing papers were highly profitable. In short, newspaper publishing became monopolistic, far more so than most other major industries. Indeed, there has not been a single profitable new daily newspaper established in the United States in an existing market since World War I, despite the growth of the nation and the exceptional profitability in the industry overall.
This led to a political crisis for journalism. It was one thing for newspapers to be stridently partisan when there were numerous competing voices and when it was not impossible to launch a new newspaper if the existing range was unsatisfactory. It was altogether different when there were only one or two newspapers and it was impossible to start a new one. Moreover, as the papers were larger and the owners were always wealthy, the politics tended to be antilabor and probusiness. In community after community, newspapers were in bed with those who owned and controlled the community. In this context partisanship reeked of the heavy-handedness one associates with authoritarian regimes, or, to be more accurate, company towns.
During the first decades of the twentieth century, the crisis spawned by sensationalism and right-wing crony partisanship reached a boiling point. In the 1912 presidential race, all three challengers to President William Howard Taft—Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, and Socialist Eugene Debs—criticized the corruption and venality of the press. It was in this cauldron of controversy that professional journalism was spawned. A driving force was the publishers themselves who understood that partisan and sensationalistic journalism was undermining their business model. They had to accept self-regulation to protect their profits and to ward off the threat of organized public-reform efforts.
Professional journalism was the solution to the crisis. It was the revolutionary idea that the owner and editor of a newspaper would be split, and a “Chinese Wall” put between them. News would no longer be shaped to suit the partisan interests of press owners, but rather would be determined by trained nonpartisan professionals, using judgment and skills honed in journalism schools. There were no such schools in 1900; by the end of World War I nearly every major journalism school in the nation had been established, often at the behest of newspaper owners. Professionalism meant that the news would appear the same whether the paper was owned by a Republican or a Democrat. Professionalism meant that there was no longer any reason to be concerned about the monopolistic nature of newspaper markets since owners would not abuse their power and, besides, so the theory went, more newspapers in the same community would merely reproduce the same professional content, so they were redundant.
Professional journalism: pros and cons
The strengths of professionalism are self-evident. It gives editors and reporters a measure of independence from the owners’ politics and from commercial pressures to shape the news to please advertisers and the bottom line. It places a premium on being fair and upon being accurate. It makes it a cardinal sin, a career killer, to accept bribes or to fabricate stories. No wonder so many Americans think that the problem with U.S. journalism is that there is too little “objectivity,” as professional journalism is often characterized, albeit inaccurately. But even the strongest proponents of neutral journalism now recognize that values play a crucial role in story selection, deciding what gets covered and what does not, not to mention how the coverage is framed. Journalists covering a story can never be objective in the sense of a number of mathematicians who would all come up with the same answer for a problem. Instead of objectivity, the preferred terms today are fairness, accuracy, and balance.
Professionalism looked awfully good compared to what it replaced and was largely welcomed across the board. Yet criticism of the weaknesses of professional journalism and its biases began almost immediately, and by the second half of the twentieth century had become widespread in both journalists’ memoirs and in sociological criticism of the news. As Ben Bagdikian famously put it, the core problems with professional journalism as it developed in the United States are threefold: 1) reliance on official sources; 2) fear of context; 3) a “dig here, not there,” built-in bias concerning what areas of power are fair game and what are off-limits.
Professional journalism places a premium on legitimate news stories based upon what people in power say and do. The appeal is clear. It removes the tinge of controversy from story selection—”Hey, the Governor said it so we had to cover it”—and it makes journalism less expensive: Simply place reporters near people in power and have them report on what is said and done. It also gives journalism a very conventional feel, as those in power have a great deal of control over what gets covered and what does not. Reporting often turns into dictation as journalists are loathe to antagonize their sources, depending upon them as they do for stories. Indeed, successful politicians learn to exploit journalists’ dependence upon official sources to maximum effect. This dependence also makes possible what the modern public-relations industry does in its surreptitious manner.
The best-case scenario for journalists relying on official sources is when people in power have strong debates over fundamental issues, providing a good deal of wiggle room in which journalists can operate. The 2005 debate over privatizing Social Security is a good example, as President Bush and leading Democrats squared off in opposite corners. The worst-case scenario, where those in power are in general agreement and are not debating an issue, is a nightmare for democratic journalism. If journalists raise an issue that no one in power is debating, they are instantly accused of being ideological and unprofessional and attempting to force their own views into the news. It is criticism few journalists enjoy—it can be a career killer—so the reliance on official sources has a tremendous disciplinary effect on the range of legitimate news stories. It also means the public is at the mercy of those in power to a far greater extent than was the case under partisan journalism.
Context is often eschewed by professional journalism because it opens the door to the charge of partisanship. It is awfully difficult to contextualize a story well without showing some partisan inclinations or making some controversial value judgments. So professional journalism tends to pummel people with facts, but rarely pummels people with a nuanced appreciation of what the facts might mean. This helps explain the numerous studies that show that sustained consumption of the news on a particular subject often does not lead to a better understanding of the subject and sometimes leads to more confusion. Which means that professional news can have the ironic effect of making public life more confusing and less interesting and attractive, thereby promoting depoliticization. This is one area where professional journalism as it developed in the United States stands in direct contrast to its partisan predecessor. If nothing else, partisan journalism put stories in context and attempted to find the common thread between them.
“Dig here, not there” refers to the implicit or unspoken biases built into the professional code. They tend to be the biases that are favored by media owners, and journalists who climb the organizational ladder tend to be those who have the least problem internalizing them. For example, it is unusual for local news media to do hard-hitting critical examinations of the most powerful families and commercial institutions in their own communities. It is one of the great weak spots of our journalism, because if the local media in Decatur, Illinois, do not investigate the big shots of Decatur, it is highly unlikely the local news media of Fresno, California, will send a delegation of reporters to Decatur to do the job for them.
At a more macro level, as Bagdikian points out, our news media have internalized the notion that corporate power is largely benevolent, capitalism is synonymous with democracy, and the United States is a force for good in the world. So it is that corporate malfeasance gets barely a sniff of investigative journalism, unless blatant transgressions affect investors, while stories concerning governmental malfeasance, especially in programs intended to benefit the poor and working class, are stock-in-trade.
When professional journalism is looked at in this light, it can be seen as a mixed blessing. Not only does professional journalism have biases, it has the audacity to insist that it is unbiased.
A return to explicit partisanship?
Some have concluded, after a rigorous accounting of the flaws in professional journalism, that we would be far better to return to a more explicitly partisan form of journalism. Let’s cut the flawed pretense of neutrality and professionalism, the reasoning goes, and let all sides have at it. The problem with this argument is that it accepts the premise that the type of professional journalism that emerged in the United States is the only type possible, and the only alternative to it is explicit partisanship. In fact, there was a major debate in the 1930s over what constituted professional journalism between the newly formed journalists’ union, the Newspaper Guild, and the press barons. To George Seldes and Heywood Broun of the Newspaper Guild, the reliance upon official sources and the internalization of the owners’ biases was anathema to genuine professional journalism. They argued that a truly independent journalism required journalists to stand outside of partisan institutions, assuming the perspective of those outside of power. As the legendary expression goes, journalism should “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”
For Seldes’s vision of independent professional journalism to take hold, it would require that journalists use their union to prevent owners from having any control over the editorial contents of the paper, to make the Chinese Wall impermeable, and for the staff to be accountable directly to the public. Unfortunately, Seldes and the Newspaper Guild lost this fight to the extent it was ever much in play. By the 1940s the Guild became a conventional trade union, and what we know as professional journalism was on the verge of being adopted by all U.S. news media with the exception of a few cranky holdouts, like William Loeb in New Hampshire. But the Seldes vision of independent professional journalism has survived on the margins, in the work of journalists such as Seymour Hersh, Bill Moyers, Charles Lewis, and Amy Goodman, to mention but a few. It is dismissed as partisan by those who dislike the glaring light of public attention upon those in power, and because sympathy with those out of power is regarded as unacceptably ideological. But what makes this journalism so powerful is that it actually applies the same hard look at all in power regardless of party affiliation.
Professional journalism enjoyed a golden age of sorts in the late 1960s and 1970s. Although there was sharp criticism of mainstream journalism during this period in the alternative press, and in journalism reviews edited by working reporters, the resources, autonomy, and institutional strength of professional journalism were arguably at their peak during these years. On the heels of the Watergate scandal and the Nixon resignation, professional journalism enjoyed considerable prestige and was regarded as a central force for good in the nation. In the classic 1970s film drama Three Days of the Condor, the film ends with Robert Redford’s character entering the New York Times building to turn over his evidence of government chicanery. The insinuation was that journalists would slay the dragon and we would all live happily ever after.
A more contemporary Hollywood drama on journalism, The Insider, a few years ago told the true story of how management pressure led CBS News to spike an interview with a tobacco industry whistle-blower. Today, the expectation that journalists could or would provide a happy ending turns out to be unrealistic, unless the film is a farce.
The commercial assault on journalism
Since the 1970s, professional journalism has been under sharp attack on two fronts. First, a wave of media consolidation and conglomeration combined with loosened federal regulations unleashed a commercial attack on the autonomy of professional journalism. Increasingly, the deal between media owners and journalists—the Chinese Wall separating church and state, commercial interests from journalistic values—no longer made as much business sense to the owners. Why should they lavish resources on news divisions unless those divisions generated the same returns as the other branches of the corporate empire? After all, the argument went, this is a business, not a charity, which must be accountable to shareholders’ needs for profit maximization above all else. If the market does not encourage journalism, then people must not want or need journalism, or at least the quaint old journalism of yesteryear. Because the deal between owners and journalists was never in writing, it has eroded under steady commercial pressure.
Understood in this context, much of what has transpired in journalism over the past two or three decades makes sense. On the one hand, there has been a decrease in resources for journalism. On the other hand, journalism standards for what is considered a legitimate story have gradually transformed to incorporate the newly commercialized environment. All in all, the autonomy of professional journalism is disappearing in a manner similar to the Amazon rainforest or the ozone layer.
The reduction in resources for journalism has been widely chronicled. It means many fewer resources for investigative reporting. Roberta Baskin, who has won seventy-five awards and two Peabodys with ABC and CBS, among others, says that investigative journalism became the first area cut over the past two decades as corporate values conquered the newsroom. Moreover, investigative journalism went from being a protected and encouraged entity to something viewed by corporate managers with suspicion. “The lawyers for the media firms have always checked our stories for possible legal issues,” Baskin states. “But whereas the lawyers were once sympathetic, playing an advocacy role to the journalists and trying to get their stories on the air, now they’re representing the perspective of the owners, that investigative journalism is a lot of trouble and the less of it the better.” As Charles Lewis has noted, much of what passes for investigative journalism today simply involves an insider leaking a story to a reporter.
International coverage is also on the kill list. Expensive correspondents produce lots of red ink and very little black ink. Veteran CBS News foreign correspondent Tom Fenton wrote a devastating account of the decline of international coverage in the U.S. media, especially television news, in his 2005 book, Bad News. Fenton notes that the amount of coverage in U.S. newspapers and on TV news devoted to foreign affairs dropped by 70 to 80 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Fenton outlines in depressing detail the utter lack of interest corporate media executives have in covering the world. By the time the 9/11 attacks occurred, the news media had left the American public with no grounding to evaluate what had taken place and why. An American arguably had to devote enormous attention to scouring obscure sites on the Internet or pursue an advanced degree in international politics in order to have the same sense of the world that many Europeans had from exposure to their mainstream media. And despite a lot of hot air immediately following the 9/11 attacks that the news media would begin to cover the world again, such rhetoric was never taken seriously by corporate media managers.
The reduction in the number of reporters overall means increased reliance upon public relations news releases as the basis for news stories. On television, journalism is replaced by uninformed punditry and pointless prognostication, an inexpensive and entertaining way to maximize profit, but nothing remotely close to journalism. Indeed, the real revolution brought on by the FOX News Channel is less its turn to partisanship as it is its replacement of costly journalism with relatively inexpensive pundit blowhards. It is a winning business model, and highly attractive to all media owners. The other alternative is the outright elimination of news, as has happened on many radio stations and on a growing number of television stations. In town after town, there are barely a handful of journalists on the job, and issues of considerable importance get only cursory mention or no treatment whatsoever.
This means that the traditional malady of professional journalism, that it basically reports debates between elites, becomes a cancer. It is one thing to report on debates and then do some investigation, some journalism, to ascertain what the truth of the matter is. It is quite another thing to report on debates and competing claims and wash one’s hands of any responsibility to examine the claims. In journalism today it is increasingly the rule that if a journalist challenges a politician’s claim, they are accused of being partisan, which is anathema. It is left to the politician’s opponent to make the challenge and produce the evidence, not the journalist. But since a political opponent can always be dismissed as partisan, a politician can lie with impunity. Journalists spend much more time evaluating whether politicians can successfully spin the public—i.e., lie—than they do holding politicians responsible for lying. Our journalistic environment today is a liar’s paradise.
This excerpt from Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy by Robert McChesney and John Nichols was published with the permission of The New Press. collected
At a panel discussion at American University tonight in conjunction with the Online News Association conference, called "An American Forum: The Future of News is Here, Now What?" Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said he's trying to push the state of journalism ahead by investing in a number of innovative citizen media journalism ventures. He hopes doing so will help bring more professionalism to citizen media and thus enable it to have more impact and be higher quality.
"There is no substitute for reporting,"he said. "There is no substitute for professionalism in journalism....
The model in blogging is often publish first and check later, and a little more professionalism is needed."
The Dark Ages
In recent journalism history textbooks, this period, especially the decades immediately following independence, has been referred to as the Dark Ages of American journalism—with the premise that the less said about it, the better. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that partisan journalism had its strengths, not the least of which was its tendency to contextualize political issues so that citizens could recognize seemingly random events as part of a coherent pattern. Such an approach tends to draw people into public life. Observers note that nations around the world with partisan press systems tend to have high voter turnouts and more passionate political cultures. In the United States, the high-water mark for partisan journalism was arguably the 1820s and 1830s, and in the northern states this era is characterized as one of broad democratic participation among those who were allowed to vote.
Partisan press systems have their clear downside, too. After all, the press systems of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were partisan. A partisan press can degenerate into shameless lying and blatant propaganda, the purpose of which is to depoliticize the citizens rather than engage them. The key to having partisan journalism promote democratic values, rather than repress them, is to have a wide range of partisan viewpoints available, and for it to be feasible to launch a new partisan newspaper or magazine if one is dissatisfied with the existing range of options. One way to view the freedom of the press clause in the First Amendment is to see that it protects the right of citizens to launch their own publications, even if they are opposed to the political views of those holding political power at the time. That radical idea was mainstream thinking at the time of the country’s founding.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, massive postal and printing subsidies assured that there was a range of newspapers and magazines in circulation far beyond what market forces would have permitted. Over the course of the nineteenth century, as publishing became an increasingly lucrative sector, market competition generated innumerable new newspapers, with publishers seeking profit as much or more than political influence. This was a classic competitive market, where new entrepreneurs could enter the field and launch a newspaper with relative ease if they were dissatisfied with the existing publications. Major cities like New York or Chicago or St. Louis tended to have well over a dozen daily newspapers at any given time, reflecting a fairly broad range of political viewpoints. The system was far from perfect, yet it worked.
But built within the commercial press system of the late nineteenth century were the seeds of its own destruction, which led to the greatest crisis in U.S. journalism until the one we are in the midst of today. On the one hand, as newspapering became an explicitly commercial enterprise, political journalism was no longer privileged per se, as the point was to generate as many readers as possible as inexpensively as possible. This led to the rise of sensationalism, blatant fabrication of stories, widespread bribing of journalists, and all sorts of other disreputable measures that undermined the legitimacy of journalism.
On the other hand, as newspapering became big business, markets became much less competitive. By the early twentieth century, there were fewer and fewer newspapers in any given community, and in many towns there remained only one or two competing dailies. Barriers to entry emerged that made it virtually impossible to launch a new newspaper in a community, even if the existing papers were highly profitable. In short, newspaper publishing became monopolistic, far more so than most other major industries. Indeed, there has not been a single profitable new daily newspaper established in the United States in an existing market since World War I, despite the growth of the nation and the exceptional profitability in the industry overall.
This led to a political crisis for journalism. It was one thing for newspapers to be stridently partisan when there were numerous competing voices and when it was not impossible to launch a new newspaper if the existing range was unsatisfactory. It was altogether different when there were only one or two newspapers and it was impossible to start a new one. Moreover, as the papers were larger and the owners were always wealthy, the politics tended to be antilabor and probusiness. In community after community, newspapers were in bed with those who owned and controlled the community. In this context partisanship reeked of the heavy-handedness one associates with authoritarian regimes, or, to be more accurate, company towns.
During the first decades of the twentieth century, the crisis spawned by sensationalism and right-wing crony partisanship reached a boiling point. In the 1912 presidential race, all three challengers to President William Howard Taft—Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, and Socialist Eugene Debs—criticized the corruption and venality of the press. It was in this cauldron of controversy that professional journalism was spawned. A driving force was the publishers themselves who understood that partisan and sensationalistic journalism was undermining their business model. They had to accept self-regulation to protect their profits and to ward off the threat of organized public-reform efforts.
Professional journalism was the solution to the crisis. It was the revolutionary idea that the owner and editor of a newspaper would be split, and a “Chinese Wall” put between them. News would no longer be shaped to suit the partisan interests of press owners, but rather would be determined by trained nonpartisan professionals, using judgment and skills honed in journalism schools. There were no such schools in 1900; by the end of World War I nearly every major journalism school in the nation had been established, often at the behest of newspaper owners. Professionalism meant that the news would appear the same whether the paper was owned by a Republican or a Democrat. Professionalism meant that there was no longer any reason to be concerned about the monopolistic nature of newspaper markets since owners would not abuse their power and, besides, so the theory went, more newspapers in the same community would merely reproduce the same professional content, so they were redundant.
Professional journalism: pros and cons
The strengths of professionalism are self-evident. It gives editors and reporters a measure of independence from the owners’ politics and from commercial pressures to shape the news to please advertisers and the bottom line. It places a premium on being fair and upon being accurate. It makes it a cardinal sin, a career killer, to accept bribes or to fabricate stories. No wonder so many Americans think that the problem with U.S. journalism is that there is too little “objectivity,” as professional journalism is often characterized, albeit inaccurately. But even the strongest proponents of neutral journalism now recognize that values play a crucial role in story selection, deciding what gets covered and what does not, not to mention how the coverage is framed. Journalists covering a story can never be objective in the sense of a number of mathematicians who would all come up with the same answer for a problem. Instead of objectivity, the preferred terms today are fairness, accuracy, and balance.
Professionalism looked awfully good compared to what it replaced and was largely welcomed across the board. Yet criticism of the weaknesses of professional journalism and its biases began almost immediately, and by the second half of the twentieth century had become widespread in both journalists’ memoirs and in sociological criticism of the news. As Ben Bagdikian famously put it, the core problems with professional journalism as it developed in the United States are threefold: 1) reliance on official sources; 2) fear of context; 3) a “dig here, not there,” built-in bias concerning what areas of power are fair game and what are off-limits.
Professional journalism places a premium on legitimate news stories based upon what people in power say and do. The appeal is clear. It removes the tinge of controversy from story selection—”Hey, the Governor said it so we had to cover it”—and it makes journalism less expensive: Simply place reporters near people in power and have them report on what is said and done. It also gives journalism a very conventional feel, as those in power have a great deal of control over what gets covered and what does not. Reporting often turns into dictation as journalists are loathe to antagonize their sources, depending upon them as they do for stories. Indeed, successful politicians learn to exploit journalists’ dependence upon official sources to maximum effect. This dependence also makes possible what the modern public-relations industry does in its surreptitious manner.
The best-case scenario for journalists relying on official sources is when people in power have strong debates over fundamental issues, providing a good deal of wiggle room in which journalists can operate. The 2005 debate over privatizing Social Security is a good example, as President Bush and leading Democrats squared off in opposite corners. The worst-case scenario, where those in power are in general agreement and are not debating an issue, is a nightmare for democratic journalism. If journalists raise an issue that no one in power is debating, they are instantly accused of being ideological and unprofessional and attempting to force their own views into the news. It is criticism few journalists enjoy—it can be a career killer—so the reliance on official sources has a tremendous disciplinary effect on the range of legitimate news stories. It also means the public is at the mercy of those in power to a far greater extent than was the case under partisan journalism.
Context is often eschewed by professional journalism because it opens the door to the charge of partisanship. It is awfully difficult to contextualize a story well without showing some partisan inclinations or making some controversial value judgments. So professional journalism tends to pummel people with facts, but rarely pummels people with a nuanced appreciation of what the facts might mean. This helps explain the numerous studies that show that sustained consumption of the news on a particular subject often does not lead to a better understanding of the subject and sometimes leads to more confusion. Which means that professional news can have the ironic effect of making public life more confusing and less interesting and attractive, thereby promoting depoliticization. This is one area where professional journalism as it developed in the United States stands in direct contrast to its partisan predecessor. If nothing else, partisan journalism put stories in context and attempted to find the common thread between them.
“Dig here, not there” refers to the implicit or unspoken biases built into the professional code. They tend to be the biases that are favored by media owners, and journalists who climb the organizational ladder tend to be those who have the least problem internalizing them. For example, it is unusual for local news media to do hard-hitting critical examinations of the most powerful families and commercial institutions in their own communities. It is one of the great weak spots of our journalism, because if the local media in Decatur, Illinois, do not investigate the big shots of Decatur, it is highly unlikely the local news media of Fresno, California, will send a delegation of reporters to Decatur to do the job for them.
At a more macro level, as Bagdikian points out, our news media have internalized the notion that corporate power is largely benevolent, capitalism is synonymous with democracy, and the United States is a force for good in the world. So it is that corporate malfeasance gets barely a sniff of investigative journalism, unless blatant transgressions affect investors, while stories concerning governmental malfeasance, especially in programs intended to benefit the poor and working class, are stock-in-trade.
When professional journalism is looked at in this light, it can be seen as a mixed blessing. Not only does professional journalism have biases, it has the audacity to insist that it is unbiased.
A return to explicit partisanship?
Some have concluded, after a rigorous accounting of the flaws in professional journalism, that we would be far better to return to a more explicitly partisan form of journalism. Let’s cut the flawed pretense of neutrality and professionalism, the reasoning goes, and let all sides have at it. The problem with this argument is that it accepts the premise that the type of professional journalism that emerged in the United States is the only type possible, and the only alternative to it is explicit partisanship. In fact, there was a major debate in the 1930s over what constituted professional journalism between the newly formed journalists’ union, the Newspaper Guild, and the press barons. To George Seldes and Heywood Broun of the Newspaper Guild, the reliance upon official sources and the internalization of the owners’ biases was anathema to genuine professional journalism. They argued that a truly independent journalism required journalists to stand outside of partisan institutions, assuming the perspective of those outside of power. As the legendary expression goes, journalism should “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”
For Seldes’s vision of independent professional journalism to take hold, it would require that journalists use their union to prevent owners from having any control over the editorial contents of the paper, to make the Chinese Wall impermeable, and for the staff to be accountable directly to the public. Unfortunately, Seldes and the Newspaper Guild lost this fight to the extent it was ever much in play. By the 1940s the Guild became a conventional trade union, and what we know as professional journalism was on the verge of being adopted by all U.S. news media with the exception of a few cranky holdouts, like William Loeb in New Hampshire. But the Seldes vision of independent professional journalism has survived on the margins, in the work of journalists such as Seymour Hersh, Bill Moyers, Charles Lewis, and Amy Goodman, to mention but a few. It is dismissed as partisan by those who dislike the glaring light of public attention upon those in power, and because sympathy with those out of power is regarded as unacceptably ideological. But what makes this journalism so powerful is that it actually applies the same hard look at all in power regardless of party affiliation.
Professional journalism enjoyed a golden age of sorts in the late 1960s and 1970s. Although there was sharp criticism of mainstream journalism during this period in the alternative press, and in journalism reviews edited by working reporters, the resources, autonomy, and institutional strength of professional journalism were arguably at their peak during these years. On the heels of the Watergate scandal and the Nixon resignation, professional journalism enjoyed considerable prestige and was regarded as a central force for good in the nation. In the classic 1970s film drama Three Days of the Condor, the film ends with Robert Redford’s character entering the New York Times building to turn over his evidence of government chicanery. The insinuation was that journalists would slay the dragon and we would all live happily ever after.
A more contemporary Hollywood drama on journalism, The Insider, a few years ago told the true story of how management pressure led CBS News to spike an interview with a tobacco industry whistle-blower. Today, the expectation that journalists could or would provide a happy ending turns out to be unrealistic, unless the film is a farce.
The commercial assault on journalism
Since the 1970s, professional journalism has been under sharp attack on two fronts. First, a wave of media consolidation and conglomeration combined with loosened federal regulations unleashed a commercial attack on the autonomy of professional journalism. Increasingly, the deal between media owners and journalists—the Chinese Wall separating church and state, commercial interests from journalistic values—no longer made as much business sense to the owners. Why should they lavish resources on news divisions unless those divisions generated the same returns as the other branches of the corporate empire? After all, the argument went, this is a business, not a charity, which must be accountable to shareholders’ needs for profit maximization above all else. If the market does not encourage journalism, then people must not want or need journalism, or at least the quaint old journalism of yesteryear. Because the deal between owners and journalists was never in writing, it has eroded under steady commercial pressure.
Understood in this context, much of what has transpired in journalism over the past two or three decades makes sense. On the one hand, there has been a decrease in resources for journalism. On the other hand, journalism standards for what is considered a legitimate story have gradually transformed to incorporate the newly commercialized environment. All in all, the autonomy of professional journalism is disappearing in a manner similar to the Amazon rainforest or the ozone layer.
The reduction in resources for journalism has been widely chronicled. It means many fewer resources for investigative reporting. Roberta Baskin, who has won seventy-five awards and two Peabodys with ABC and CBS, among others, says that investigative journalism became the first area cut over the past two decades as corporate values conquered the newsroom. Moreover, investigative journalism went from being a protected and encouraged entity to something viewed by corporate managers with suspicion. “The lawyers for the media firms have always checked our stories for possible legal issues,” Baskin states. “But whereas the lawyers were once sympathetic, playing an advocacy role to the journalists and trying to get their stories on the air, now they’re representing the perspective of the owners, that investigative journalism is a lot of trouble and the less of it the better.” As Charles Lewis has noted, much of what passes for investigative journalism today simply involves an insider leaking a story to a reporter.
International coverage is also on the kill list. Expensive correspondents produce lots of red ink and very little black ink. Veteran CBS News foreign correspondent Tom Fenton wrote a devastating account of the decline of international coverage in the U.S. media, especially television news, in his 2005 book, Bad News. Fenton notes that the amount of coverage in U.S. newspapers and on TV news devoted to foreign affairs dropped by 70 to 80 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Fenton outlines in depressing detail the utter lack of interest corporate media executives have in covering the world. By the time the 9/11 attacks occurred, the news media had left the American public with no grounding to evaluate what had taken place and why. An American arguably had to devote enormous attention to scouring obscure sites on the Internet or pursue an advanced degree in international politics in order to have the same sense of the world that many Europeans had from exposure to their mainstream media. And despite a lot of hot air immediately following the 9/11 attacks that the news media would begin to cover the world again, such rhetoric was never taken seriously by corporate media managers.
The reduction in the number of reporters overall means increased reliance upon public relations news releases as the basis for news stories. On television, journalism is replaced by uninformed punditry and pointless prognostication, an inexpensive and entertaining way to maximize profit, but nothing remotely close to journalism. Indeed, the real revolution brought on by the FOX News Channel is less its turn to partisanship as it is its replacement of costly journalism with relatively inexpensive pundit blowhards. It is a winning business model, and highly attractive to all media owners. The other alternative is the outright elimination of news, as has happened on many radio stations and on a growing number of television stations. In town after town, there are barely a handful of journalists on the job, and issues of considerable importance get only cursory mention or no treatment whatsoever.
This means that the traditional malady of professional journalism, that it basically reports debates between elites, becomes a cancer. It is one thing to report on debates and then do some investigation, some journalism, to ascertain what the truth of the matter is. It is quite another thing to report on debates and competing claims and wash one’s hands of any responsibility to examine the claims. In journalism today it is increasingly the rule that if a journalist challenges a politician’s claim, they are accused of being partisan, which is anathema. It is left to the politician’s opponent to make the challenge and produce the evidence, not the journalist. But since a political opponent can always be dismissed as partisan, a politician can lie with impunity. Journalists spend much more time evaluating whether politicians can successfully spin the public—i.e., lie—than they do holding politicians responsible for lying. Our journalistic environment today is a liar’s paradise.
This excerpt from Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy by Robert McChesney and John Nichols was published with the permission of The New Press. collected
At a panel discussion at American University tonight in conjunction with the Online News Association conference, called "An American Forum: The Future of News is Here, Now What?" Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said he's trying to push the state of journalism ahead by investing in a number of innovative citizen media journalism ventures. He hopes doing so will help bring more professionalism to citizen media and thus enable it to have more impact and be higher quality.
"There is no substitute for reporting,"he said. "There is no substitute for professionalism in journalism....
The model in blogging is often publish first and check later, and a little more professionalism is needed."
The role of media and communication
It is important to understand the dominant socio-economic and cultural patterns underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content, mass-produced to feed the different traditional and new media.
“Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognised and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.” These words come from Article 1 of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and express very eloquently the need for diversity in all aspects of human activity.
With the tremendous development of the communication and information sectors, particular attention has been paid in recent years to the need for cultural diversity in the media as a way of preserving concepts of identity and social bonds within communities and cultures while promoting local cultural expression and local languages.There is no doubt that today’s media environment increases choices, provides opportunities for cultural expression and dialogue, and facilitates the flow of information at the planetary level. But during the last decades we have also witnessed a concentration of ownership and a limitation of access and content sources.
One of the main lines of the plan of action of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity clearly stresses the importance of encouraging the production, safeguarding and dissemination of diversified contents in the media and global information networks and, to that end, promoting the role of public radio and television services in the development of audiovisual productions of good quality, in particular by fostering the establishment of cooperative mechanisms to facilitate their distribution.
The importance of creating and distributing culturally diversified and local content for the new and traditional media is therefore formally recognised as a crucial factor in the promotion of cultural and linguistic expression.Local content is the expression of a community’s knowledge and experience, and the process of creating and disseminating, it provides opportunities to the members of the community to interact and communicate with each other, xpressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.
A community may be defined by its location, culture, language or area of interest and can comprise a whole region, a sub-region, a nation, a village or a group of people with strong cultural, linguistic, religious or common interest links. Thus, a community may include a handful of people or millions; its members may share the same location or be geographically dispersed. Communities are not static or exclusive and individuals may belong to many communities at the same time.
In this context, it is important to grasp and understand the dominant socio-economic and cultural patterns emerging on the back underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content that is being mass-produced to feed the different traditional and new media. The dominant trends are obviously the top-down flow of content from economically and socially powerful groups to less privileged and disadvantaged ones; from the more developed countries and more sophisticated media production houses to the less developed countries and networks.With the exception of community radio, which has traditionally allowed more local content production and dissemination,
The importance of creating and distributing culturally diversified and local content for the new and traditional media is therefore formally recognised as a crucial factor in the promotion of cultural and linguistic expression.
Local content is the expression of a community’s knowledge and experience, and the process of creating and disseminating, it provides opportunities to the members of the community to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.
A community may be defined by its location, culture, language or area of interest and can comprise a whole region, a sub-region, a nation, a village or a group of people with strong cultural, linguistic, religious or common interest links. Thus, a community may include a handful of people or millions; its members may share the same location or be geographically dispersed. Communities are not static or exclusive and individuals may belong to many communities at the same time.
In this context, it is important to grasp and understand the dominant socio-economic and cultural patterns emerging on the back underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content that is being mass-produced to feed the different traditional and new media. The dominant trends are obviously the top-down flow of content from economically and socially powerful groups to less privileged and disadvantaged ones; from the more developed countries and more sophisticated media production houses to the less developed countries and networks.With the exception of community radio, which has traditionally allowed more local content production and dissemination,
the content made available to billions of people worldwide through television and the Internet, comes from a very limited number of sources. A recent research study conducted by UNESCO in the Pacific region shows that, despite tremendous improvements in the recent past, some island countries are still trying to reach a 10% of local content on their television screens.
Known important local content producers are - India in Asia; Brazil and Mexico in Latin America; Nigeria in Africa but the success of these industries has often sacrificed quality and public service for commercial considerations, often reducing the potential of the medium to its entertainment and advertising dimensions. There is yet another problem that has been proved to be more difficult to overcome than content production, it is its distribution. Broadcasters worldwide, but particularly in developing countries, public or commercial, prefer buying low-price Western packages than purchasing the broadcasting rights of content made in the region, the latter being more costly and requiring an effort of accustoming their audiences. Even if broadcasters often have no choice because of weak or non-existent production and programming budgets, it is also a matter of lack of commitment at the decision-making level, where the importance of local content for the promotion of cultural diversity is not yet fully recognised.The consequence of current audio-visual distribution practices is that neighbouring countries ignore the content produced beyond their borders, contributing to the lack of understanding between their populations.As for the “new content” made available through the Internet, this comes often in languages which are not understood by billions of people. The English language has become a pre-requisite for having access nearly to half of the overall knowledge and information available through the net, let alone in search engines, metadata, indexes, catalogues, site directories etc.UNESCO’s strategy to promote content development relies on creating proactive partnerships with content creators, media organisations, NGOs, distribution and broadcasting outlets and professional international organisations. For this, the Organisation launched two years ago the Programme for Creative Content, which aims at boosting the production and distribution of local content for television, radio and new media.
The search for new tools, with which poorer countries and communities can develop their creativity and reach wider audiences and markets while safeguarding their cultural identity, has become easier with the latest technological developments. Internet delivery, for example, provides new energy to this sector and a whole new range of possibilities in terms of audiences. It is true that the economy of some sectors (e.g. the music industry) is being threatened by these new developments and the negative consequences of the abuse being made by some users (e.g. piracy). This is unfortunately inherent to every new technological development and an effort of adjustment to the new landscape will be necessary for many. But one cannot deny the fascinating avenues that are being opened for small groups and individuals to communicate and deliver their contents.
In this spirit, UNESCO has just launched an Audiovisual e-Platform, a multicultural, on-line catalogue for independent producers and broadcasters. The e-Platform, now fully operational, intends to increase the flow of content among countries that are unusual content providers, empowering local, independent producers to reach international audiences, and creating a new space for intercultural communication and dialogue.
In other words, the platform aims at becoming an alternative communication channel, offering very diverse approaches to audiovisual story-telling and content production. The programming available through this system consists of recently directed television productions, including documentaries, short fiction films, children’s programmes and TV-magazines, that are innovative in form or content, going beyond conventional forms of television language as well as a genuine expression of different cultures in the world. All these challenging and creative productions can be fully screened on-line and acquired by contacting the right-owner. Moreover, the system provides a forum for discussion as well as e-mailing and news services.
The system is highly secured and restricted to professional use. It works at two different levels. At an individual level, independent directors, producers and distributors are able to use this tool to promote their work on their own by giving access to their contacts to their personal catalogues. At an institutional level, UNESCO and its partners are able to stimulate the distribution of the platform’s materials with broadcasters, distribution networks, festivals, cultural institutions and other partners.
And I should stress that UNESCO is very interested in strengthening its collaboration with these “other partners”, such as local associations, media libraries or cultural centres, as they can become a significant new audience for this kind of materials. The addition of all these local players at the international level can result in an important, unprecedented network of professionals interested in content generated in every region of the world. To sum up, the idea is to empower local content producers while enhancing the effectiveness of the Internet as a medium for communication and delivery.
We hope that in one-year’s time we will have an important community of users and that their usage will translate into benefits for the local content producers.
The next step may be to open this kind of initiatives to the general public for a modest fee, following the pay-per-view principle, which can then replenish the independent authors’ content production budget lines, ensuring some sustainability and keeping creativity alive in the audiovisual sector.
“Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognised and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.” These words come from Article 1 of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and express very eloquently the need for diversity in all aspects of human activity.
With the tremendous development of the communication and information sectors, particular attention has been paid in recent years to the need for cultural diversity in the media as a way of preserving concepts of identity and social bonds within communities and cultures while promoting local cultural expression and local languages.There is no doubt that today’s media environment increases choices, provides opportunities for cultural expression and dialogue, and facilitates the flow of information at the planetary level. But during the last decades we have also witnessed a concentration of ownership and a limitation of access and content sources.
One of the main lines of the plan of action of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity clearly stresses the importance of encouraging the production, safeguarding and dissemination of diversified contents in the media and global information networks and, to that end, promoting the role of public radio and television services in the development of audiovisual productions of good quality, in particular by fostering the establishment of cooperative mechanisms to facilitate their distribution.
The importance of creating and distributing culturally diversified and local content for the new and traditional media is therefore formally recognised as a crucial factor in the promotion of cultural and linguistic expression.Local content is the expression of a community’s knowledge and experience, and the process of creating and disseminating, it provides opportunities to the members of the community to interact and communicate with each other, xpressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.
A community may be defined by its location, culture, language or area of interest and can comprise a whole region, a sub-region, a nation, a village or a group of people with strong cultural, linguistic, religious or common interest links. Thus, a community may include a handful of people or millions; its members may share the same location or be geographically dispersed. Communities are not static or exclusive and individuals may belong to many communities at the same time.
In this context, it is important to grasp and understand the dominant socio-economic and cultural patterns emerging on the back underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content that is being mass-produced to feed the different traditional and new media. The dominant trends are obviously the top-down flow of content from economically and socially powerful groups to less privileged and disadvantaged ones; from the more developed countries and more sophisticated media production houses to the less developed countries and networks.With the exception of community radio, which has traditionally allowed more local content production and dissemination,
The importance of creating and distributing culturally diversified and local content for the new and traditional media is therefore formally recognised as a crucial factor in the promotion of cultural and linguistic expression.
Local content is the expression of a community’s knowledge and experience, and the process of creating and disseminating, it provides opportunities to the members of the community to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.
A community may be defined by its location, culture, language or area of interest and can comprise a whole region, a sub-region, a nation, a village or a group of people with strong cultural, linguistic, religious or common interest links. Thus, a community may include a handful of people or millions; its members may share the same location or be geographically dispersed. Communities are not static or exclusive and individuals may belong to many communities at the same time.
In this context, it is important to grasp and understand the dominant socio-economic and cultural patterns emerging on the back underlying the creation and distribution of the entertainment and information content that is being mass-produced to feed the different traditional and new media. The dominant trends are obviously the top-down flow of content from economically and socially powerful groups to less privileged and disadvantaged ones; from the more developed countries and more sophisticated media production houses to the less developed countries and networks.With the exception of community radio, which has traditionally allowed more local content production and dissemination,
the content made available to billions of people worldwide through television and the Internet, comes from a very limited number of sources. A recent research study conducted by UNESCO in the Pacific region shows that, despite tremendous improvements in the recent past, some island countries are still trying to reach a 10% of local content on their television screens.
Known important local content producers are - India in Asia; Brazil and Mexico in Latin America; Nigeria in Africa but the success of these industries has often sacrificed quality and public service for commercial considerations, often reducing the potential of the medium to its entertainment and advertising dimensions. There is yet another problem that has been proved to be more difficult to overcome than content production, it is its distribution. Broadcasters worldwide, but particularly in developing countries, public or commercial, prefer buying low-price Western packages than purchasing the broadcasting rights of content made in the region, the latter being more costly and requiring an effort of accustoming their audiences. Even if broadcasters often have no choice because of weak or non-existent production and programming budgets, it is also a matter of lack of commitment at the decision-making level, where the importance of local content for the promotion of cultural diversity is not yet fully recognised.The consequence of current audio-visual distribution practices is that neighbouring countries ignore the content produced beyond their borders, contributing to the lack of understanding between their populations.As for the “new content” made available through the Internet, this comes often in languages which are not understood by billions of people. The English language has become a pre-requisite for having access nearly to half of the overall knowledge and information available through the net, let alone in search engines, metadata, indexes, catalogues, site directories etc.UNESCO’s strategy to promote content development relies on creating proactive partnerships with content creators, media organisations, NGOs, distribution and broadcasting outlets and professional international organisations. For this, the Organisation launched two years ago the Programme for Creative Content, which aims at boosting the production and distribution of local content for television, radio and new media.
The search for new tools, with which poorer countries and communities can develop their creativity and reach wider audiences and markets while safeguarding their cultural identity, has become easier with the latest technological developments. Internet delivery, for example, provides new energy to this sector and a whole new range of possibilities in terms of audiences. It is true that the economy of some sectors (e.g. the music industry) is being threatened by these new developments and the negative consequences of the abuse being made by some users (e.g. piracy). This is unfortunately inherent to every new technological development and an effort of adjustment to the new landscape will be necessary for many. But one cannot deny the fascinating avenues that are being opened for small groups and individuals to communicate and deliver their contents.
In this spirit, UNESCO has just launched an Audiovisual e-Platform, a multicultural, on-line catalogue for independent producers and broadcasters. The e-Platform, now fully operational, intends to increase the flow of content among countries that are unusual content providers, empowering local, independent producers to reach international audiences, and creating a new space for intercultural communication and dialogue.
In other words, the platform aims at becoming an alternative communication channel, offering very diverse approaches to audiovisual story-telling and content production. The programming available through this system consists of recently directed television productions, including documentaries, short fiction films, children’s programmes and TV-magazines, that are innovative in form or content, going beyond conventional forms of television language as well as a genuine expression of different cultures in the world. All these challenging and creative productions can be fully screened on-line and acquired by contacting the right-owner. Moreover, the system provides a forum for discussion as well as e-mailing and news services.
The system is highly secured and restricted to professional use. It works at two different levels. At an individual level, independent directors, producers and distributors are able to use this tool to promote their work on their own by giving access to their contacts to their personal catalogues. At an institutional level, UNESCO and its partners are able to stimulate the distribution of the platform’s materials with broadcasters, distribution networks, festivals, cultural institutions and other partners.
And I should stress that UNESCO is very interested in strengthening its collaboration with these “other partners”, such as local associations, media libraries or cultural centres, as they can become a significant new audience for this kind of materials. The addition of all these local players at the international level can result in an important, unprecedented network of professionals interested in content generated in every region of the world. To sum up, the idea is to empower local content producers while enhancing the effectiveness of the Internet as a medium for communication and delivery.
We hope that in one-year’s time we will have an important community of users and that their usage will translate into benefits for the local content producers.
The next step may be to open this kind of initiatives to the general public for a modest fee, following the pay-per-view principle, which can then replenish the independent authors’ content production budget lines, ensuring some sustainability and keeping creativity alive in the audiovisual sector.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Moment with U
The years have seen many autumns pass
In the seasons our hearts once knew
The richness of the
Scarlet leaves
Reveals special times
With you.
The hand of time keeps
ticking on
As down the road we go
Our hearts locked in a
bond of love
As we walk in fallen snow.
I saw your soul light up
the sky
And your heart began to sing
As tiny arms reached
out to you
In the summer that
followed spring .
Can you belive that
summer is gone
And autumn is here again
Its time to stop and
reminiscence
About where our lives
have been .
A few more lines now
trace your face
Soft shadows veil and wall
Our children have seen gone away
And faded leaves to fall.
But our love has known
few changes
With the passing of the days
except to grow still stronger
In so may little ways.
Those vows we took so
long ago
To always have
and hold
Have bound our lives
together
Lacing silver years with gold.
Communication
The English word communication has its root in Latin language. Communis and communicare.
Communis means common, commonality or sharing
Communicare means to make common
Communication system is a process.
The dictionary meaning of communication is "the exchange of thoughts, messages or information, as by speech, signals writing or behavior".
Types of communication:
verbal, non-verbal, intra personal, inter personal, organizational, mass communication
Defining "Mass Communication"
Term 'mass communication' came into use (coined) in the late of 1930s, but its essential features were already well known and gave not really changed since.
'Mass' is itself value laden and controversial and the term 'communication' still has no agreed definition.
'Social interaction through messages' is hard to beat for succinctness (concise, not using many words). Nevertheless, there is sufficient commonality in widely held 'common-sense perceptions to provide a working definition and a general characterization.
The term 'mass' denotes great volume, range or extent (of people or production), while 'communication' refers to the giving and taking of meaning, the transmission and reception of messages.
Mass communication comprise the institutions and techniques by which specialized groups employ technological devices (press, radio, films, TV, etc.) to disseminate symbolic content to large, heterogeneous and widely dispersed audiences. The process of 'mass communication' is not synonymous with the 'mass media' (the organized technologies which makes mass communication possible).
Mass media can also be used for individual, private or organizational purpose. The same media carry public message to large publics for public purposes can also carry personal notices, advocacy messages, charitable appeals, situation-vacant advertisements and many varied kinds of information and cultures.
These derive from the technologies of multiple reproduction and distribution and certain forms of organization, even if the particular reality of mass communication as experienced by audiences often diverges significantly from the typical form. The most obvious feature of the mass media is that they are designed to reach the many.
Relation between sender and receiver is bound to influence by this fact.
The 'sender' is often the organization itself or a professional communication (journalist, presenter, producer, entertainer, etc.)The relationship is inevitably one-sided and impersonal, and there is a social as well as a physical distance between sender and receiver..
The symbolic content or message of mass communication is typically 'manufactured' in standardized ways (mass production) and is re-used and repeated in identical forms.
The mass communication process
Large-scale distribution and reception
One-directional flow
Asymmetrical relation
Impersonal and anonymous
Calculative or market relationship
Standardized content
The 'Mass' concept
In the interpretations of the direction (positive or negative) of mass media influence show much divergence, the most persistent element in public estimation of the media has been a simple agreement on their strong influence.
Various meaning of the term 'mass'.
The concept of mass society was not fully developed until after the second word war.
The idea in fact circulating before the end of the 19th century.
Early use of the term usually carried negative associations.
It referred initially to the multitude or the "common people", uneducated, ignorant and potentially irrational, unruly and even violent (mob of rioters).
It could also be used in positive sense, however, especially in the socialist tradition, where it connotes the strength and solidarity of ordinary working people..............organized people for collective purpose (when having to bear oppression)
Whereby large people working together: 'mass support', 'mass movement', 'mass action' for positive reason.
Raymond Williams commented: 'there are no masses, only ways of seeing people as masses".
Mass reflect varying political or personal perspectives. Whether or not mass in question is legitimately constituted and acting in a rational and orderly manner.
The dominant social and cultural values of 'west' have been individualist and elitist, biased against collective action.
'Mass' applied a set of people. It suggests an amorphous collection of individuals without many individuals without much individuality.
Standard dictionary defines the "mass" as an 'aggregate in which individuality is lost".
This is close to the meaning which early sociologist sometimes gave to the media audience.
It was the large and seemingly undifferentiated audiences for the popular media that provided the clearest examples of the concept.
Concept
large aggregate
undifferentiated
mainly negative image
lacking order or organization
reflective of mass society
Elements in the communication process
a source
a process of encoding
a message
a channel
a process of decoding
a receiver
the potential for feedback
the chance of noise
Nature of mass communication
i. mass comm is produced by complex and formal organization.
ii. mass comm organizations have multiple gatekeepers.
iii. mass comm organizations need a great deal of money to operate.
iv. mass comm organizations are highly competitive.
v. mass comm organizations exist to make a profit.
Journalism – introduction
Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. Journalism applies to various media, but is not limited to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.
While under pressure to be the first to publish its stories, each news media organization adheres to its own standards of accuracy, quality, and style — usually editing and proofreading its reports prior to publication. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions on the accountability of the press.
The word journalism is taken from the French journal which in turn comes from the Latin diurnal or daily; The Acta Diurna, a handwritten bulletin, was put up daily in the Forum, the main public square in ancient Rome, and was the world's first newspaper.
News-oriented journalism was described by former Washington Post editor, Phil Graham, as "a first rough draft of history", because journalist often record important historical events as they are happening, but at the same time, they must produce their news articles on short deadlines.
Journalism's activities include stating What, When, Where, How, and Why, famously quoted by Rudyard Kipling (see the Five Ws), and stating the significance and effects of certain events or trends. Journalism exists in a number of media: newspapers, television, radio, magazines and, most recently, the World Wide Web through the Internet.
The English word communication has its root in Latin language. Communis and communicare.
Communis means common, commonality or sharing
Communicare means to make common
Communication system is a process.
The dictionary meaning of communication is "the exchange of thoughts, messages or information, as by speech, signals writing or behavior".
Types of communication:
verbal, non-verbal, intra personal, inter personal, organizational, mass communication
Defining "Mass Communication"
Term 'mass communication' came into use (coined) in the late of 1930s, but its essential features were already well known and gave not really changed since.
'Mass' is itself value laden and controversial and the term 'communication' still has no agreed definition.
'Social interaction through messages' is hard to beat for succinctness (concise, not using many words). Nevertheless, there is sufficient commonality in widely held 'common-sense perceptions to provide a working definition and a general characterization.
The term 'mass' denotes great volume, range or extent (of people or production), while 'communication' refers to the giving and taking of meaning, the transmission and reception of messages.
Mass communication comprise the institutions and techniques by which specialized groups employ technological devices (press, radio, films, TV, etc.) to disseminate symbolic content to large, heterogeneous and widely dispersed audiences. The process of 'mass communication' is not synonymous with the 'mass media' (the organized technologies which makes mass communication possible).
Mass media can also be used for individual, private or organizational purpose. The same media carry public message to large publics for public purposes can also carry personal notices, advocacy messages, charitable appeals, situation-vacant advertisements and many varied kinds of information and cultures.
These derive from the technologies of multiple reproduction and distribution and certain forms of organization, even if the particular reality of mass communication as experienced by audiences often diverges significantly from the typical form. The most obvious feature of the mass media is that they are designed to reach the many.
Relation between sender and receiver is bound to influence by this fact.
The 'sender' is often the organization itself or a professional communication (journalist, presenter, producer, entertainer, etc.)The relationship is inevitably one-sided and impersonal, and there is a social as well as a physical distance between sender and receiver..
The symbolic content or message of mass communication is typically 'manufactured' in standardized ways (mass production) and is re-used and repeated in identical forms.
The mass communication process
Large-scale distribution and reception
One-directional flow
Asymmetrical relation
Impersonal and anonymous
Calculative or market relationship
Standardized content
The 'Mass' concept
In the interpretations of the direction (positive or negative) of mass media influence show much divergence, the most persistent element in public estimation of the media has been a simple agreement on their strong influence.
Various meaning of the term 'mass'.
The concept of mass society was not fully developed until after the second word war.
The idea in fact circulating before the end of the 19th century.
Early use of the term usually carried negative associations.
It referred initially to the multitude or the "common people", uneducated, ignorant and potentially irrational, unruly and even violent (mob of rioters).
It could also be used in positive sense, however, especially in the socialist tradition, where it connotes the strength and solidarity of ordinary working people..............organized people for collective purpose (when having to bear oppression)
Whereby large people working together: 'mass support', 'mass movement', 'mass action' for positive reason.
Raymond Williams commented: 'there are no masses, only ways of seeing people as masses".
Mass reflect varying political or personal perspectives. Whether or not mass in question is legitimately constituted and acting in a rational and orderly manner.
The dominant social and cultural values of 'west' have been individualist and elitist, biased against collective action.
'Mass' applied a set of people. It suggests an amorphous collection of individuals without many individuals without much individuality.
Standard dictionary defines the "mass" as an 'aggregate in which individuality is lost".
This is close to the meaning which early sociologist sometimes gave to the media audience.
It was the large and seemingly undifferentiated audiences for the popular media that provided the clearest examples of the concept.
Concept
large aggregate
undifferentiated
mainly negative image
lacking order or organization
reflective of mass society
Elements in the communication process
a source
a process of encoding
a message
a channel
a process of decoding
a receiver
the potential for feedback
the chance of noise
Nature of mass communication
i. mass comm is produced by complex and formal organization.
ii. mass comm organizations have multiple gatekeepers.
iii. mass comm organizations need a great deal of money to operate.
iv. mass comm organizations are highly competitive.
v. mass comm organizations exist to make a profit.
Journalism – introduction
Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. Journalism applies to various media, but is not limited to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.
While under pressure to be the first to publish its stories, each news media organization adheres to its own standards of accuracy, quality, and style — usually editing and proofreading its reports prior to publication. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions on the accountability of the press.
The word journalism is taken from the French journal which in turn comes from the Latin diurnal or daily; The Acta Diurna, a handwritten bulletin, was put up daily in the Forum, the main public square in ancient Rome, and was the world's first newspaper.
News-oriented journalism was described by former Washington Post editor, Phil Graham, as "a first rough draft of history", because journalist often record important historical events as they are happening, but at the same time, they must produce their news articles on short deadlines.
Journalism's activities include stating What, When, Where, How, and Why, famously quoted by Rudyard Kipling (see the Five Ws), and stating the significance and effects of certain events or trends. Journalism exists in a number of media: newspapers, television, radio, magazines and, most recently, the World Wide Web through the Internet.
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