When Events Become News

The primary focus of the news media is the human world - society - since it is other people we find interesting
and who most often affect our own fate, and since, in a larger sense, the human condition is its subject. Thus, the news
media finds itself constantly giving us updates about important people, about their actions, interactions, and reactions
to actions, and about chains of action and reaction that result from these. It tells us about intentions, deliberations,
proposals, decisions and events, which can be hidden from view or open to public scrutiny. And so the media finds
itself inexorably drawn into reporting the minutiae of the human world.
It focuses on nature, too, of course, abut usually nature as it fits in the human world. It depicts nature as
destroyer - hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes; and nature as something we destroy that can also destroy us -- global
warming, mass die outs of frogs. And it depicts nature as something we are conquering and making transparent - rocks
analysed on Mars, diseases conquered.
Fulfilling its role as non-stop update service, the news media is forever describing the permutations of power in
this realm: who’s got it, who’s fighting over it, who the winner is, and what the consequences will be. Journalists are
forever trying to find out how power is being exercised; who has it and who doesn't. How are those with power using
it? And they describe a great many issues as contests over the right to make policy and control government. Political
parties, elected officials, pressure groups and everyone else in the game is portrayed as involved in a never-ending tug
of war, as the news media records every movement of the rope.
The one thing all news stories have in common is that they are expected to meet a set of specific relevance
criteria, if they are to be told. Journalists must be able to answer the question: "Why is this news?" - and they must
have an answer that meets a set of standards accepted by their audience.
There is a general consensus of ideas held by analysts and researchers, such as Galtang and Ruge (1973), over
the categories that an event must fulfil to become viable news. For example, the duration of time between a story
'breaking' and its coverage is obviously a key factor, which help to produce the illusion of television news being up to
the minute. Viewers tend to consider television as more 'up to the minute' than other forms of news circulation
because access is instant - one can simply turn on a television rather than going to a newsagent. News is perishable. It
loses value as it ages. People want to know now. What happened yesterday, last night, or this morning is more
newsworthy than what happened last week. A new twist, angle, discovery, or disclosure, however, will make an old
story timely again. The same holds true for news of future events. For this reason, broadcasters must endeavour to
break stories at least as fast as newspapers to maintain the illusion. Fiske points out that 'A newsworthy event should
have occurred within the last twenty-four hours, and during that time things should have happened that can be seen as
an origin and as a point of...closure' (Fiske 1987: p284)
Thus, recency is obviously a key criterion, contributing to the idea that the TV news is up-to-the-minute. This is
a key application of new technology.
As well as recency, negativity plays a large part in the selection of events to classify as news. The seemingly
cynical statement that all of the news on television is bad news is quite true and accurate. News is represented as that
which breaks the norm and disrupts harmony. This is a telltale sign of construction of reality by news broadcasters in
two ways: firstly all the events of the world are obviously not bad (if the news is to be believed, the world is complete
hell); the second indicator is the way in which broadcasters structure around the ideological rather than the concrete.
The most general relevance criterion for news is simply that it is something that journalists deem their
audiences would be interested in and want to know. Getting a little more specific, anything that might affect large
numbers of people - whether that effect is good or ill or neutral, whether the meaning of the effect is widely agreed on
or hotly debated - is considered news. Much of what is defined as news is information about whether things are, or
will, get better or worse for the audience, or for some group of people.
Thus, journalists are forever trying to tell audiences whether they may be helped or hurt by events. Their job is
to take the temperature of events. Is the economy sick or robust? Are politicians stealing from the public? Are there
more single teenagers having children? Does a nation with terrorist links have the bomb? Will the accused be
convicted, thereby closing the case and partially repairing the moral order of society?
In this, the news is much like popular fiction, which also depicts people and societies immersed in problems and
then shows us how they make things better or worse, usually leading us to invented happy endings that the news can
only rarely offer. News is more tightly tethered to actual events, it is reduced to reporting humanity’s endless
machinations and the incremental changes that result, as people try to make things better, according to their own
vision of what is good.

Set I.
1. Name the criteria for defining events as news.
2. Why is it often said that "all of the news on television is bad news"? To what extent do you agree with this
statement?
3. What is the key application of new technologies in the process of news making?
4. What are the common and different features of news and popular fiction?
Set II.
1. What is news on television?
2. Who decides what stories, people, events should be on the news?
3. Why do some news items have a long run while others maintain a day's interest?

Set III.
1. Watch a 15-20 minutes BBC (or other) news program. While viewing, complete the chart:

countries places events participants statistics details

2. Decide which news determinants lead to selection of each issue.

3. Watch a program of local TV news. Complete the same chart.
4. Are there issues treated in both programs? Do these topics take the same place and time limit in both programs?
5. State the reasons for the topic's inclusion in these programs.
6. State the reasons for the topic's exclusion from these programs.
7. Why do some events treated as top stories in the first broadcast make no news in the second?

Which Media Are Mass Media?

1. Go through the following vocabulary notes to avoid difficulties of understanding.

alter to change; modify

assume Take for granted; to be proved
attention span Capacity or size of attention
consequence Something that follows from an
action or condition
dissemination The act of process of spreading
diverse Having variety in form
enlighten To inform or to instruct
entertain To hold the attention of with
something amusing or diverting
inevitably Impossible to avoid or prevent
mediate To act as intermediary
ongoing Currently taking place
pose To assume or cause to assume a particular position,
as
in sitting for a portrait
precisely Clearly expressed or delineated
presume To take unwarrented advantage
of something
set forth 1. To present for consideration.
2. To express in words.
3. To begin journey.
via By way of…
yield To produce

2. Read the text carefully and do the tasks that follow.

Is the telephone a mass medium? How about a fax machine or personal computers linked in a network? What
about a large museum? Should we include rock concerts, theatrical performances, church services, or parades in our
study of mass communication? After all, each of these human activities is a form of communication. For our purposes,
whether or not a medium is one of the media depends on whether it can carry out the process of mass communication
we have just defined.
To be true to our definition, we would have to conclude that talking on the telephone is not really mass
communication, because the audience is not large and diverse; usually, there is only one person at each end of the line.
Furthermore, telephone users usually are not "professional communicators." The same is true of a fax machine or even
a set of personal computers on which individuals exchange messages. A museum does not participate in mass
communication because it does not provide "rapid dissemination" with "media." Neither does a rock concert qualify,
because it does not disseminate messages "over distance"; it is a form of direct communication to audiences. Large-
scale advertising by direct mail might qualify – except that it is not really "continuous".
By exercising the criteria set forth in our definition we can identify precisely what we consider to be mass media.
The major mass media are print (including books, magazines, and newspapers), film (principally commercial motion
pictures), and broadcasting (mainly radio and television, but also several associated forms such as cable and video
cassettes).
The consequences of using Media: Communication via a mass medium between a professional communicator
and particular individual within an audience is very different from face-to-face communication between a sender and a
receiver. In mass communication, a large, diverse audience is at the receiving end. There is no realistic way for the
professional communicator to engage in any role-taking during the process of transmitting a message or for the
audience to provide immediate and ongoing feedback while transmission is taking place.
Communicators try to guess how their messages will be received, with only indirect, delayed feedback in the form
of advertising revenues, research findings, a few telephone calls, occasional letters, movie reviews, and box-office
receipts. This delayed feedback may help them shape future communications, but it provides no basis for altering a
message while it is being disseminated. As a consequence, accuracy and influencing of any particular member of the
audience are significantly limited.
The consequences of large, diverse audience: Mass communication differs from face-to-face communication
and from mediated interpersonal communication not only because it involves more complex media, but also because
the audience is large and diverse. The existence of a large and diverse audience can pose significant limitations on the
content, accuracy, and influence of the messages transmitted by a mass medium. Inevitably, much mass media content
– perhaps most of it – is designed for the tastes and presumed intellectual level of "the average citizen" or, often, for
the average member of a specialized category of people who are assumed to share some common taste or interest (for
instance, all fishing enthusiasts, football fans, or fashion-conscious women). In forming appropriate message content,
professional communicators must make assumptions about such audiences. In fact, most professional communicators
tend to assume that the majority in their audiences;
1. have a limited attention span,
2. prefer to be entertained rather than enlightened, and
3. quickly lose interest in any subject that makes intellectual demands.
Thus, all of the factors discussed above work together in a kind of system that encourages media content that is
high in entertainment value and low in intellectual demands.
It is important to understand the conditions and principles that fit together to yield the above consequence,
because they explain a great deal about why the media function as they do. Furthermore, we can then more readily
understand why the media inevitably attract the attention of deeply concerned critics who have generated a long list of
charges and complaints that the media are both trivial and harmful in some way.

3. Assignment to the text: "Which Media Are Mass Media?"

1. Find information about:

a) museums which do not participate in mass communication
b) communicators who try to guess how their messages will be received
c) delayed feedback

2. Find the sentences with the following word combinations:

a) a set of personal computers
b) the major mass media
c) delayed feedback
d) the existence of a large and diverse audience

3. Translate the following sentences into English:

a) Широкомасштабная рекламная компания может подойти под определение "средства массовой
информации".
b) Большая и разнообразная аудитория является ограничением в содержании, точности и воздействии
информации распространяемой через СМИ.
c) Замедленная обратная связь может помочь профессиональному коммуникатору приспособить будущие
способы передачи информации.

4. Put the questions to the following statements:

a) In mass communication, a large, diverse audience is at the receiving end.
b) Accuracy and influencing of any particular member of the audience are significantly limited.
c) Telephone users usually are not "professional communicators"

5. Answer the following questions:

a) What majorities features of audience do professional communicators tend to assume?
b) Does mass communication differs from face-to-face communication?
c) Which media can we call mass media?

6. Discuss the following points:

a) the consequences of using mass media
b) the consequences of large, diverse audience

7. Ask your friends what he/she knows about:

a) influencing on audience with the aid of mass media
b) anything interesting about any sort of mass media
c) communication via mass media