SUPY206

UNDERGRADUATE COURSE
B.Sc. PSYCHOLOGY

SECOND YEAR
FOURTH SEMESTER

NON-MAJOR ELECTIVE - II

CRIME AND MEDIA

INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS
B.Sc., Psychology NON MAJOR ELECTIVE - II
SECOND YEAR - FOURTH SEMESTER CRIME AND MEDIA

WELCOME
Warm Greetings.

It is with a great pleasure to welcome you as a student of Institute of Distance Education,

University of Madras. It is a proud moment for the Institute of Distance education as you are
entering into a cafeteria system of learning process as envisaged by the University Grants
Commission. Yes, we have framed and introduced Choice Based Credit System(CBCS) in
Semester pattern from the academic year 2018-19. You are free to choose courses, as per the
Regulations, to attain the target of total number of credits set for each course and also each
degree programme. What is a credit? To earn one credit in a semester you have to spend 30
hours of learning process. Each course has a weightage in terms of credits. Credits are assigned
by taking into account of its level of subject content. For instance, if one particular course or
paper has 4 credits then you have to spend 120 hours of self-learning in a semester. You are
advised to plan the strategy to devote hours of self-study in the learning process. You will be
assessed periodically by means of tests, assignments and quizzes either in class room or
laboratory or field work. In the case of PG (UG), Continuous Internal Assessment for 20(25)
percentage and End Semester University Examination for 80 (75) percentage of the maximum
score for a course / paper. The theory paper in the end semester examination will bring out your
various skills: namely basic knowledge about subject, memory recall, application, analysis,
comprehension and descriptive writing. We will always have in mind while training you in
conducting experiments, analyzing the performance during laboratory work, and observing the
outcomes to bring out the truth from the experiment, and we measure these skills in the end
semester examination. You will be guided by well experienced faculty.

I invite you to join the CBCS in Semester System to gain rich knowledge leisurely at
your will and wish. Choose the right courses at right times so as to erect your flag of success.
We always encourage and enlighten to excel and empower. We are the cross bearers to make
you a torch bearer to have a bright future.

With best wishes from mind and heart,

DIRECTOR

(i)
B.Sc., Psychology NON MAJOR ELECTIVE - II
SECOND YEAR - FOURTH SEMESTER CRIME AND MEDIA

COURSE WRITER

Dr. S. Arulchelvan
Associate Professor
Department of Media Sciences,
Anna University, Chennai - 600 025.

COORDINATION & EDITING

Dr. S.Ramdoss
Associate Professor
Department of Criminiology
University of Madras
Chennai - 600 005.

© UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS, CHENNAI 600 005.

(ii)
 B.Sc., DEGREE COURSE

SECOND YEAR - FOURTH SEMESTER

NON MAJOR ELECTIVE - II

CRIME AND MEDIA

SYLLABUS

Unit I: Introduction

Evolution of media – Definition and key concepts – Mass media– Types of media – Reporting
– Types of reporting – Significance of media in crime reporting

Unit II: Journalism

Journalistic concepts – Ethics in Journalism– Investigative Reporting– Plagiarism – Target

audience– Interviewing

Unit III: Impact of Mass media

Portrayal of crime and police in media– Fear of crime– De-sensitisation of people by media–
Spread of rumours– Indecent representation of women– Role of media in crime prevention–
Impact of mass media on crime and delinquency

Unit IV: Crime Reporting

Types of crime reporting –Evaluating sources– Weighing evidences and verifying facts – Dealing
with sensitive issues/cases– Interviewing women, children and victims of crime

(iii)
Unit V: Report Writing

Techniques and styles of writing for various types of media, editing, concise writing – Analysis
of news item of criminological importance from a newspaper – Content analysis

REFERENCE

Howitt, D. (1998). Crime, the Media and the Law. John Wiley

Jackson, D., & Sweeney, J. (2002). The journalist’s craft. New York, N.Y.: Allworth.

Jewkes, Y. (2015). Media and Crime: Key approaches to criminology. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Khosla, A. (2008). Media violence and crime. New Delhi, India: SBS-Publishers & Distributors.

Kidd-Hewitt, D. & Osborne, R. (1995). Crime and the media: the post-modern spectacle. London:
Pluto Press.

Kumar, R. (2010). How to report and write the news. New Delhi, India: DPS Pub. House.

Potter, J. (1999). On media violence. London: Sage

Silverman, J. (2012). Crime, policy and the media. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

(iv)
 B.Sc., DEGREE COURSE

SECOND YEAR - FOURTH SEMESTER

NON MAJOR ELECTIVE - II

CRIME AND MEDIA

SCHEME OF LESSONS

Sl.No. Title Page

1. Introduction to Media 001

2. Mass Media 025

3. Journalism 041

4. Interviewing Techniques and Investigative Report 056

5. Mass Media and Crime 066

6. Representation of Crime in Media 075

7. Crime Reporting 083

8. Report Writing 102

9. Content Analysis 118

(v)
 1

LESSON-1
INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 understand the key concepts of media

 learn the evolution of media in general and India

 understand the importance of journalism in India during Independence

Structure
1.1 General introduction

1.2. Brief history of media

1.3. Technological advances in printing—part I—and paper-making production

1.4. Technological advances in printing—part II

1.5. Radio

1.6. Television

1.7. New media

1.8. Evolution of media in India

1.8.1 Origin & growth of Indian press

1.9. History of newspapers in India

1.9.1. Press in India after independence

1.10. Broadcast media in India (Radio)

1.11. Television in India

1.11.1. Impact of television

1.11.2. Prasar Bharathi

2

1.12. Cinema in India

1.13. Summary

1.14. Check your progress

1.15. Keywords

1.16. Review questions

1.17. Suggested readings

1.1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

In most developed countries, journalism and mass communication are just the staples of
modern life. Newspapers and magazines bring the news of the world as well as the amusements
of the day to the doorstep. Radio news and talk programs update the listener at the workplace,
in the car, in the home, everywhere. Television links sound with pictures during the regularly
scheduled news broadcasts or at any time in the event of breaking news. One click on a web
site takes the browser across the world to download a story, a radio program, a song, or a
snippet of the latest motion picture. In developed countries, journalism and the many, many
messages of mass communication have led to the malaise of modern society—”information
overload.” Citizens in developed countries have so much to read, hear, see, and click that it is
difficult to process all the information.

Journalism and mass communication are not as plentiful in developing countries.

Nonetheless, journalism and mass communication are important to the economic, social, political,
and cultural lives of these nations. Some governments attempt to control the content of news
and the messages transmitted in the media. Other governments see journalism and mass
communication as important partners in economic, political, and social progress of their nations.
These governments see journalism and mass communication as allies to progress, ways to
educate the population about life, politics, culture, and the economy in a modern world. Still
others see the media as a means of cultural domination by the West.

Whether journalism and mass communication are taken for granted—as is the case in
the developed countries—or are seen as allies to progress or things to be controlled—as is the
 3

case in many of the developing countries—they remain important influences in the social,
economic, and political lives of the people in today’s world.

1.2. BRIEF HISTORY OF MEDIA

Until Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press,
books were painstakingly handwritten and no two copies were exactly the same. The printing
press made the mass production of print media possible. Not only was it much cheaper to
produce written material, but new transportation technologies also made it easier for texts to
reach a wide audience. It’s hard to overstate the importance of Gutenberg’s invention, which
helped usher in massive cultural movements like the European Renaissance and the Protestant
Reformation. In 1810, another German printer, Friedrich Koenig, pushed media production
even further when he essentially hooked the steam engine up to a printing press, enabling the
industrialization of printed media. In 1800, a hand-operated printing press could produce about
480 pages per hour; Koenig’s machine more than doubled this rate. (By the 1930s, many
printing presses could publish 3,000 pages an hour.)

This increased efficiency went hand in hand with the rise of the daily newspaper. The
newspaper was the perfect medium for the increasingly urbanized Americans of the 19th century,
who could no longer get their local news merely through gossip and word of mouth. These
Americans were living in unfamiliar territory, and newspapers and other media helped them
negotiate the rapidly changing world. The Industrial Revolution meant that some people had
more leisure time and more money, and media helped them figure out how to spend both.
Media theorist Benedict Anderson has argued that newspapers also helped forge a sense of
national identity by treating readers across the country as part of one unified community.

In the 1830s, the major daily newspapers faced a new threat from the rise of penny
papers, which were low-priced broadsheets that served as a cheaper, more sensational daily
news source. They favored news of murder and adventure over the dry political news of the
day. While newspapers catered to a wealthier, more educated audience, the penny press
attempted to reach a wide swath of readers through cheap prices and entertaining (often
scandalous) stories. The penny press can be seen as the forerunner to today’s gossip-hungry
tabloids.
4

Earliest history

The roots of journalism can be found in many locations. The Sumerians developed the
art of phonic writing centuries before the birth of Christ. This same culture developed a cylinder
seal to inscribe its ownership records onto wet clay surfaces. This early form of “printing” also
allowed the Sumerians to “report” on the prowess of their warriors. In perhaps the first example
of sensationalism (although certainly not the last), the Sumerians printed exaggerated muscular
features on their pictured warriors.

The written word was not limited to the Sumerians. Other cultures, the Egyptians, the
Phoenicians, and the Chinese, all had written alphabets, and thus an ability to communicate
information over long distances. Each took advantage of this, spreading its alphabet and culture
across the region through trade, colonization, and/or conquest.

Journalism, by definition, needs several things. First, it must have a written language.
Second, it must have a certain level of literacy among at least a portion of the population. Third,
it demands a certain level of affluence among the literate population. These individuals must
be able to afford the news product and have the leisure time to read it. Finally, this affluent,
literate population must have an interest in current events.

These factors coalesced earliest in two locations—ancient Rome and China.

Earliest news sheets

Launched in 59 BC in ancient Rome by Julius Caesar, Acta Diurna Populi Romani (Daily
Acts of the Roman People) was a script account of the news of the empire. As an official
publication of Caesar’s government, the Acta Diurna circulated to the rich and powerful in the
empire; each issue was posted in public places for citizens to read. The Acta contained details
of government business—decrees, proclamations, and resolutions, news of the most affluent
and powerful of the empire, catastrophic stories (fires and executions), and the weather. Although
no issues exist today, the Acta Diurna survived some two centuries, evolving from primarily
official news to more popular fare.

The Chinese version of a news organ, ti-pao, developed several centuries later. During
the T’ang dynasty (618–907 AD), the ti-pao circulated among government officials in the far-
 5

flung Chinese empire. Over time, as literacy increased, the circulation of ti-pao expanded to
intellectuals and other affluent citizens. That circulation increase was due, in large part, to
technological innovations peculiar to China.

It was in China that papermaking first developed some five centuries prior to the debut of
the ti-pao. This papermaking technology spread to Korea and Japan and, through the Arabs, to
the Middle East. It would take centuries before the innovation reached Europe.

1.3. TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN PRINTING—PART I—

AND PAPER-MAKING PRODUCTION

The expanded circulation of the ti-pao was also due to technological innovations in printing,
which the Chinese did not export. Many centuries before Gutenberg developed the technology
of movable type printing in the west, China had developed a modern process of mechanical
printing on paper. Initially, artisans developed a way to reproduce writing by carving designs on
wooden blocks. The designs were then inked and painstakingly pressed on paper. Four centuries
before Gutenberg, Pi Sheng, a metal worker, invented a press that used movable letters of
metal, clay, and wood.

These rudimentary forms of journalism developed independently in two of the most

technologically advanced cultures at the time—in the West (ancient Rome) and in the East
(China). In both locations, however, journalism sprang from similar impulses— literacy among
an affluent population who had time to read and needed information. Of the two cultures, the
Chinese was clearly the more technologically advanced. Europeans would need centuries to
develop the papermaking and movable type technologies needed for a modern journalism
system.

1.4. TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN PRINTING—PART II

By the end of the thirteenth century, the manufacture of paper had been introduced into
Europe. With it came significant cost reductions. Yet the Europeans were slow to adopt the
technology. Historians have given many explanations for this, including religious bigotry (paper
had been associated with the Jews and the Arabs) and the reluctance of craftsmen to use the
6

new product. That reluctance was effectively eliminated with Gutenberg’s movable type
innovations in printing, which spread quickly through Europe. By 1480, just 35 years after
Gutenberg printed the first bibles in Germany, more than 110 towns in Western Europe and
England had printing presses employing some version of movable type. By the end of the
fourteenth century, about 1000 printers worked in 236 printing centers in Europe and England.

Accompanying the expansion of printing technology was the adoption of papermaking.

Religious bigotry and craftsmen’s inertia might have slowed the technology’s adoption, but
once printing presses were increasing the production of reading material, more paper was
needed. Paper had one huge advantage; it was inexpensive. At the end of the fourteenth
century, paper cost only about one sixth the amount of parchment.

The new printing centers needed lots of paper because printers were literally creating an
information revolution. More books, newsletters, newspapers, and broadsides were produced
than ever before. According to one historian, during just the first 50 years of printing, printers
produced more books than had been available during the previous 1000 years. During the next
100 years, another 150 million to 200 million books were produced. That production was fueled
by the demands of a growing literate population and the theological debate that raged during
the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Although printers and printing were thriving,
they were not necessarily free. As with any technology, governments moved to control printing
and printers.

European governments employed a proverbial carrot-and-stick approach to the control

of this new technology. On the carrot side, governments used monopolies and contracts to
assure a printer’s loyalty and to punish enemies. Thus, a printer who supported the crown
might be given a monopoly, an exclusive privilege, to print certain types of documents. Likewise,
by awarding contracts, governments could reward their printing allies and punish their enemies.
Governments could and did give extremely lucrative printing contracts to loyal printers. If the
printer published material critical of the crown, the contract would be taken away.

On the stick side, governments used a wide range of repressive measures. Early in the
history of printing, the printer was licensed and the number of printers was strictly controlled.
 7

With time, however, measures became more repressive. Some governments used prior restraint
or outright censorship. Harsh penalties were levied for unlicensed printing of materials that
challenged the government or the clergy. In France, that meant flogging for the first offense,
death for the second. In England, punishment could be just as severe. For example, William
Carter, a Catholic in Protestant England, printed a book in 1580 critical of the queen. He was
soon arrested, tortured, and executed. Other printers and writers were imprisoned. Such
practices were common in Europe, where seditious libel laws were applied to any printed work
critical of the government—even if the material were true. Nor was criticism of the government
the only grounds for punishment. Printers could be fined, imprisoned, beaten, or even put to
death for publishing material questioning established religious doctrines.

As European countries began colonization in the “new world” of the Americas, Africa,
Asia, and Australia, they exported the printing technology and the repressive legislation. But
even as the repression continued, production of reading materials accelerated, aided by the
larger number of skilled printers, the greater number of printing presses, and the seemingly
insatiable appetite for reading material.

1.5. RADIO

In the early decades of the 20th century, the first major non print form of mass media—
radio—exploded in popularity. Radios, which were less expensive than telephones and widely
available by the 1920s, had the unprecedented ability of allowing huge numbers of people to
listen to the same event at the same time. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge’s pre-election speech
reached more than 20 million people. Radio was a boon for advertisers, who now had access
to a large and captive audience. An early advertising consultant claimed that the early days of
radio were “a glorious opportunity for the advertising man to spread his sales propaganda”
because of “a countless audience, sympathetic, pleasure seeking, enthusiastic, curious,
interested, and approachable in the privacy of their homes. The reach of radio also meant that
the medium was able to downplay regional differences and encourage a unified sense of the
American lifestyle—a lifestyle that was increasingly driven and defined by consumer purchases.
This boom in consumerism put its stamp on the 1920s and also helped contribute to the Great
Depression of the 1930s. The consumerist impulse drove production to unprecedented levels,
8

but when the Depression began and consumer demand dropped dramatically, the surplus of
production helped further deepen the economic crisis, as more goods were being produced
than could be sold.

1.6. TELEVISION

The post–World War II era in the United States was marked by prosperity, and by the
introduction of a seductive new form of mass communication: television. In 1946, about 17,000
televisions existed in the United States; within 7 years, two-thirds of American households
owned at least one set. As the United States’ gross national product (GNP) doubled in the
1950s, and again in the 1960s, the American home became firmly ensconced as a consumer
unit; along with a television, the typical U.S. household owned a car and a house in the suburbs,
all of which contributed to the nation’s thriving consumer-based economy. Briggs and Burke,
Social History of the Media. Broadcast television was the dominant form of mass media, and
the three major networks controlled more than 90 percent of the news programs, live events,
and sitcoms viewed by Americans. Some social critics argued that television was fostering a
homogenous, conformist culture by reinforcing ideas about what “normal” American life looked
like. But television also contributed to the counterculture of the 1960s. The Vietnam War was
the nation’s first televised military conflict, and nightly images of war footage and war protesters
helped intensify the nation’s internal conflicts.

Broadcast technology, including radio and television, had such a hold on the American
imagination that newspapers and other print media found themselves having to adapt to the
new media landscape. Print media was more durable and easily archived, and it allowed users
more flexibility in terms of time—once a person had purchased a magazine, he or she could
read it whenever and wherever. Broadcast media, in contrast, usually aired programs on a
fixed schedule, which allowed it to both provide a sense of immediacy and fleetingness. Until
the advent of digital video recorders in the late 1990s, it was impossible to pause and rewind a
live television broadcast.

The media world faced drastic changes once again in the 1980s and 1990s with the
spread of cable television. During the early decades of television, viewers had a limited number
 9

of channels to choose from—one reason for the charges of homogeneity. In 1975, the three
major networks accounted for 93 percent of all television viewing. By 2004, however, this
share had dropped to 28.4 percent of total viewing, thanks to the spread of cable television.
Cable providers allowed viewers a wide menu of choices, including channels specifically tailored
to people who wanted to watch only golf, classic films, sermons, or videos of sharks. Still, until
the mid-1990s, television was dominated by the three large networks. The Telecommunications
Act of 1996, an attempt to foster competition by deregulating the industry, actually resulted in
many mergers and buyouts that left most of the control of the broadcast spectrum in the hands
of a few large corporations. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened
regulation even further, allowing a single company to own 45 percent of a single market (up
from 25 percent in 1982).Ibid.

1.7. NEW MEDIA

New media technologies both spring from and cause social changes. For this reason, it
can be difficult to neatly sort the evolution of media into clear causes and effects. Did radio fuel
the consumerist boom of the 1920s, or did the radio become wildly popular because it appealed
to a society that was already exploring consumerist tendencies? Probably a little bit of both.
Technological innovations such as the steam engine, electricity, wireless communication, and
the Internet have all had lasting and significant effects on American culture. As media historians
Asa Briggs and Peter Burke note, every crucial invention came with “a change in historical
perspectives.” Electricity altered the way people thought about time because work and play
were no longer dependent on the daily rhythms of sunrise and sunset; wireless communication
collapsed distance; the Internet revolutionized the way we store and retrieve information.

The transatlantic telegraph cable made nearly instantaneous communication between

the United States and Europe possible for the first time in 1858.

The contemporary media age can trace its origins back to the electrical telegraph, patented
in the United States by Samuel Morse in 1837. Thanks to the telegraph, communication was
no longer linked to the physical transportation of messages; it didn’t matter whether a message
needed to travel 5 or 500 miles. Suddenly, information from distant places was nearly as
10

accessible as local news, as telegraph lines began to stretch across the globe, making their
own kind of World Wide Web. In this way, the telegraph acted as the precursor to much of the
technology that followed, including the telephone, radio, television, and Internet. When the first
transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, allowing nearly instantaneous communication from the
United States to Europe, the London Times described it as “the greatest discovery since that of
Columbus, a vast enlargement…given to the sphere of human activity.”

Not long afterward, wireless communication (which eventually led to the development of
radio, television, and other broadcast media) emerged as an extension of telegraph technology.
Although many 19th-century inventors, including Nikola Tesla, were involved in early wireless
experiments, it was Italian-born Guglielmo Marconi who is recognized as the developer of the
first practical wireless radio system. Many people were fascinated by this new invention. Early
radio was used for military communication, but soon the technology entered the home. The
burgeoning interest in radio inspired hundreds of applications for broadcasting licenses from
newspapers and other news outlets, retail stores, schools, and even cities. In the 1920s, large
media networks—including the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia
Broadcasting System (CBS)—were launched, and they soon began to dominate the airwaves.
In 1926, they owned 6.4 percent of U.S. broadcasting stations; by 1931, that number had risen
to 30 percent.

In addition to the breakthroughs in audio broadcasting, inventors in the 1800s made

significant advances in visual media. The 19th-century development of photographic
technologies would lead to the later innovations of cinema and television. As with wireless
technology, several inventors independently created a form of photography at the same time,
among them the French inventors Joseph Niépce and Louis Daguerre and the British scientist
William Henry Fox Talbot. In the United States, George Eastman developed the Kodak camera
in 1888, anticipating that Americans would welcome an inexpensive, easy-to-use camera into
their homes as they had with the radio and telephone. Moving pictures were first seen around
the turn of the century, with the first U.S. projection-hall opening in Pittsburgh in 1905. By the
1920s, Hollywood had already created its first stars, most notably Charlie Chaplin; by the end
of the 1930s, Americans were watching color films with full sound, including Gone with the
Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
 11

Television—which consists of an image being converted to electrical impulses, transmitted

through wires or radio waves, and then reconverted into images—existed before World War II,
but gained mainstream popularity in the 1950s. In 1947, there were 178,000 television sets
made in the United States; 5 years later, 15 million were made. Radio, cinema, and live theater
declined because the new medium allowed viewers to be entertained with sound and moving
pictures in their homes. In the United States, competing commercial stations (including the
radio powerhouses of CBS and NBC) meant that commercial-driven programming dominated.
In Great Britain, the government managed broadcasting through the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). Funding was driven by licensing fees instead of advertisements. In contrast
to the U.S. system, the BBC strictly regulated the length and character of commercials that
could be aired. However, U.S. television (and its increasingly powerful networks) still dominated.
By the beginning of 1955, there were around 36 million television sets in the United States, but
only 4.8 million in all of Europe. Important national events, broadcast live for the first time, were
an impetus for consumers to buy sets so they could witness the spectacle; both England and
Japan saw a boom in sales before important royal weddings in the 1950s.

In 1969, management consultant Peter Drucker predicted that the next major technological
innovation would be an electronic appliance that would revolutionize the way people lived just
as thoroughly as Thomas Edison’s light bulb had. This appliance would sell for less than a
television set and be “capable of being plugged in wherever there is electricity and giving
immediate access to all the information needed for school work from first grade through college.
Although Drucker may have underestimated the cost of this hypothetical machine, he was
prescient about the effect these machines—personal computers—and the Internet would have
on education, social relationships, and the culture at large. The inventions of random access
memory (RAM) chips and microprocessors in the 1970s were important steps to the Internet
age. As Briggs and Burke note, these advances meant that “hundreds of thousands of
components could be carried on a microprocessor. The reduction of many different kinds of
content to digitally stored information meant that “print, film, recording, radio and television and
all forms of telecommunications [were] now being thought of increasingly as part of one complex.”
This process, also known as convergence, is a force that’s affecting media today.
12

1.8. EVOLUTION OF MEDIA IN INDIA

1.8.1 Origin & growth of Indian press

• Ancient India

- Education wasn’t wider spread

- Meaning for communication was inadequate

- Concentration on strengthening political system

- Communication through imperial edict on copper plates, rocks, stone pillars

- Daily news published in small pictures convey through painting Bible New testimony
published in 1456 by Gutenberg, he was the father of Printing Technology.

• Medieval India

- Aurangazeb pioneered the concept communication network

- Vaquia Navis, specialist news writers who summaries the important events and incidents

- Cofia Navis, secret spies to collect the news from public

- News Letters covers the local news and their leaders expedition

- Calligraphy flourished during this period New Era

- Christian missionaries

- During 16th century printing technology came to India by Christians group of Fathers
were travel through coastal areas to convey news to public

- Books, Dictionaries, Bible translation.

- September 15th, 1556 first printing machine set up in Goa, India.

- September 6th, 1557 first book ‘Doutrina Christ’ was published by St. Francis Xavier,
they used Mental Typeface for printing.
 13

- In 1578 ‘Doutrina Christ’ was translated in Tamil and it’s the first Tamil Book in Indian
Language.

• Printing Press in India

- First printing press set up in Goa in 1556, September 15th ‘Doutrina Christ’ was printed.

- Second printing press set up in Coramandal Coast, ‘Flos sancprum’ newsletter printed
and it’s the first Tamil Nadu printing press.

- Third printing press in Bombay, ‘Bhimji Parekh’ was printed.

- Fourth printing press in Kerala, ‘Tamil Portuguese Dictionary’ was printed.

- Fifth printing press in Thanjore district and it’s the second press in Tamil Nadu. And next
15years many printing press were set up in India.

- In 18th century Grammar books were published in southern languages. School of Distance
Education History of Journalism in India

- In 1714 first copy of new testimony in Tamil was published

- In 1779 Tamil-English Dictionary was published.

• Newspapers in India - 18th Century

- In 1780, January 29th first newspaper ‘Bengal Gazette’ by James Augustus Hickey and
Hickey is known as the Father of Journalism.

- In 1780, November second newspaper ‘India Gazette’ by Bernard Messnik and Peter
reed.

- In 1784 third newspaper ‘Calcutta Gazette’ alias ‘Oriental Advertiser’

- In 1785 fourth newspaper ‘Bengal Journal’ by Thomas Jones – published government

advertisement at free of cost (above papers were given postal concession for wide
circulation).
14

- In 1785 ‘Madras Courier’ by Richard Johnston

- In 1789 ‘Bombay Herald’

- In 1790 ‘Bombay Courier’

- In 1791 ‘Bombay Gazette’

- In 1798 ‘Madras Gazette’ by Robert Williams.

- In 1795 ‘Indian Herald’ by Humphreys.

1.9. HISTORY OF NEWSPAPERS IN INDIA

The evolution of Newspapers in India is with the introduction of ‘Bengal Gazette’ started
by James Augustus Hicky in 1780 from Calcutta as a weekly two sheet paper. This Newspaper
paved the way for Indian freedom struggle and the fight against the social evils in India by the
way of revolutionary and enlightening writings.

Very soon other Newspapers such as Calcutta Chronicle, Madras Courier, and Bombay
Herald, Bombay Courier, Bombay Gazette entered into the scene and the Newspapers in Hindi
and other regional languages also started flourishing in the various parts of the nation. Bengal
was the birth place of Journalism in India and the language press. ‘Samachar Darpan’ was the
first Indian language Newspaper which was a Bengali weekly newspaper introduced in 1818
and the first periodical of India in Indian language was ‘Dig Darshan’ in Bangla language started
in the same year. ‘Eenadu’ was a Telugu daily which was started by Ramoji Rao, first Gujarati
Newspaper was ‘Bombay Samachar’ which still exists and is considered as the oldest living
Indian Newspaper of India.

The prime motives to start the Newspapers in Indian languages were to promote the
feeling of patriotism and to encourage social reforms also because the society was occupied
with lots of prejudices, orthodoxies and social evils like sati pratha, child marriage, caste
discrimination, idol worship, animal sacrifice and other narrow beliefs. Raja Rammohan Roy,
who is considered as the founder of revolutionary Indian Press, recognized the power of
Newspapers and used it as a vehicle for propagating his liberal ideas and eradicating the
 15

social evils prevailing in the Indian society. He introduced ‘Sambad Kaumudi’ in Bengali in
1821 and published the articles promoting women education, social betterment and awakening
and development of scientific outlook. His other publications include ‘Mirat-ul-Akhbar’ in Persian
and ‘Brahmanical Magazine’ in English. Aggarwal, V.B. and Gupta, V.S. (2002) Pp.92-97

At that time, education system entered in the country through British contacts and many
societies and missions like Brahma Samaj, Ramkrishna Mission, AryaSamaj, and Theosophical
Society came into the scenario with the feeling of social development and nationalism.

The era of Hindi Journalism started in 1826 with ‘UddantaMartanda’ from Kolkata, then
Bangdoot, Banaras Akhbaar, Gyandeepak, MalwaAkhbaar, Gwalior Gazette, Payam-e-Azadi,
SamacharSudhaVarshan, Lokhit, Marwaad Gazette, Jodhpur Government Gazette etc. were
introduced with the mission of independence, self-rule and social reforms. Bhanawat, S. (2005).
Pp.54-58

1860’s witnessed a boom in the Indian Language Press in the country. Several
Newspapers made their appearance in this period. Also many English Newspapers which evolved
at that time are flourishing even today like The Times of India (1861), The Pioneer (1861), The
Statesman (1875) and The Hindu (1878).

Number of acts and restrictions like The Vernacular Press Act, Gagging Act etc tried to
overrule the power of Print Media in India but the then social reformers and freedom fighters
like Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurbindo Ghosh, Annie Beasant, Surendra Nath
Banerjee, Lala Lajpat Rai, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi and many others recognized the power
of pen and used it as a tool for propagating the feeling of nationalism and brotherhood. They
also used their Newspapers to remove the socioreligious evils of the society. Thus, the history
of Journalism in India is inseparably linked with the development of social awareness, national
consciousness and the progress of freedom movement. Also the Newspapers like Kesari,
Pratap, Maratha, Yugantar, Sudarshan, Samalochak, Maryada, Swadesh, Abhyudaya,
Karmaveer, Karmyogi, Gadar etc. brought revolution in the Hindi Journalism of India.

Mahatma Gandhi, who was considered as the greatest Journalist of his times used his
Newspapers- Indian Opinion, Young India, Navjivan, Satyagrah and Harijan, to expose the
16

flaws of the society and to stimulate social awakening. He advocated that a Newspaper is a
powerful tool in bringing positive changes in the society but at the same time, he feared that
this power can be misused for commercial interests as many publications started looking for
the revenue attached to the advertisements. That is why, he once said that a Newspaper is a
great power but just as an unchained torrent of water brings devastations, similarly an
uncontrolled pen can also fetch destruction for the entire humanity. Thus, he suggested that
the sole aim of Journalism should be service to the people. Aggarwal, V.B. and Gupta, V.S.
(2002). Pp. 105

Even the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, called the Newspapers a tool of
national reconstruction and social reformation. He supported the liberty of Press and considered
it as a vital part of democracy. Thus the Print Media nurtured during the postindependence era
too. The Press thus developed into a “National Institution” by playing an important role in the
struggle for independence and in shaping and moulding the Public Opinion. In the Independent
India, it became a medium of inter-communication between the Government and the Public.
Agrawal, S. (1970). Pp. 19-20.

1.9.1. Press in India after independence

Indian media scene has witnessed spectacular growth. With this newfound energy and
excitement, media has also explored a whole new dimension of its power. And this realization
has dawned not just due to technological advances but through some recent initiatives taken
by them as the fourth estate of our democracy.

Moreover, this realization was not a moment of enlightenment rather a gradual process.
However, it is to be noted that this power is inherent in media. Media has always had the power
to influence, impact, propagate and mobilize. It won’t be wrong to say that media in India, at
least, was started with this idea of media as a tool for social change.

This power of media to bring about a social change or transformation is called as media
activism.

The history of freedom of the press before India’s independence was characterized by a
swing between imposition and relaxation of restrictions on the press. The attitude to the press
 17

depended on the personality and values of those in power at that time. The swing from freedom
of the press to control of the press has persisted in the post-independence period again
depending on the personality and values of those in power. Before independence, the attitude
to the press depended on the Governor Generals and Viceroys in power and after independence,
the attitude to the press depended on the Prime Minister at that time.

In the post-independence era the press enjoyed a large measure of freedom because
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minster of India was a liberal who realized that for the
successful functioning of democratic set-up, the freedom of the press was absolutely necessary.
Nehru had acquired the liberal outlook as a part of his education in Britain, in the public school
at Harrow and the University of Cambridge. He was democrat to the core and welcomed criticism,
whether it was from political parties or from newspapers (Ravindran, 1997:26-27).During his
regime, the press was tolerated as he was quite generous in overlooking and ignoring its
criticism of his government’s policies and programs (Sahni, 1974:215). To him, criticism was a
way in which the working of the government could be improved and so not only to be tolerated,
but also to be encouraged. No other public man of his standing tolerated criticism as much as
he did (Padhy and Sahu, 2005:156). Knowing the dangers of arbitrary government in the absence
of free press, Nehru once said: “To my mind the freedom of the press is not just a slogan from
the larger point of view, but it is an essential attribute of the democratic process. I have no
doubt that even if the Government dislikes the liberties taken by the press and considers them
dangerous, it is wrong to interfere with the freedom of the press. I would rather have a completely
free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or
a regulated press” (Padhy and Sahu, 2005:110).

1.10. BROADCAST MEDIA IN INDIA (RADIO)

In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, sent the first radio communication signals
through the air. Experimental radio broadcasts began in about 1910. Regular radio services in
many countries including India began in the 1920’s. One of the first commercial radio stations
was established in the United States and regular broadcasts began in August, 1920.

In India, as early as August 1921, The Times of India in collaboration with the Posts and
Telegraphs Department broadcast a special programme from its Bombay office. The first radio
18

programme in India was broadcast by the Radio Club of Bombay in June 1923. An agreement
was signed for this purpose between the Government of India and a private company called
the Indian Broadcasting Company Limited. In 1930, Indian Broadcasting Company handed
over the Bombay station to the Government and it was renamed the Indian State Broadcasting
Service (ISBS). Later it was renamed All India Radio on June 8, 1936.

All India Radio has a multi-system of broadcasting through which it caters to the
information, education and entertainment needs of the people. These services are given below:

i) National service: The national channel of AIR started functioning on May 18, 1988. It
covers nearly 76% of the population and 64% of the area of the country.

ii) Regional services: The regional services cater to major linguistic and cultural groups.
Regional service is offered in 24 Indian languages and in 146 dialects.

iii) External services: The External Service Division of All India Radio began in 1939
during World War II. External broadcasts project the Indian point of view on world affairs. This
service offers programmes in 24 foreign languages.

iv) VividhBharati: Vivid Bharati, which is a popular entertainment service, is broadcast

from 35 centres in India This service was started on October 2, 1957, to compete with Radio
Ceylone, which had begun directing a commercial service to India on powerful short wave
transmitters.

FM broadcast is essentially a local radio channel with a reach of 70 km radius from the
place of transmission. This broadcast provides crystal clear reception to the listener and it has
traditionally been used for airing music. FM broadcast was introduced in India in 1977 but it
was not really popularised till 1992. Presently there are 105 FM transmitters in India including
Kochi, Devikulam and Kannur stations in Kerala. The Government of India has privatised FM
broadcasting in the country. Several Malayalam FM radio stations will soon begin broadcasting
in Kerala.

In a country like India where more than 70% of the population lives in villages, radio
cannot be completely replaced by any other media. Moreover, one medium does not put to an
 19

end to another medium. Television cannot replace radio, but they will complement each other
and will grow side by side.

1.11. TELEVISION IN INDIA

Television started in India on an experimental basis on September 15, 1959 with a limited
transmission on three days a week. The scope of programmes was restricted to educational
broadcasts for a limited area around New Delhi. Television, at this initial phase, was not
considered to be a medium of entertainment but primarily an educational tool. The Government
of India supported the television project financially. In 1961 television programmes for teachers
were started. Regular broadcasting of television programmes began in 1965.

The period between 1972 and 1982 saw the rapid expansion of television. In 1976
television broadcasting was delinked from All India Radio and was put under an independent
organisation called Doordarshan. It switched over to colour transmission on August 15, 1982.
A number of foreign as well as private domestic television channels have been established in
the country after 1990s. Private television channels in various languages dominate the television
broadcasting industry. Although, Doordarshan has excellent network and presence all over
India, its popularity has dwindled significantly.

Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE)

In 1975 Doordarshan, still a part of AIR, launched the Satellite Instructional Television
Experiment (SITE), one of the most ambitious experiments in television history. From August
1, 1975 to July 31, 1976, Doordarshan used the ATS-6 satellite to beam farm, health and
hygiene, and family planning programs 4 hours each day to 2400 villages in rural India. SITE
was also used to telecast entertainment programs, consisting chiefly of rural art, music, and
dance. For the most part, since very few people had their own sets, they watched SITE programs
in communal areas where TV sets were specifically set up for viewing purposes. SITE’s primary
agenda was not only to educate people about solutions to the country’s problems, but also to
unify the diverse and multilingual audience’s country by exposing them to one another’s cultures.
SITE opened up the possibility of connecting people in far and unreachable corners of the
country through the magic of satellite communication.
20

1.11.1. Impact of television

Television in India is now over 40 years old. Within this short span of time, it has made a
profound impact on our society. It has changed the lifestyles of the people and has become a
major influence on our culture. Unlike printing which took hundreds of years to influence our
daily lives, TV’s impact was almost instantaneous.

Television as a mass medium cannot be ignored anymore. It has become an inseparable

part of the individual, family and social life. Hence television is capable influencing our attitudes,
ideas, behavior and even our social life. Television broadcasting in India began with the noble
objective of educating the masses. But this priority had to be sacrificed due to the pressures of
the market forces. The primary objective of television is presently to entertain the masses. We
live in a culture that is different from the one that our parents had lived. The present culture is
mass mediated, in as much as this culture is produced, advertised, propagated and reproduced
by the media and consumed by the masses. This mass mediated culture has a new language,
new psychology, new values and new techniques. The greatest advantage of television in a
country like India is that it is capable of breaking the barrier of illiteracy. Besides, television has
the intimacy of radio and believability of personal participation. It has an intimate approach
which makes it very appealing and attracts the attention and interest of the people.

1.11.2. Prasar Bharathi

Doordarshan was a Government-controlled organ right from its inception. In 1959, when
India witnessed the first experiment in television broadcasting. The various Governments at
the Centre not only controlled the electronic media but made use of them to promote the ruling
party’s hidden agenda. The demand for autonomy for the broadcast media was gaining
increasing support. The National Front Government led by Mr. V. P. Singh introduced the Bill in
the first Parliamentary session in January 1990 to grant autonomy to the broadcast media in
the country. Finally the Act came into force on September 22, 1997. The Prasar Bharathi Board
was formed paving the way for granting autonomy to Doordarshan and All India Radio.
 21

Main functions
1. To organize and conduct public service broadcasting.

2. To ensure a balanced development of radio and television broadcasting.

3. To establish a system of gathering news for radio and television.

4. To conduct or commission programmes, audience research, market or technical services

5. To purchase or acquire programmes and rights or privileges in respect of sports or other

events, films, serials etc.

PrasarBharathi will aim to provide, in the most efficient manner possible, media content
of the highest quality that will empower and enlighten the citizens of India and audiences
outside the country, through original and relevant programmes which inform, educate and
entertain while ensuring a sizeable audience and reach.

Broadcasting Codes

Generally, what will and what will not be aired on All India Radio and on Doordarshan is
dictated by the 1968 AIR code. While permitting the discussion of political and social policies
followed by the government and various political parties, the code does not allow the broadcast
of

1. Criticism of friendly countries

2. Attacks on religious or ethnic communities

3. Obscene, defamatory, inflammatory, and anarchic material

4. Content that undermines the integrityof the President of India, State Governors or the
judiciary

5. Hostile criticism of the State and Central governments

6. Content disrespectful of the Indian Constitution

7. Content that advocates violence as a means for changing the Indian Constitution.
22

1.12. CINEMA IN INDIA

Photography made the possibility of capturing still images. The next attempt was to
capture moving pictures. Auguste and Louis, better known as Lumiere brothers patented a
camera on February13, 1895 which could also project films. They made the first film which was
later screened on March 22, 1895 at a hall in Paris. Cinema was first exhibited in India by the
Lumiere brothers on July 7, 1896 at Watson’s Hotel in Mumbai, six months after their public
exhibition in Paris. Feature films found their place in India in 1912 when the first film ‘Pundalik’
was made by R. G. Torney and N. G. Chitre. This film was followed by ‘Raja Harischandra’ in
1913 by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke. The era of talkie films began in 1931 when the first film
‘AlamAra’ was produced by Ardeshir Irani. The noted film directors of early years were V.
Shantaram, K. A. Abbas, P.C. Barua, Satyajit Ray, Sohrab Mody, Raj Kapoor, Mrinal Sen and
Mehbbob Khan to name a few. Sohrab Mody’s Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) was India’s first colour
film. The Indian film industry, famously known as Bollywood, is the largest in the world and
produces around 1000 films a year.

Documentary film

Documentary film, also known as cinema verite, is a broad category of visual expressions
that is based on the attempt to “document” reality. The filmmaker John Grierson used the term
documentary in 1926 to refer to any nonfiction film medium, including travelogues and
instructional films. The earliest “moving pictures” were, by definition, documentaries. Propaganda
films made by countries during the World War II and during the Cold War era were important
phases in documentary film production. In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often
conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in
Latin America, and other Third World countries. Box office analysts have noted that this film
genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit
9/11, Super-Size Me, Earth (2009 film), March of the Penguins, and An Inconvenient Truth
among the most prominent examples.

Indian Documentaries

Documentary films in India was started by P V Pathy, D G Tendualkar and H S Hirlekar.

Later Paul Zils and FaliBillimoria established a Documentary Unit in India in 1947. Paul Zils
 23

made a number of documentaries including Hindustan Hamara, Zalzala, The Vanishing Tribe.
Independent documentary film producers had to face stringent censorship from Board of Censors
and Film Advisory Board. However, a committed band of independent documentary producers
made films based on political and humanitarian issues from the 1970s and 1980s. One of the
most noted documentarian is Anand Patwardhan. His Waves of Revolution, Prisoners of
Conscience and Hamara Shaher opened new frontiers in independent documentary productions.
His later works Narmada Diary, In Memory of Friends, In the Name of God, and Father, Son
and Holy War have caught the attention of the audience both in India and abroad. By the turn
of the century, documentary film production have come of age. There are several producers of
film that have unearthed and focused on the exploitation of the marginalized and environmental
issues and corporate greed. An international film festival under the aegis of Film Division named
Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Film is held every
year.

Short films

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. The Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as “an original motion picture that has a
running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits”. In the beginning, all films were short.
The films screened by the Lumière brothers’ were of less than one minute duration. The length
of film got extended as the industry began to grow. But the biggest demand for short films has
undoubtedly came from the internet. YouTube and WhatsApp have become some of the most
popular viewing platforms for the short films online. The internet is also proving to be a popular
alternative for short film-makers who can’t afford to distribute their films on DVD. Many of the
campus films produced by schools and colleges belong to this category. Apart from the short
film competitions and festivals, the internet has become the biggest platform for the exhibition
of short films.

1.13. Summary

This lesson provides the brief history of media worldwide and the advancements in print
media, TV, radio and new media. It also carries content related to evolution of media in Indian
context.
24

1.14. Check your Progress

1) Who invented movable printing press?

2) Which is the earliest print document?

3) What is ti-pao?

4) Who invented radio?

5) Expand GNP.

6) When first printing press in India started?

7) When did the color TV transmission in India started?

1.15. Keywords

Documentary film: Documentary film, also known as cinema verite, is a broad category
of visual expressions that is based on the attempt to “document” reality.

Short films: A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. The
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as “an original motion picture
that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits”.

1.16. Review Questions

1. Brief the history of media.

2. Explain the history of media in India.

3. Brief the history of newspapers in India.

4. Elaborate on the importance of prasar bharathi and broadcasting codes.

5. Discuss the evolution of cinema in India.

1.17. Suggested Readings

1. The Evolution of Media by A. Michael Noll, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.

2. The Indian media: illusion, delusion, and reality: essays in honour of Prem Bhatia by
Prem Bhatia, Asharani Mathur, Rupa 2006.

3. Indian News Media: From Observer to Participant by Usha M. Rodrigues, Maya

Ranganathan, SAGE Publications, 2014.
 25

LESSON-2
MASS MEDIA

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 learn the different types of mass media

 learn the importance of reporting and its types

 learn the significance of media in crime reporting.

Structure
2.1. Mass media and its types

2.2. News reporting

2.2.1. Principles of reporting

2.3. Types of reporting

2.3.1. Requisites of News Reporting

2.4. Significance of media in crime reporting

2.5. Summary

2.6. Check your progress

2.7. Keywords

2.8. Review questions

2.9. Suggested readings

2.1. MASS MEDIA AND ITS TYPES

There are different types of mass media that we are accustomed to in this day and age.
Whether it’s children, young people, or adults, we’ve all had our share of media-related exposure
every day.
26

Mass media refers to communication devices, which can be used to communicate and
interact with a large number of audiences in different languages. Be it the pictorial messages
of the early ages, or the high-technology media that are available today, one thing that we all
agree upon, is that mass media are an inseparable part of our lives. Entertainment and media
always go hand in hand, but in addition to entertainment, mass media also remains to be an
effective means of communication, spreading information, advertising, marketing, and in general,
of expressing and sharing views, opinions, and ideas.

There are several types of Mass Media:

1) Print Media: •Newspapers •Magazines •Booklets and Brochures •Billboards

2) Electronic Media: •Television •Radio

3) New Age Media: •Mobile Phones •Computers •Internet •Electronic Books

Print media encompasses mass communication through printed material. It includes

newspapers, magazines, booklets and brochures, house magazines, periodicals or newsletters,
direct mailers, handbills or flyers, billboards, press releases, and books.

Newspapers: Newspapers enjoyed the position of the most preferred medium to reach
a wider audience until electronic communication emerged on the media scene. In the early
days, newspapers were the only medium that masses at large depended on, for daily news. A
newspaper carries all kinds of communication related to a variety of topics like politics, current
affairs, entertainment, finance, stocks, etc. Apart from this, it also includes topics which are in
lighter vein like cartoons, crosswords, Sudoku, movie reviews, book reviews, puzzles,
crosswords, etc. This captivates the imagination and interests of readers from all age groups.
Newspapers are an important platform of mass communication as they reach every 2 nook
and corner of the world where electronic media fails to reach. It plays a pivotal role in providing
authentic firsthand information, building opinions, updating the knowledge of the reader, and
serves as a good platform for advertisers to promote their products. However, with the emergence
of the Internet, which updates information every second and is just a click away, the popularity
of newspapers has reduced. Magazines:
 27

Magazines are another type of popular culture print media. They usually cater to a specific
type of audience who are looking for information based on a particular subject. Magazines
cover a plethora of topics like current affairs, business, finance, consumers, gadgets, self-
help, luxury, lifestyle, beauty, fashion, entertainment, travel, etc. Magazines like TIME and
Reader’s Digest include information which is all-pervasive. The frequency of magazines can
be weekly, fortnightly, bi-monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly. These magazines are the
best forum for advertisers as they have a niche readership. The readers look for a specific type
of information; say for example, a camera ad in a Gadget magazine will definitely have a direct
brand impact on the reader who wants to buy a camera. Also, the shelf life and brand recall of
magazines is far better than newspapers which have a short life span.

Booklets and Brochures: Booklets and brochures are part of the promotional literature
of a product, or an organization. There are two types of booklets and brochures.

•Pre-buying promotion: Usually in malls and stores, promotional literature is distributed

free to all (with discount offers, or other schemes which seem profitable). For example, a free
booklet about cosmetics will include information about the products, latest trends, contents,
the benefits of using them, the available range, or colors, discount coupons, etc. This, will most
likely, have a positive impact on your decision-making.

•Post-buying promotion: These booklets and brochures are usually given with a product
for better customer experience and easy usage post purchasing. You must have observed
when you buy any new item that it is usually accompanied with a small booklet giving details
about the benefits of using the product, usage directions, cleaning and storage instructions.
The guidelines are usually followed by a series of ‘how to’ images which facilitate easy information
about the product. These booklets may also include ‘Other offerings’ section. Organizations
also have their own profiles in the form of brochures which they give to their stakeholders to
create a favorable image. It highlights the information about the company, its capacity and
capability, services and solutions offered milestone achievements, sustainability, innovation,
awards, etc. In this case people “do judge the book by its cover”, and hence, these booklets
and brochures are designed in an attractive format using colors and photos.
28

Billboards: Billboards are huge advertisements that are put up at a height in strategic
locations to draw more attention. They usually attract the target audience by their bold colors,
attention-grabbing headlines, creativity, designs, special effects, etc. Initially, billboards started
by hand painting huge boards, and eventually graduated to putting up printed sheets. Later
came a trend for incorporating neon signs, videos, and cut-outs which extend out from the
boards, 3D rubber, or plastic balloon objects, etc. Such billboards are called bulletins. They
command the best customer exposure. Communication in these types of billboards should be
in minimum words. The images should speak louder than the words. They are a successful
medium of communication as they are good at captivating and retaining customer’s attention.

Electronic media is the kind of media which requires the user to utilize an electric
connection to access it. It is also known as ‘Broadcast Media’. It includes television, radio, and
new-age media like the Internet, computers, telephones, etc.

Television: Television appeals to both the auditory and visual senses, and hence is an
important communication device as it beholds the attention of the audience. For many people,
it is impossible to imagine a life without their television sets, be it the daily news, or even the
soap operas. Television has become an advertising hub where advertisers are ready to spend
huge amounts of money for an ad of a few seconds, especially for programmes with high
viewership. An apt example would be Super Bowl Season. It offers various programs to appeal
to the masses of different age groups. It is a popular means of communication which provides
both information and entertainment. This category also includes electronic media like movies,
CDs and DVDs as well as the electronic gadgets.

Radio: Radio has a significant reach. A considerable number of Americans tune into
radio every week while on their way to work. Advertising on the radio with catchy jingles and
phrases is a tried and tested means of communication. Radio lost its popularity with the boom
of television. But till day, radio remains one of the favorite means of electronic communication.
Moreover, it is an interactive means of communication with all the dial-in programs which give
the listeners an opportunity to feature on radio.

New age Media: With the advent of the Internet, we are now enjoying the benefits of
high technology mass media, which is not only faster than the old school mass media, but also
 29

has a widespread range. Mobile phones, computers, and the Internet are often referred to as
the new-age media. The Internet has opened up several new opportunities for mass
communication which include email, websites, podcasts, e-forums, e-books, blogging, Internet
TV and many others, which are booming today. The Internet has also started social networking
4 sites which have redefined mass communication all together. Sites like Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube have made communication to the masses all the more entertaining, interesting,
and easier!

Mobile Phones: Mobile phones have become a boon to mankind. It has made
communication possible at any time, and from anywhere. Nowadays, a smart device like a
mobile phone is not only used for interaction, but also for other technical utilities like operating
pumps from remote locations, etc. You can also get alerts of your monetary transactions on a
mobile phone. About a decade ago, who would have thought of having the Internet on mobiles?
Today, we can stay in touch with the whole world via the Internet on our mobile phones.

Computers: With the invention of computers the impossible has become possible. We
virtually get information about everything from pin to piano with the help of computers. It has
added speed and multimedia to the information which was earlier available only in the print
format. Also, anyone can voice their opinions through computers. Computers have added a
new breakthrough in the mass media by combining human intelligence with the cutting edge
technology.

The Internet: This is the most important device of the new age media. The discovery of
the Internet can be called the biggest invention in mass media. In earlier days, news used to
reach people only with the morning newspaper. But today, live updates reach us simultaneously
as the events unfold. For example, the royal wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William
was watched live on the Internet by millions of people around the world. The Internet has
inspired interaction and connectivity through its social networking medium. It has become one
of the core means of mass communication. We cannot think of leading our lives without it. Let
us see how the Internet impacts mass communication through the following mediums.

 E-mails: e-mails or electronic mails have drastically reduced the time it took for drafting
and sending letters, or mails. Electronic mails have also facilitated lesser usage of paper.
30

 Websites: the Internet has a plethora of websites dedicated to various people, companies,
brands, causes, activities, etc. The most significant usefulness of these websites is in
providing information, search engines, downloads through libraries, and interaction through
the social networking sites. Due to these websites carrying out e-commerce transactions
has also become easy. 5

 Podcasts: Podcasts are mediums of mass communication that include short video or
audio files. They can be seen and heard on mobiles, computers, and portable media
instruments. They are engaging devices of communication.

 E-Forums: E-Forums are bulletin boards on websites where people start threads on
topics. These are usually hosted on a website. These forums are open platforms to
discuss a range of topics. People give their opinions and share their experiences on
various topics.

 E-Books: There are a number of websites which have hosted eBooks and online libraries.
The main benefit of having eBooks is that you don’t have to carry bulky books. You can
read them on your eBook readers, mobiles, computer screens, or other devices. You can
even adjust the font size to suit your requirements.

 Blogging: A blog is a space on the Internet where a single person or a group of people
record their information, opinions, photos, videos, etc. It is an interesting and free platform
to talk about any topic. Interaction happens in the form of comments or feedback.

 Internet TV: It is also known as online TV. It usually has an archive of programmes. You
have to choose the programme, you wish to view from the list. You can either view the
programs directly from the host server, or download the content on your computer. It is
an effective means of communication.

 Facebook: It is the most popular social networking website. Facebook has several
applications which people utilize. It is the best platform to meet old friends, or make new
ones. Advertisers also like this forum for communicating about their products.

 Twitter: It is also a famous social networking website. Twitter is a micro blogging site
which allows interaction and feedback of different people. There was a time when it was
 31

very popular among celebrities and individuals. Today, the governments of various nations
have understood the importance of “tweeting” information to the public, and regularly
share information through Twitter.

 YouTube: It is a website which uploads content in a video format. It houses a range of

interesting videos that appeal to people of all generations. From films to educational
videos, you will find everything on YouTube.

2.2. NEWS REPORTING

News reporting involves discovering all relevant facts, selecting and presenting the
important facts and weaving a comprehensive story. Reporting involves hard work, which in
turn involves stamina and patience. The main function of journalistic profession is news reporting.

A reporter needs not only energy to spend long hours chasing a story, collecting facts
from various sources in an effort to dig up the truth, he needs must have the will to pursue the
course of his investigation to the very end in order to produce a really comprehensive story
without any missing links or unanswered questions.

In the modern age news journalism the responsibilities of the press have grown manifold.
These days, the people are governed by multiplicity of authorities, viz. Municipality, District
Administration, State Government and the Central Government. Even non-governmental
authorities are involved in the lives of the people in one-way or the other. Man cannot live
alone. He is a social animal. The way his neighbours behave or act affects him. Man is thus
anxious to know more about the world he lives in. Satisfaction of this curiosity is the major task
of a good journalist.

The variety and the depth of news has, of late, increased manifold. In fact, newspapers,
magazines and periodicals have become the main source of information for the people. This
fact underscores the need for accuracy in news reporting. Giving inaccurate news or putting
out news in a casual manner is fraught with grave dangers. A journalist, who is careless in
news reporting or indulges in lies, is a disgrace to the profession. It is better to ease him out
from this profession. If a journalist reports that 50 persons belonging to a particular community
32

,died as a result of communal riot when in fact only 5 persons had lost their lives, his misreporting
can trigger off a major communal flare up and pose grave threat to law and order.

2.2.1. Principles of reporting

Every news story should contain four essential elements— accuracy, attribution of source,
fairness and objectivity. These factors give credibility to a publication and at the same time
demonstrate a reporter’s sense of responsibility.

1. Accuracy: The facts in a story should be correct, down to the minutest detail. A reporter
must be precise with every bit of the details of a story. Readers tend to judge a newspaper’s
credibility by their own experiences with its record of accuracy. News stories with
inaccuracies are a sign of a lazy reporter.

2. Attribution Source identification should be as specific as possible. Use the person’s name
if possible, not merely a ‘spokesperson’. A reporter should not invent news source or
attribute information to such vague quarters like ‘an informed source’, ‘a confidential
observer’ etc. The source from which a story’s information is obtained must be clearly
identified. Failure to do so makes a reporter’s story suspect.

3. Fairness News stories should be scrupulously fair in their presentation of information.

They should never serve the vested interests of groups or individuals. When a person
criticises the behavior or opinion of another in a story, basic fairness requires that a
person criticised is given an opportunity to respond.

4. Objectivity Writers should strive to keep their personal opinions out of a news story. In
general readers are unable to detect the reporter’s political beliefs, religious affiliations or
social attitudes. Every reporter will have his/her personal beliefs, interests, and involvements
but these should not be allowed to creep into the story. At times a reporter will cover
events that run contrary to those personal concerns. In such cases, the reporter should
work harder to achieve even-handedness.
 33

2.3. TYPES OF REPORTING

General Reporting

Reporting means gathering facts and presenting them objectively with ail news writing
skills. It is an active, creative, long and tough process of news, gathering, ideas and opinion
collection, fact finding in order to serve the general public by informing them and enabling
them to make judgment of the issues of the time.

The reporter either he/she is general assignment reporter, beat reporter or specialized
reporter wants to know at all costs, what is going on and why, what has happened and why and
who is involved in what manner. He/she reports it to satisfy the curiosity of the public by giving
due coverage to 5Ws & 1H which the people want to know.

Objective reporting

Reporting of news, unlike editorial writing, is often described as a coldly impersonal job.
A reporter is essentially a story teller and he should tell the story in an objective and tpthful
manner, without lacing it with personal opinions or subjective comments. He should be fair and
impartial and present both sides of the story.

Interpretative reporting

Interpretative reporting, as the phrase suggests, combines facts with interpretation. It

delves into reasons and meanings of a development. It is the interpretative reporter’s task to
give the information along with an interpretation of its significance. In doing so he uses his
knowledge and experience to give the reader an idea of the background of an event and
explain the consequences. Besides his own knowledge and research in the subject, he often
has to rely on the opinions of specialist’s to-do a good job.

Investigative reporting

Investigative reporting means reporting a matter, often a scandal or controversy, in all its
details. It is in-depth reporting. For this, a reporter or a team of reporters selects a particular
subject and goes deep into it. In the recent past some such stories investigated by the media
34

are the Bofors arms deal, security scam and urea import scam. Investigative reporting sometimes
becomes a sting operation. A sting operation is one in which a reporter adopts all available
methods and tactics to collect the information. Sometimes they even trap people for that. One
such sting operation that created controversy was done by Tehelka.

Diplomatic Reporting

Diplomatic Reporting concerns with the foreign policy and the relationship of a country
with other countries and the activities of various foreign missions and the contours of the
foreign policy. In diplomatic relations, neither the enemy is eternal nor is the friendship eternal.
The only thing which is eternal is the interest of the nation. A diplomatic reporter should be
aware of the world power games and the interest of various countries in various regions.

Business and financial reporting

Business and Financial Reporting is a very important beat. Only a person who is well
versed with the financial and business climate of the country can do this assignment. He should
be aware of current economic climate. The causes and the potential solutions for the problems
confronting the business community. Business and financial beat reporter must be aware of
Political and Social Fallout on the economy of the country and the effects of strikes and rallies
on the economy. Financial Reporter must study business pages of daily newspapers/yellow
pages and weekly business magazines to enhance the knowledge. He should frequently visit
the business pages of web and internet.

Sports Reporting

Sports reporting are claimed be one of the most interesting and thrilling beat. Most talented
and respected journalists have been sports writers. If anyone intends to be a sports reporter he
must read books on a range of sports topic, including biographies, histories of Cricket, Hockey,
Football, Golf, Athletics, World Olympics, Local sports – Kabaddi and Wrestling etc.

Court Reporting

Courts are one of the very important sources of news. The decisions of court are often
breaking news or they have a larger implication on policy matters of the state. The major courts
 35

are: supreme court, high courts, district courts. The Reporter covering the court must know the
basics of the law of the land, the functioning of court, its procedure proceedings, the importance
of Bar Council. The problems faced by lawyer community and the clients. He should also read
and understand the constitution.

War Reporting

War reporting is one of the dangerous form of beat reporting. A common reporter can
never be a good war reporter if he does not have the experience of working in pressure and in
stress environment. In modern media scene, the war reporting has got importance due to
development of technology and live reporting.

Conflict Reporting

Working within range of guns, bomb blasts, mines, violence comes under Conflict
Reporting parameters. Conflict reporting is considered to be the most dangerous form of
journalism. Army or Law Enforcing Agencies seizes control over land or situation while media
helps consolidating it. There are number of situations comes under Conflict Reporting they
are; War, Civil war, Terrorists attack, Disaster, Bomb blast, Suicide attack, riots, abductions,
target killing, floods, earth quakes. While working in conflict zones/disaster areas one should
be mentally and physically fit and alert. From the war zone, reporting is very dangerous and
one has to take special care while reporting the events, or analysing the facts. Whenever a
reporter covers rallies and mob demonstrates he should be aware of that sometime mob takes
out their frustration on the media. In war zone or in mob rallies attack or violence comes from
unexpected directions and reporter should be vigilant to take safety measures.

Political Reporting

Politics is a big area which provides a very large part of the media’s diet of news. Politics
is about relationships within and between societies, about the use of power and authority, and
about the government of countries or communities. For journalists, politics can range from
stories about individuals competing for power in minor organisations to nation competing against
nation in international affairs.
36

It is difficult to define where politics ends and government begins - or even if there is a
dividing line. In this and the following chapter, we will look at the ways of reporting power
struggles as news, at the coverage of elections, and at government - the practical application
of politics.

The most important thing to remember about politics is that it involves people. It involves
the politicians who make decisions, the public servants who carry out their orders and - most
important - the people affected by their actions. Your job as a journalist is to serve the people
affected, to explain how the decisions will affect their lives. You should also give them knowledge
they need to take part in debates and vote for the people who will serve them best. You
should not be writing for the politicians or public servants concerned in particular issues; they
should know already what is going on. Whenever you report on any political story, always ask
yourself: “How will it affect my readers’ or listeners’ lives?”

There is a further reason for reporting politics. If you tell the people what is happening,
they can give their reactions to it. They can write letters to the editor, give their opinions in vox
pops or express their feelings directly to the politicians and public servants themselves. In this
way, those in power know what the people they are governing think. This is important in any
democracy.

2.3.1. Requisites of News Reporting

1. A reporter must appreciate the importance of having a good reputation for absolute
reliability. For this purpose he must be systematic in his habits and punctual in keeping
his appointments. By observing these principles, every reporter can make his path smooth
and trouble free.

2. A reporter should have the ability of news reporting and writing skills in the language of
his paper. He should possess the quality to compose in a condensed manner as per
allowable space.

3. The reporter of any local newspaper occupies a unique position and he becomes quite
popular with the people of his town. He reports the local events, functions, fairs, socials
etc. and comes closer to the social life of the town. A reporter should follow some
 37

professional ethics in his work. Sometimes, while engaged in his profession, he may
come to some persons and develop confidential relations with them.

4. Sometimes, a reporter may be asked to write short length paragraphs regarding the local
intelligence or about the city news. For this he should keep his eyes and ears open and
develop a nose for local news. He should develop a system to ensure that none of the
interesting news is missed by him. He should try to know the secretaries of social, religious,
political, musical dramatic, legal, official and other organizations and should call upon
them regularly to get some interesting stories. He should make inquiries from the police
regarding news of accidents and crimes. He should also contact the fire-station for the
particulars of local fires.

5. Every reporter should keep an engagement diary. In this way he can systematize his
working and attend to all his appointments properly and punctually. By keeping an
engagement diary he can know about the important engagements and other events in
the future and cover them without fail.

6. The reporter should not forget to give a head line to his typed copy. Every copy which
goes to the printer to be set is given a catchline. The catchline is a key word, because
during the production it identifies all the sheets of the copy. Tile catchline is given on each
sheet so that the printer can collate the whole story. The catchline should be chosen very
carefully. It is better to choose an uncommon word, which may not resemble with another
news catchline.

2.4. SIGNIFICANCE OF MEDIA IN CRIME REPORTING

Crime stories constitute the fourth largest category of stories for newspapers and television
after sports, general interest and business which is an over-representation of the actual amount
of crime occurring. Research suggests that over 50% of crime stories in a sample of Canadian
newspapers dealt with offences involving violence but offences involving violence represent
less than 6% of reported offences. This is likely a significant factor in the public belief that
crime is on the rise. For example, Canada fortunately has a relatively low homicide rate. Every
year, approximately, 600 Canadians are murdered and because murder remains a relatively
rare event in our society, most of these murders will garner some media attention. So while
38

homicide makes up less than 1% of crimes committed in Canada, it garners a significant

amount of media coverage of crime.

The media is most likely to focus on stories that highlight the unique, the sensational, the
extreme, and those that have the potential to impact the greatest number of people. For crime-
related stories, the media are most likely to focus on events that have occurred multiple times,
for example a number of assaults or break-ins that are centred in a small geographic area, or
those that are very unlikely to occur. Homicides committed by young offenders are often front
page news and may cause people to believe that youth violence is at significant levels, despite
being incredibly rare. The reason they are so newsworthy is because they are so rare – they
shock us, are unique and because of that, may dominate headlines for days and weeks, thereby
giving the public a distorted view of how common these crimes are.

Stranger crimes get more coverage:

The media also tends to focus on crimes committed by strangers rather than the more
common crimes which are committed by someone known to the victim. The abduction of a
child by a stranger will garner far more attention than the abduction of a child by a parent. The
sexual assault of a woman in her home by someone who broke in will be more newsworthy
than a woman who is assaulted in her home by her husband. While this may be explained by
the fact that a single case of domestic assault is unlikely to have wide impact on the community,
it also hides these crimes and creates the impression that these cases are not reported to the
police or prosecuted, which may discourage other victims from seeing the merit in reporting
their abuse.

This kind of coverage may give people a false sense of security. As parents, we tell our
children to be wary of strangers, or to not to walk alone at night, but few of us are educated
about the real dangers. The reality that victim service providers are well aware of is that people
are more likely to be assaulted by someone they know and that we are at greater risk of
violence in our own homes. The media’s focus on stranger crimes asserts the myth that many
people have that if they avoid certain situations or doing what the victims did, they will be safe.
 39

Complexity of what is covered or not:

What crimes the media choose to cover and how they cover those crimes can influence
the public’s perception of crime, including their belief about the amount of crime that occurs in
neighbourhoods and cities. Editors and assignment editors make complex decisions about
what crime stories they will cover (or not) and what the headline will be. Journalists and reporters,
in partnership with their assignment desks and producers decide what information about those
crimes they will include or leave out, what experts they may go to for input, what quotes from
that expert they will include, and where in the story these facts and quotes appear.Other media
managers decide what priority the piece will take within the newspaper or news broadcast. The
process by which the mass media decides how they will or will not report about crime is very
complex.

2.5. Summary

This lesson provides the brief history of media worldwide and the advancements in print
media, TV, radio and new media. It also carries content related to evolution of media in Indian
context. The definition, different types of mass media and its characteristics, news reporting
types, prerequisites are discussed. The significance of media in crime reporting is clearly
introduced in this section for the better understanding of students.

2.6. Check your Progress

1) What is mass media?

2) List any two types of print media.

3) What is e-media?

4) Write any two social media.

5) Expand TV

2.7. Keywords

Mass media: It refers to communication devices, which can be used to communicate

and interact with a large number of audiences in different languages.
40

Print media: It encompasses mass communication through printed material.

Electronic media: It is the kind of media which requires the user to utilize an electric
connection to access it. It is also known as ‘Broadcast Media’.

2.8. Review Questions

1. What are the principles of news reporting?

2. Define print and electronic media.

3. Discuss the features of new media.

4. Explain the different types of news reporting.

5. Explain the significance of crime reporting in media.

6. What is broadcasting codes?

7. Define objectivity.

8. What is crime reporting?

2.9. Suggested Readings

1. The Evolution of Media by A. Michael Noll, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.

2. A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech, by Marshall
T. Poe, Cambridge University Press, 06-Dec-2010.
 41

LESSON – 3
JOURNALISM

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 understand the basics of journalism

 understand the purpose and functions of journalism

 learn the various components of news

 learn the ethics of journalism and news coverage & writing

 understand the plagiarism concepts and its influence in news writing

Structure
3.1. Journalism

3.2. Obligations of journalism

3.3. Purposes of journalism

3.4. Functions of journalism

3.5. News

3.5.1. Basics of news reporting

3.5.2. Basic concepts in news

3.6. Ethics in journalism

3.7. Plagiarism

3.7.1. Plagiarism in journalism

3.8. Summary

3.9. Check your progress

42

3.10. Keywords

3.11. Review questions

3.12. Suggested readings

3.1. JOURNALISM

Journalism means writing for newspapers or magazines. It is the communication of

information through writing in periodicals and newspapers. The people have an inborn desire
to know what’s novel or new. This curiosity is satisfied by the journalists through their writing in
the newspapers and journals on current affairs and news.

Journalism is the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing or broadcasting

news or of conducting any news organization as a business. The word “Journalism” is derived
from the word “Journal” which means a daily register or a diary – a book containing each day’s
business or transactions. This includes newspapers no matter whether they are published
daily or weekly. It also means a magazine to whatever section of the audience it caters to.

When a person writes for a newspaper, magazine or a journal (journalist), such writing is
called journalism which means communication of information about daily events condensed
into a few words, sounds or pictures. We know that man by his nature is curious to know what
is going on in the world around him. Journalism satisfies this vital human need by providing him
and other members of the public with the relevant and requisite information. While a historian
records what happened in the past, a journalist reports on current events and the latest news.

Journalism comes in several different forms:

I. News

A. Breaking news: Telling about an event as it happens.

B. Feature stories: A detailed look at something interesting that’s not breaking news.

C. Enterprise or Investigative stories: Stories that uncover information that few people knew.

II. Opinion

A. Editorials: Unsigned articles that express a publication’s opinion.

 43

B. Columns: Signed articles that express the writer’s reporting and his conclusions.

C. Reviews: Such as concert, restaurant or movie reviews.

Online, journalism can come in the forms listed above, as well as:

 Blogs: Online diaries kept by individuals or small groups.

 Discussion boards: Online question and answer pages where anyone can participate.

 Wikis: Articles that any reader can add to or change.

The best journalism is easy to read, and just sounds like a nice, smart person telling you
something interesting.

3.2. OBLIGATIONS OF JOURNALISM

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth

Democracy depends on citizens having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context.
Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but it can--and must—
pursue it in a practical sense. This “journalistic truth” is a process that begins with the professional
discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable
account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation. Journalists should be
as transparent as possible about sources and methods so audiences can make their own
assessment of the information.

2. Its first loyalty is to citizens.

While news organizations answers to many constituencies, including advertisers and

shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and
the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor.
This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization’s credibility, the implied
covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers.
Commitment to citizens also means journalism should present a representative picture of all
constituent groups in society.
44

3. Obligation of verification

Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information. When the concept
of objectivity originally evolved, it did not imply that journalists are free of bias. It called, rather,
for a consistent method of testing information—a transparent approach to evidence—precisely
so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. Journalism
has developed various techniques for determining facts, for instance, it has done less to develop
a system for testing the reliability of journalistic interpretation.

4. Independence and Neutrality

Independence is an underlying requirement of journalism, a cornerstone of its reliability.

Independence of spirit and mind, rather than neutrality, is the principle journalists must keep in
focus. While editorialists and commentators are not neutral, the source of their credibility is still
their accuracy, intellectual fairness and ability to inform—not their devotion to a certain group
or outcome. In our independence, however, we must avoid any tendency to stray into arrogance,
elitism or isolation.

5. Independent monitor of power

Journalism has an unusual capacity to serve as watchdog over those whose power and
position most affects citizens. Journalists have an obligation to protect this watchdog freedom
by not demeaning it in frivolous use or exploiting it for commercial gain.

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise

The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility
forms a basis for our special privileges. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied
viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the
conflicting fringes of debate.

3.3. PURPOSES OF JOURNALISM

1. Informed Citizenary: The primary purpose of journalism is to ensure a well informed

citizenary for our social and political structure. American Sociologist Herbert J. Gans in his
 45

book ‘Democracy and the News’ says journalism itself “can do little to reduce the political
imbalance between citizens and the economic, political and other organizations.”

Journalism’s theory of democracy still relies on a belief that an informed citizenry will be
an engaged citizenry, that an engaged citizenry will be more participatory and more informed,
and that the result will be a more democratic society. The central purpose of journalism is to
provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society.
This encompasses myriad roles—helping define community, creating common language and
common knowledge, identifying a community’s goals, heros and villains, and pushing people
beyond complacency. This purpose also involves other requirements, such as being entertaining,
serving as watchdog and offering voice to the voiceless.

2. Informed Media: Another purpose of journalism is to provide knowledge about all

aspect of media. It tells about new developments in technology and hones writing skills that
produce real publications (newspapers and television shows, radio programmes) for real
audience.

3. Focus on writing/reading on people’s issues: Journalism emphasizes on writing

and reading literature on people’s issues

4. Promotion of multiperspective approach: Journalism promotes values and ideology

of the profession with a purpose to project a multi-perspectival approach. Journalism informs
citizens about the country’s political diversity, the politically relevant activities and ideas of their
fellow citizens, and what issues are concerning these citizens (which our elected representatives
also need to know) then journalists need to be multiperspective to encompass all the important
viewpoints from people with different values, interests, incomes. Multiperspectivism means
reporting all ideas that could resolve issues and help problems, even if the ideas come from
ideologically small groups.

5. Sociological context: Journalism need to be more sociological — more about

understanding and interpreting what underlies experience. But current journalism’s attempts at
explanation are rarely interpretive or analytical in these ways.
46

6. Online journalism: It is feisty and combative, but its style and round-the-clock news
cycle raise questions about how cyber-journalism can offer reporting compatible with journalism’s
highest standards. Mainstream news organizations are struggling to apply old-fashioned news
standards to the Web, but are discovering it is not easy to translate the virtues of accuracy,
balance, and clarity to a medium where the advantages of speed and timeliness prevail.

Web technology has strengthened the traditional watchdog functions of journalism by

giving reporters efficient ways to probe more deeply for information. The capacity to search
documents, compile background and historical context, and identify authoritative sources has
expanded the reporter’s toolbox. It also has introduced a fundamentally different culture built
on interactivity, fewer rules, and fewer limits.

3.4. FUNCTIONS OF JOURNALISM

 Inform

 Educate

 Interpret

 Mold opinion

 Enable decision making

 Agent of change

 Entertain

3.5. NEWS

 An account of an event, or a fact or an opinion that interests people.

 A presentation of current events

 Anything that enough people want to read is news, provided it meets the standards of
“good taste” and isn’t libelous.
 47

What makes news?

a) Proximity: Location. Location. Location. If the event is happening close by, it will have a
greater impact on your readers.

b) Timeliness: If something is happening NOW, it has more impact on the reader. The most
recent development in a story can be used as a feature.

c) Prominence: If the people in the story are well known, the story will have more impact on
the reader. Most people are not as impacted if the story involves people they do not
know.

d) Conflict: Readers are interested in rivalries, arguments, fights, and disagreements.

e) Novelty: If something is unusual, original, or unique, readers want to know what it is and
why it happened.

f) Human Interest: If the story evokes (inspires) emotion in the reader such as anger,
sadness, or happiness, the reader will have a greater connection with the story and the
story will have a greater impact.

3.5.1. BASICS OF NEWS REPORTING

 Most news stories are written in a very concise way in order to pack as much information
into every line on the page.

 In journalism, space is of a premium so your writing must lend itself to this medium or
form.

 The simplest and most common structure of this kind of writing is called the Inverted
Pyramid.

 To understand what the “inverted pyramid” name means, picture an upside-down triangle
— one with the narrow tip pointing downward and the broad base pointing upward. The
broad base represents the most newsworthy information in the news story, and the narrow
tip represents the least newsworthy information in the news story. When you write a story
in inverted pyramid format, you put the most newsworthy information at the beginning of
the story and the least newsworthy information at the end.
48

 To write an inverted-pyramid story from the facts, you first would write a lead that
summarizes the most important information. This summary should attempt to answer all
5w’s & H (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How). Does your Lead answer all 5W’s
& H? If not, revise.

3.5.2. BASIC CONCEPTS IN NEWS

 5W’S & H The essentials of any story: who, what, when, where, why, and how

 BY-LINE Indicates who wrote the story; often includes the writer’s title

 CAPTION The portion of the layout which explains what is happening in a photograph.
Also called cutlines. Often includes a photo credit.

 EDITOR Has overall responsibility for the publication

 EDITORIAL A type of story which serves to express an opinion and encourage the reader
to take some action

 ETHICS A standard of conduct based on moral beliefs

 FACT A statement that can be proven. Not an opinion

 FEATURE A story written with some interpretation that goes beyond just reporting the
facts

 FLAG The name of the paper that usually appears at the top of page one

 GRAF A paragraph in news writing. These are often short, around 2-3 sentences.

 HAMMER A form of headline consisting of a few very large words over a smaller
subheadline

 HEADLINE Large type designed to summarize a story and grab the reader’s attention

 HUMAN INTEREST An element of news that includes people or events with which the
audience can identify; stories that are just interesting
 49

 INVERTED PYRAMID A style of writing most commonly applied to news stories in which
the most important facts appear early in the story and less important facts later in the
story

 KICKER A short (one or two word) statement at the beginning of a caption that serves to
grab the reader’s attention

 LEAD The beginning of the story which serves to summarize the story and/or grab the
reader’s attention

 LIBEL Written defamation; damaging false statements against another person or institution
that are in writing or are spoken from a written script

 QUOTATION A statement made by another person included in a published story. A direct

quotation is exactly what the person said and appears inside quotation marks. An indirect
quote is a paraphrase of what a person said and does not appear in quotes.

 REVIEW A form of editorial written to comment on a play, movie, piece of music or some
other creative work

 SLANDER Spoken defamation; damaging false statements against another person or

institution that are spoken

3.6. ETHICS IN JOURNALISM

JOURNALISTIC ethics are the common values that guide reporters. They lay out both
the aspirations and obligations that journalists, editors, and others working in the field should
follow to execute their work responsibly. Journalism ethics have evolved over time. Most news
organizations have their own written codes of ethics, as do professional membership bodies. If
a professional journalist or news organization transgresses these ethical standards, they will
lose credibility.

There are several key ethical standards that appear across global news organizations.
At the highest level, they call on journalists to seek the truth, act in the public interest, and
minimize harm.
50

1. Honesty. Journalists have an obligation to seek out the truth and report it as accurately
as possible. This requires diligence: this means making every effort to seek out all the
facts relevant to a story. Journalists should also corroborate any information with multiple
sources.

2. Independence. Journalists should avoid taking political sides and should not act on
behalf of special interest groups. Any political affiliations or financial investments that
might constitute a conflict of interest with the subject they are writing about should be
declared to editors and readers. Some organizations characterize this principle as
“objectivity,” while others, especially non-profit civic journalism projects, reject this term,
as they position themselves explicitly on the side of public interest.

3. Fairness. In addition to being independent, journalists should show impartiality and

balance in their reporting. Most news stories have more than one side, and journalists
should capture this. That said, they should not place two different perspectives on equal
footing where one is unsupported by evidence. The exception to the impartiality rule is
opinion writing, as well as “gonzo” journalism and creative nonfiction.

4. Public accountability. News organizations should listen to their audience. To enable

the public to hold them accountable, journalists should write under their own bylines and
accept responsibility for their words. When news outlets publish factual errors, they need
to issue a correction.

5. Harm minimization. Not every fact that can be published should be published. If the
amount of harm that could come to private individuals—particularly children—as a result
of disclosure exceeds the public good that would come of it, then news outlets might
choose not to publish the story. This is less of a consideration when it comes to public
figures. It is huge, however, in matters of national security, where lives could be on the
line.

6. Avoiding libel. This is a legal as well as a moral imperative for journalists. Journalists
cannot print false statements that damage a person’s reputation. In most jurisdictions,
true statements cannot be libelous, so journalists can protect themselves by rigorously
checking facts.
 51

7. Proper attribution. Journalists must never plagiarize. If they use information from another
media outlet or journalist, they need to attribute it to them.

3.7. PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of another author’s
“language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original
work.

Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics. It is

subject to sanctions such as penalties, suspension, expulsion from school or work, substantial
fines and even incarceration. Recently, cases of “extreme plagiarism” have been identified in
academia. The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged
in Europe in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic Movement.

Plagiarism is not in itself a crime, but like counterfeiting fraud can be punished in a court
for prejudices caused by copyright infringement, violation of moral rights, or torts. In academia
and industry, it is a serious ethical offense. Plagiarism and copyright infringement overlap to a
considerable extent, but they are not equivalent concepts, and many types of plagiarism do not
constitute copyright infringement, which is defined by copyright law and may be adjudicated by
courts.

Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement. While both terms may apply to a
particular act, they are different concepts, and false claims of authorship generally constitute
plagiarism regardless of whether the material is protected by copyright. Copyright infringement
is a violation of the rights of a copyright holder when material whose use is restricted by copyright
is used without consent. Plagiarism, in contrast, is concerned with the unearned increment to
the plagiarizing author’s reputation, or the obtaining of academic credit, that is achieved through
false claims of authorship. Thus, plagiarism is considered a moral offense against the plagiarist’s
audience (for example, a reader, listener, or teacher).

Plagiarism is also considered a moral offense against anyone who has provided the
plagiarist with a benefit in exchange for what is specifically supposed to be original content. In
52

such cases, acts of plagiarism may sometimes also form part of a claim for breach of the
plagiarist’s contract, or, if done knowingly, for a civil wrong.

3.7.1. PLAGIARISM IN JOURNALISM

Since journalism relies on public trust, a reporter’s failure to honestly acknowledge their
sources undercuts a newspaper or television news show’s integrity and undermines its credibility.
Journalists accused of plagiarism are often suspended from their reporting tasks while the
charges are being investigated by the news organization.

Plagiarism in journalism is much the same as anywhere else. There are essentially three
types of plagiarism that occurs in journalism. Plagiarism of information is using information
another reporter has gathered without crediting them or their publication. Plagiarism of writing
is when a reporter directly copies segment/segments of another reporter’s story and uses it in
their own article. The third type is a plagiarism of ideas which is when a reporter has an idea or
theory about a news issue and another reporter advances that theory as their own. So,
paraphrasing a quote is the best idea to avoid plagiarism of ideas.

3.8. Summary

This lesson mainly focus on training students in understanding the basic concepts of
journalism. Hence the definition, obligations, purpose and functions of journalism are covered
in this lesson. The introduction to news, basics of news reporting, the various jargons used in
news industry is explained in detail. To every journalist learning ethics in their industry is important.
So the ethics of journalism and journalist is dealt in this section. The role of plagiarism and
steps to prevent presenting plagiarism content is clearly explained in this chapter.

3.9. Check your Progress

1. Define journalism.

2. Define news.

3. What is ethics?

4. What is plagiarism?
 53

5. What are open ended questions?

6. What is breaking news?

3.10. Keywords

Breaking news: Telling about an event as it happens.

Feature stories: A detailed look at something interesting that’s not breaking news.

Enterprise or Investigative stories: Stories that uncover information that few people
knew.

Editorials: Unsigned articles that express a publication’s opinion.

Columns: Signed articles that express the writer’s reporting and his conclusions.

Reviews: Such as concert, restaurant or movie reviews.

Blogs: Online diaries kept by individuals or small groups.

Discussion boards: Online question and answer pages where anyone can participate.

Wikis: Articles that any reader can add to or change.

5W’S & H: The essentials of any story: who, what, when, where, why, and how

BY-LINE: Indicates who wrote the story; often includes the writer’s title

CAPTION: The portion of the layout which explains what is happening in a photograph.
Also called cut lines. Often includes a photo credit.

EDITORIAL: A type of story which serves to express an opinion and encourage the
reader to take some action

ETHICS: A standard of conduct based on moral beliefs

FACT: A statement that can be proven. Not an opinion

54

FEATURE: A story written with some interpretation that goes beyond just reporting the
facts

FLAG: The name of the paper that usually appears at the top of page one

GRAF: A paragraph in news writing. These are often short, around 2-3 sentences.

HAMMER: A form of headline consisting of a few very large words over a smaller sub
headline

HEADLINE: Large type designed to summarize a story and grab the reader’s attention

HUMAN INTEREST: An element of news that includes people or events with which the
audience can identify; stories that are just interesting

INVERTED PYRAMID: A style of writing most commonly applied to news stories in which
the most important facts appear early in the story and less important facts later in the story

KICKER: A short (one or two word) statement at the beginning of a caption that serves to
grab the reader’s attention

LEAD: The beginning of the story which serves to summarize the story and/or grab the
reader’s attention

LIBEL: Written defamation; damaging false statements against another person or

institution that are in writing or are spoken from a written script

QUOTATION: A statement made by another person included in a published story. A direct

quotation is exactly what the person said and appears inside quotation marks. An indirect
quote is a paraphrase of what a person said and does not appear in quotes.

REVIEW: A form of editorial written to comment on a play, movie, piece of music or some
other creative work

SLANDER: Spoken defamation; damaging false statements against another person or

institution that are spoken
 55

3.11. Review Questions

1. Explain the functions of journalism.

2. List the various components of news.

3. What is the purpose of journalism?

4. Explain the obligations in journalism.

5. Discuss the ethics of reporting.

6. Explain the different types of news values.

3.12. Suggested Readings

1. D Souza, “Hand book of Journalism”, Anmol Publications, 2000.

2. H.M.Aggarwal, “Journalism in Practice”, Reference press, 2005

56

LESSON – 4
INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUES AND
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 understand the role of investigative reporting and its techniques in news

 learn the various news interviewing techniques for effective news coverage

Structure
4.1. Investigative reporting

4.1.1. Basic rules of investigative reporting

4.2. Interviewing

4.2.1. Classification of interview

4.2.2. Types of interview

4.3. Summary

4.4. Check your progress

4.5. Keywords

4.6. Review questions

4.7. Suggested readings

4.1. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Investigative journalism is finding, reporting and presenting news which other people try
to hide. It is very similar to standard news reporting, except that the people at the center of the
story will usually not help you and may even try to stop you doing your job.
 57

The job of journalists is to let people know what is going on in the community, the society
and the world around them. Journalists do this by finding facts and telling them to their readers
or listeners.

4.1.1. BASIC RULES OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

News value

Most newspapers, radio and television stations get a lot of requests from people to
“investigate” some alleged wrongdoing. In many cases these are silly matters, lies or hoaxes.
But you should spend some time on each tip-off, to decide whether or not it will make a story.
You should judge all topics for investigative reporting on the criteria for what makes news.

Keep your eyes and ears open

Always be on the lookout for possible stories. Sometimes people will come to you with
tip-offs, but often you must discover the stories yourself. Story ideas can come from what you
read or overhear or even a sudden thought while you are brushing your teeth. Good investigative
reporters do not let any possible story clues escape. They write them down because they
might come in useful later.

Listen to casual conversations and rumor, on the bus, in the street or in a club. Careless
words give the first clues to something wrong, but never write a story based only on talk you
have overheard or on rumor.

Get the facts

Because investigative reporting means digging up hidden facts, your job will not be as
easy as reporting court or a public meeting. People will try to hide things from you. You must
gather as many relevant facts as you can, from as many people as possible. Your facts must
be accurate, so always check them.

And do not expect dramatic results. Real life journalism is seldom like the stories you see
in films. Most investigations need many hours of work gathering lots and lots of small details.
You and your editor must realize this. If you are not given enough time, you may not be able to
do any successful investigative reporting.
58

Fit the facts together

As you gather the facts, fit them together to make sure that they make sense. Investigative
reporting is often like doing a jigsaw. At the beginning you have a jumble of pieces. Only slowly
will they emerge as a picture. Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, you will not have all the pieces at the
beginning. You have to recognize which pieces are missing then go and find them.

Check the facts

Remember you are trying to find information which some people want to keep secret.
They will not help you in your investigation, so you cannot check your facts with them. They will
probably oppose you and look for mistakes in everything you write or broadcast. If you make a
mistake, they will probably take you to court. You must always check your facts. However,
remember that many people you might interview about corruption could be corrupt themselves.
Criminals lie, so be suspicious of what you are told - and check their words with someone else,
preferably someone you trust.

Evidence

In addition to gathering facts, you should also gather evidence to support those facts.
This is especially important in case you are taken to court for defamation as a result of your
investigation. Courts will only accept facts which can be proved. If someone tells you something
on the record, you can show the court your notes, but it would also be useful to get a signed
statutory declaration from them. This is a kind of legal statement given under oath. Original
documents will usually be accepted as evidence, but photocopies may not, unless they are
supported by evidence from the owner of the original, who may not choose to help you.

Confidential sources

When investigating corruption or abuse, you will meet people who will only give you
information if you promise never to reveal their identity. This is very common in criminal matters,
where people are scared of pay-back. You can agree to these conditions but remember,
sometime in the future a judge examining the same matter in court may order you to reveal the
name of such a confidential source of information. You will be breaking the law if you refuse to
name your source, and could go to jail for contempt.
 59

If you promise to protect a confidential source, you must do so until the source himself or
herself releases you from that promise. So if you are not prepared to go to jail to protect a
source, do not promise in the first place.

Threats

People may threaten you to try to stop your work. This could be a threat of physical harm
or a threat by a company to stop advertising with your newspaper or station. It could even by a
vague threat to “do something” to you. Most threats are never carried out. The people making
them realize that harming you will only make their situation worse.

But all threats should be reported immediately to your editor or your organization’s lawyer.
This will share the burden of worry with someone objective. It will also act as extra protection if
the person making the threat knows that it is public knowledge. If you have a witness to the
threat, you might be able to include it in your eventual story, after getting legal advice.

Work within the law

Journalists have no special rights in law, even when investigating corruption. Unlike the
police, journalists cannot listen in to other people’s telephone calls or open their letters.
Journalists cannot enter premises against a person’s wish.

You must work within the law, but more than that, you should not use any unethical
methods of getting information. For example, you should not pretend to be someone to whom
people feel obliged to give information, such as a police officer or a government official. However,
there are situations where you do not have to tell people that you are a journalist when gathering
information.

4.2. INTERVIEWING

An interview is a conversation between two or more people the interviewer and the
interviewee Interviews are exchange of information between a reporter and a source. The
interview is an active method of gathering news. For a journalist, an interview is usually in a
form of question and answer session Interview is one of the most important and easy way to
60

gather information and create content for a story. It is an efficient and easy way to prepare a
news program or news show. Interview has to create a three-way interaction, a successful
interview will include all these three types of people.

Every interview is different, depending on the person you are interviewing and what you
are talking about. All the same, there is a formula which you can apply to every interview, which
will help you to get the best out of it.

Preparation

Before any interview, you need to do some preparation. Talk to your colleagues and find
out whatever they know about your interviewee and the background to the story. Get the cuttings
out of the library and read what has been published before.

Check on the sort of story that is wanted - is it a hard news story, a background story, or
a personality profile? Then make a list of the things which you need to know, so that you can
ask the right questions.

Finally, make yourself look neat and tidy. Whether you dress formally or informally depends
upon who you are going to interview, but you should always look clean and you should never
look scruffy.

Politeness

Nobody is obliged to be interviewed by a journalist, so be grateful and be polite. At the

start of every interview, introduce yourself in a clear confident voice - “Good afternoon, Mr
Wingti, I’m Joe Vagi of the Niugini Courier. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get down to business. Take a minute or two for
appropriate small talk. You might ask about his health and his family and how he is settling into
his job; this will indicate that you care about him as an individual and will help to establish a
rapport. Don’t overdo it, though. Remember that he may be a busy man and have better things
to do than discuss his family with a total stranger!
 61

It will be a matter for your judgment on each occasion how much of this small talk is
appropriate.

Open questions

It may be that you know most of the details of a story, and only need two or three details
from an interview. In that case you can get straight to the point. More usually, however, you will
have only a sketchy idea of the story. In this case, the ideal first question is something like:
“What actually happened?” or “Could you tell me about..?” This will give you the broad outlines
of the story.

Avoid asking questions with a yes/no answer especially if you want a recorded interview
for radio; it makes very dull listening to hear long questions from the journalist and one-word
answers from the interviewee. Ask questions which invite details, not agreement or disagreement.
Remember, you want to spend most of your time listening, not speaking.

Visualise

Once you have the broad outlines of the story, try to build up a picture in your mind of
what happened. If there is any part of the picture which is not clear, ask for clarification. You will
want to know Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?

You must start with the most important areas of the story and gradually fill in the less
important detail, because the interview might be brought to an end at any moment.

Don’t forget to ask about the past and the future, too - what led up to the story, and what
will happen as a result. Try not to interrupt.

Recap

To “recap” is short for “recapitulate”. This means to go back over your notes before you
let the interview end. Read them through, see if they make sense and check that no details you
need are missing. Don’t do all this in silence, though, or your interviewee will think you have
finished. Keep talking, while most of your mind is on your notes. When you come across
names, check the spelling; when there are figures, check that you have them right.
62

Finally, tell your interviewee what you understand the story to be. This will take time, as
you tell back to the interviewee in an orderly form all that he has told you in bits and pieces. If
you have got it wrong in any respect, you may be sure that he will stop you and put it right.

The final question

We are all human and fallible, so you may forget to ask something important in an interview.
Or there may be something which you could not know about, which will make a good story.

For these reasons, when you have asked everything that you think you need to know,
there is one more question to ask: “Is there anything else I should know?”

Before you go

You may find that you get back to your desk after an interview, start to write the story and
then realise that you did not ask an important question. You then have to telephone your
interviewee and put the question.

Before you leave the interview, therefore, check that you have their phone number and
check that they will be available on that phone number for the next hour or two, “in case there
are any other questions”. If the interviewee is about to go out, try to get a number where you
can contact them - most places around town have phones.

Leave your business card, if you have one, or otherwise a written note of your name,
company and phone number, so that the interviewee can phone you if a thought occurs to
them after you have gone.

If you think the story needs a photograph, check whether the interviewee will be available
to have a picture taken, and if so when would be convenient.

Finally, say “thank you”, shake the interviewee’s hand (or whatever is usual in your culture)
and part as friends - you may well need another interview from the same person at some future
date.
 63

4.2.1. CLASSIFICATION OF INTERVIEW

There are many classification of interview. The main three classifications are, subject
wise classification, technique wise classification and format wise classification. Other
classifications are: (i) Issue oriented interviews. Issue oriented interviews can further be
categorized such as Political issues, Social issues, Civic issues, Interviews. (ii) Personality
oriented interviews: Personality oriented interviews revolve around personalities for instance.
Political personalities, Show biz personalities, intellectuals, scholars, poets and writers etc. (iii)
Investigative interviews: These interviews are done to get some exclusive and authentic news
story on an event, on a personality or on a decision which has a public significant.

Forms of Interview

 Solo Interview (one man interview)

 Group Interview (More than two persons interview)

 Telephonic Interview (peeper interview).

4.2.2. TYPES OF INTERVIEWS

 Set piece interviews (It is spot or an arranged interview)

 Door stepping interviews (are done instantly)

 Vox Pop interviews (They are random interviews. In these interviews questions are instant
to a passer-by)

 Moving Interviews (Interviewing while walking, moving in the car, train or on the board in
aircraft)

 Interpreter or interpretive interviews are those which are done with the help of interpreter.
Normally, these are conducted when either the interviewer or the interviewee does not
know each other’s language.
64

4.3. Summary

This lesson mainly focus on the various types of news interviews and its use in different
types of news item is discussed. Addition to it, the importance of investigative reporting and
rules of doing investigative journalism is explained.

4.4. Check your Progress

1. What are open ended questions?

2. What is breaking news?

3. What is the purpose of interview?

4. What are closed ended questions?

5. What is ambience in interview?

6. What is vox-pop?

4.5. Keywords

 Vox Pop interviews: They are random interviews. In these interviews questions are
instant to a passer-by.

 Moving Interviews: Interviewing while walking, moving in the car, train or on the board
in aircraft.

4.6. Review Questions

1. Explain the different types of news values.

2. Explain the types of interviews

3. What is investigative reporting?

4. Explain the process of reporting investigative stories.

5. What are confidential sources?

 65

4.7. Suggested Readings

1. Lynette Sheridan Burns, Understanding Journalism, Vistaar Publications, 2006

2. James Glen Stovall, Journalism on the Web, Pearson Allyn & Bacon, 2003.
66

LESSON – 5
MASS MEDIA AND CRIME

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 learn the portrayal of crime in media

 understand the various factors associated with crime reporting in media

Structure
5.1. Portrayal of crime and media

5.1.1. Fear of crime

5.1.2. Factors affecting the level of fear exhibited by individuals

5.1.3. Reactions to the fear of crime

5.1.4. Behavioral aspects of fear of crime

5.2. De-sensitization of people by media

5.3. Spread of rumors

5.3.1. The psychology of rumors: 6 reasons why rumors spread

5.3.2. The psychology of why people spread rumors

5.4. Summary

5.5. Check your progress

5.6. Keywords

5.7. Review questions

5.8. Suggested readings

 67

5.1. PORTRAYAL OF CRIME AND MEDIA

5.1.1. FEAR OF CRIME

The fear of crime refers to the fear of being a victim of crime as opposed to the actual
probability of being a victim of crime. The fear of crime, along with fear of the streets and the
fear of youth, is said to have been in Western culture for “time immemorial”. There are also
some wider cultural influences. The fear of crime, along with fear of the streets and the fear of
youth is said to have been in western culture for “time immemorial”. The media also plays a
vital and critical role in shaping the amount that people hold of fear of crime. This is due to the
reason that media cover crime stories in a very extensive as well as disproportionate way.
Although not everyone is a victim of crime but criminal acts touch everyone’s life.

5.1.2. FACTORS AFFECTING THE LEVEL OF FEAR EXHIBITED BY

INDIVIDUALS

Gender

Gender has been found to be the strongest predictor of fear. Women have a much greater
fear of crime than men, but are victimized less than men. Women’s fear comes mostly from
their vulnerability to sexual aggression: women are ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted
than are men. This fear of sexual assault and rape transposes itself onto other types of crimes.
Women do not simply become aware of this fear one day, nor are they born with it; women are
socialized into thinking that they are vulnerable to attack if they, for example, go out alone at
night. Parents, peers and media emphasize and re-enforce this fear, and women are expected
to succumb to it.

Age

Age is also a powerful predictor of fear but, unlike gender, with age the fear varies from
crime to crime. When it comes to age, it is customary to assume that the elderly are the most
afraid, and for many crimes, this assumption holds true, such as in mugging cases and break
and enters. When it comes to crimes like rape, sexual assault and stranger attacks, it has been
found that younger people tend to be more fearful. Elderly people have a high fear level in
68

relation to many crimes because they feel vulnerable. This vulnerability stems from the physical
and social limitations that elderly people have which renders them unable to defend themselves
or to seek support and help.

Past Experiences with Crime

Many studies have examined whether or not past experiences with crime and criminals
have any effect on the level of fear that a person holds, but findings have not been unanimous.
Some studies have found no real differences between victims and non-victims, but other studies
have documented a difference. In studying the effects of crime on college students, Dull and
Wint (1997) found that those students who had been victims of crime had less fear of personal
crime, but more fear of property crime, than those not victimized.

Geography

Fear of crime also varies according to where one lives. People who live in cities tend to
hold higher levels of fear because cities and other urban areas tend to have higher crime rates
than rural areas.

Ethnicity and Culture

Studies have found that fear levels vary according to ethnic background. While whites
tend to show the least amount of fear, the question of who has the most fear has not been
unanimously agreed upon. A 1994 British Crime Survey found that in relation to crimes of
harassment, burglary, rape and mugging, the ‘Asian’ group expressed the most fear. The ‘Black’
group showed the next highest fear level in relation to these crimes, while the ‘White’ group
showed the least amount of fear. This survey also found that for the crime of theft from car, the
‘Black’ group showed a slightly higher level of fear than the ‘Asian’ group, and the ‘White’ group
once again had the lowest level of fear. In relation to simply feeling unsafe, the ‘Asian’ group
was the highest, and the ‘White’ group had only a slightly higher level of fear than the ‘Black’
group.
 69

Other Variables

There are several other variables which have been examined in order to see if they have
an effect on fear of crime. These variables are not as prominent as the ones listed above, but
their effects are still worth noting. Factors such as low income levels, and low educational
levels tend to increase levels of fear.

Factors influencing the fear of crime include public perceptions of neighborhood stability
and breakdown, and broader factors where anxieties about crime express anxieties about the
pace and direction of social change. There may also be some wider cultural influences: some
have argued that modern times have left people especially sensitive to issues of safety and
insecurity.

5.1.3. REACTIONS TO THE FEAR OF CRIME

Due to their fear of crime, people try to reduce their risk of victimization in three ways:
avoidance behaviors, protective behaviors, and insurance behaviors. Avoidance behaviors are
restrictive, involving avoiding unsafe areas at night or certain locations altogether, or reducing
social interaction and movements outside of the home. Protective behaviors include obtaining
security systems and watch dogs, joining self-defense courses, and/or participating in community
programs such as Neighborhood Watch. Insurance behaviors aim at reducing one’s risk through
the minimization of victimization costs, leaving the person feeling that they do not have anything
of value to be victimized for, and therefore will not be victimized.

5.1.4. BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS OF FEAR OF CRIME

A way to measure fear of crime is to ask people whether they ever avoid certain areas,
protect certain objects or take preventive measures. This way, measuring fear of crime can
become a relatively straightforward thing, because the questions asked tap into actual behavior
and objective facts, such as the amount of money spent on a burglar-alarm or extra locks.
However, it is important to note that some degree of fear might be healthy for some people,
creating a natural defense against crime. In short, when the risk of crime is real, a specific level
of fear might actually be functional: worry about crime might stimulate precaution which then
makes people feel safer and lowers their risk of crime. The fear of crime is a very important
feature in criminology.
70

Fear of crime is real and it affects people’s quality of life. It is believed, however, that the
series of legislative initiatives enacted in reaction to fear of crime have not proven to be beneficial.
Fear has not been reduced and people do not feel safer. As long as fear persists, the public will
continue to call for more of the same harsh measures. It is time we took a second look at the
limited safety provided by the correctional changes we have implemented. It is time that politicians
and leaders stop merely reacting to fear by proposing simplistic, short-term solutions to the
complex problems of crime. Years of research have shown that the correctional practices we
now have in place are not effective in creating safe communities and simply delay the problem,
thereby not reducing fear in the long-term.

5.2. DE-SENSITISATION OF PEOPLE BY MEDIA

Watching media characters behave in a violent fashion can instigate a process of

observational learning in which a new cognitive and behavioral repertoire promoting violence
is acquired. Desensitization, on the other hand, is a process involving changes in emotional
responsiveness.

Desensitization is a psychological process that has often been involved in explaining

viewers’ emotional reactions to media violence. Research on emotional reactions to violent
messages has been concerned with the possibility that continued exposure to violence in the
mass media will result in desensitization, that is, that exposure to media violence will undermine
feelings of concern, empathy, or sympathy that viewers might have toward victims of actual
violence. To understand the effects of repeated exposure to violence, researchers have
suggested that viewers become comfortable with violence that is initially anxiety provoking,
much as they would if they were undergoing exposure therapy.

The vast majority of studies have looked at desensitization in terms of reduced negative
arousal in response to media violence. Another pertinent effect of habitual or repeated exposure
to media violence may be increased positive arousal or enjoyment. The role of positive arousal
to violent media is less than clear. Most of the early work on desensitization to media violence,
such as that conducted by Victor B. Cline and his colleagues (1973) and Margaret H. Thomas
and her colleagues (1977), involved exposure to rather mild forms of television violence for
relatively short periods of time.
 71

5.3. SPREAD OF RUMOURS

Some people spread rumors as a way to intimidate others and gain status or popularity.
But spreading rumors as a way to turn people against someone is a form of bullying — and it
can have serious consequences for the person doing it. Spreading unkind gossip in person or
online is not a decent or mature way to act. It hurts the person being talked about, and it
intimidates other people.

5.3.1. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RUMORS: 6 REASONS WHY RUMORS

SPREAD

What Counts as a “Rumor”?

Let’s start by defining what we mean by a “rumor” in the same way social psychologists
have. Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia describe four basic qualities of rumors:

1. They are information statements. We’re not talking about the opinions that people
share. Instead, rumors are meant to be informative.

2. They are in circulation. In other words, if you have your own personal conspiracy theory
that the moon isn’t real, it’s not a rumor if you never tell anyone.

3. They are unverified. This is key.

4. Finally, rumors are “instrumentally relevant.” They answer questions that people want
answered because they feel important or significant. If there’s a rumor that your office is
laying people off, that’s instrumentally relevant because that information impacts your
life! Some have called rumor spreading a “group sense making activity” because they
serve to help people understand an ambiguous situation.

5.3.2. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WHY PEOPLE SPREAD RUMOURS

In 1947, Gordon Allport and Leo Postman published the book, The Psychology of Rumor.
Although rumors were a pretty hot topic in social psychology around that time, it got more and
more difficult to study rumors well. In the last several years, however, there’s been a renewed
interest in the psychology of rumor.
72

1. People Spread Rumors when there’s Uncertainty

It’s when we don’t already have a firm grasp on how or why things are happening in the
world that rumors start to spread. If you can imagine being in middle school again, imagine
what would happen if one day, out of the blue, one of your classmates stopped coming to
school. There’s a ton of uncertainty there, so people would probably develop and spread rumors
as a way to get a handle on what happened. In fact, a field experiment in 1955 did just that: the
researchers strategically withdrew a student from a grade school class without explanation.
Not surprisingly, rumors started to fly as students tried to make sense of the situation.

2. People Spread Rumors When They Feel Anxiety

Oftentimes uncertainty breeds anxiety- we like to have a clear sense of the world, and we
get anxious when we feel uncertainty- and anxiety on its own has been linked to rumor spreading.
Some research has shown that more anxious people tend to be the ones who are more likely
to spread rumors. Another fascinating experiment made some students feel especially anxious
about an upcoming interview. The students who were made to feel more anxious spread rumors
more quickly than the less anxious students in the control group. Research has also shown
that “dread” rumors (i.e., rumors that something bad is going to happen) spread more than
“wish” rumors (i.e., rumors that something good is going to happen). This is the case both for
rumors spread online and for rumors spread in person.

3. People Spread Rumors When the Information is Important

As much as you might be dying to talk about the rumor you heard about the company you
work for, I probably don’t care a ton. The reason is that it’s just not that relevant to me. I, on the
other hand, would be itching to talk about some other rumor that’s more important to me. In
fact, All port and Postman’s “basic law of rumor” that they developed in 1947 was that spreading
rumors depends on both the ambiguity of the situation and the importance of the rumor. Across
a whole bunch of studies, people are more likely to spread rumors when the information is
more important to them.
 73

4. People Spread Rumors When They Believe the Information

Let’s face it—if you hear a rumor that you think is completely ridiculous, you probably
won’t find yourself on a mission to spread that information far and wide. For example, one
study looked at the spread of rumors during a university strike. It was the rumors that were
more believable that ended up spreading the most.

5. People Spread Rumor when it helps Their Self-Image

Plenty of research has shown that people often want to feel good about themselves, but
one way people can do that is through rumor spreading. There are a couple reasons this can
happen. One is that spreading a rumor positions you as someone who is clued into what’s
going on in the world. People might then come to you as the one who’s especially informed.
Another way rumor spreading can boost self-esteem is when the rumor is about another group.
Other research has shown that putting down other groups can boost people’s self-esteem.
Lots of rumors, it turns out, are about a group’s “opposing” group. These have been called
“wedge rumors” and serve to reinforce intergroup differences. Clearly, these can boost self-
regard by elevating one’s own group about a rival other group.

6. People Spread Rumor when it helps Their Social Status

The evidence for this can be seen in studies where people tell different rumors depending
on the person they’re telling them to. Specifically, the question was whether people would pass
along a rumor that one school group’s ranking had decreased or whether they’d pass along a
rumor that the group’s ranking increased. The results showed that it depended on who would
be receiving the rumor. If it was someone who was part of that group, people were more likely
to spread a positive rumor about them. If it was someone who was part of a rival group, then
people were more likely to spread the negative rumor. The point is that people spread rumors
strategically, to gain the respect of others.

5.4. Summary

This lesson deals with how media portrays crime. The different factors associated with
crime such as fear of crime, de-sensitizing crime, spread of rumors are explained in this section.
74

5.5. Check your Progress

1. What is fear of crime?

2. What is culture?

3. What is behaviour?

4. Define rumors.

5.6. Keywords

Fear of crime: The fear of crime refers to the fear of being a victim of crime as opposed
to the actual probability of being a victim of crime.

Desensitization: Desensitization, on the other hand, is a process involving changes in

emotional responsiveness.

5.7. Review Questions

1. Explain the factors affecting the fear of crime.

2. Discuss the behavioural aspects of fear of crime.

3. What is de-sensitization by media?

4. Elaborate on the reasons why rumor spreads.

5. Explain the psychology behind spreading rumors.

5.8. Suggested Readings

1. Media and Crime, THIRD EDITION by Yvonne Jewkes - University of Bath, UK.

2. Media Representations of Police and Crime, M.Shaping the Police Television Drama, by
Colbran, Palgrave macmillan.
 75

LESSON – 6
REPRESENTATION OF CRIME IN MEDIA

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 learn the role of media in disseminating and representing victims in media

 understand the impact of mass media in society and its influence in crime news.

Structure
6.1. Representation of women

6.2. Role of media in crime prevention

6.3. Summary

6.4. Check your progress

6.5. Keywords

6.6. Review questions

6.7. Suggested readings

6.1. REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN

Nowadays wherever we see we can find posters of women promoting some or the other
product. I just want to ask one question that why is it that always we find women selling products
and not men? Why is it that we always see salesgirls coming at our home selling things to us?
The answer is straight-forward that women are portrayed as a commodity in Indian society.
Didn’t you have a look at those magazines published from your place? Why is it that this is
happening? The Indian media is going against ethics. It portrays women in the most improper
form it could, just for the mundane reason that it wants to increase sales.
76

What sort of example is media setting?

The art and culture pages of the newspapers help to round out the portrayal through the
reviews of exhibitions by women artists, performances by female musicians, critiques of plays
produced or acted by women, but here too is the seductive Swapna Sundari and Malika
Sherawats or the Silk Smithas and the razzle dazzle Kareena who the camera and the pen
focuses on. Only the sports pages carry some positive news of the achievements of women
athletes and players (Saina Nehwal, Aswini Ponnappa, Jwala Gutta, Krishna Punia, Geetha
Satti). Yet even here, when women achieve positive or even spectacular results, men find ways
of undermining or ridiculing their success.

Politics is said to be the staple of our newspapers but the irony is that here too, instead of
aggrandizing the knack of the youngest and first woman Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani
Khar, media has found a reason to project the other version of the story i.e. her impeccable
style sense. Now is this the correct way of projecting a woman? The answer is a big NO, well
at least for me.

What does the Law say about it?

Now your inquisitive mind may be boggled by the question where is the recourse for such
acts? The answer is right here.

• Section 292 of Indian Penal Code which deals with the sale of obscene books, pamphlet,
inter alia representation which shall be deemed to be “lascivious or appeals to the prurient
interest”,

• The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, also punishes the indecent
representation of Women, which means “the depiction in any manner of the figure of a
woman; her form or body or any part thereof in such a way as to have the effect of being
indecent, or derogatory to, or denigrating women, or is likely to deprave, corrupt or injure
the public morality or morals. It states that no person shall publish or cause to publish or
cause to be published or arrange to take part in the publication or exhibition of any
advertisement which contains indecent representation of women in any form.
 77

But I am afraid to call it as recourse the reason being the meager punishment awarded
on the commission of such acts. Under Section 6 of the Indecent Representation of Women
(Prohibition) Act, 1986 which Penalty, the words ‘and with fine which may extend to two thousand
rupees’ shall be substituted with the words ‘and with fine which may extend to ten thousand
rupees’ and the words ‘in the event of a second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment
for a term of not less than six months but which may extend to five years and also with a fine
not less than ten thousand rupees but which may extend to one lakh rupees’ shall be substituted
with the words ‘in the event of a second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment for a term
of not less than six months but which may extend to five years and also with a fine not less than
fifty thousand rupees but which may extend to five lakh rupees’. Until and unless the stricter
punishment provisions are being incorporated, I doubt that this scenario will ever be changed.

The main aspect of media regulations is that media should not publish any story which
may relate to libel and defamation of women. sometime ago, India’s First woman Additional
Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh protested the use of words “keeps” and “one night stands” in
the Supreme Court judgment on live-in relationship. The reason behind her objection was that
such judgment would be published and telecast in several journals and newspapers and news
channels which will possibly tell the world that in India, women are regarded as “keep”. Rather
than portraying women in such outlandish manner, it is the duty of the judiciary to keep a check
on legal accountability of Media while publishing or broadcasting any story about women because
it is the judiciary who has to decide whether the acts of the other 3 pillars of the Indian democracy
namely, executive, legislature and media, are in consonance with decency, morality and public
order.

What should be done about it?

The continued projection of negative and degrading images of women in media

communications – electronic, print, visual and audio – must be changed. Print and electronic
media in most countries do not provide a balanced picture of women’s diverse lives and
contributions to society in a changing world. In addition, violent and degrading media products
are also negatively affecting women and their participation in society. In addressing the issue
of the mobilization of the media, Governments and other actors should promote an active and
visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in policies and programs.
78

Women should be empowered by enhancing their skills, knowledge and access to

information technology. This will strengthen their ability to combat negative portrayals of women
internationally and to challenge instances of abuse of the power of an increasingly important
industry. Self-regulatory mechanisms for the media need to be created and strengthened and
approaches developed to eliminate gender-biased programming. Most women, especially in
developing countries, are not able to access effectively the expanding electronic information
highways and therefore cannot establish networks that will provide them with alternative sources
of information. Women therefore need to be involved in decision-making regarding the
development of the new technologies in order to participate fully in their growth and impact.

This is not a plea of literary writing for women to be scoured but to redress the enormous
harm done by existing portrayals and images in print media. Women must resist being sold in
this manner and it is time they took the power of this medium in their own hands to create truth
in their idiom or the pressures of the mass market will make their struggle for change increasingly
difficult because when girls change, everything changes. The sex-class bias simply invisibles
women. As we unite to struggle against sex oppression, we must struggle too for equal space
in the media. We must make media work for us and not against us. Every human being is to be
respected. The media which actually should guide us towards making this world a better place
to live in, should not go against the ethics. To end I would like to quote the poignant words of
Margaret Sanger

“Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has
been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression”.

6.2. ROLE OF MEDIA IN CRIME PREVENTION

The world over media has continued to play a creative role in keeping society strong.
Apart from bringing fresh news from several sources, it is also seen as a guardian of peace
and order. Media’s role is not limited to just that but it is also recognized for its creative input
into the making of a civil society. Crime has tormented the civil society for centuries. Media’s
arrival in this regard can be seen as a blow to criminal organizations and syndicates. Often
media has been successful at reaching the corners where the police and other crime control
 79

institutions have failed to. There are thousands of such cases, in fact millions, which were
discovered and successfully solved because of the media’s efforts and contribution. Media is
also credited for serving an important role in the collective war against terrorism and other evils
that are known as the biggest plagues for the civil society.

Apart from bringing up cases of corruption into the public’s eye and covering cases that
require public’s attention media has also been known for an impartial contribution to
peacekeeping and maintenance of order across nations. Several times media has been able
to successfully bring the deficiencies of the public agencies into light and raise the level of
social awareness. Social awareness has been recognized to be the best weapon to fight against
crime and this role cannot be played alone by the government agencies. Apart from the news
media, the role of social media must also be recognized in this area. However, while the news
media has often been criticized for churning dissatisfaction against the government agencies,
still its role in fighting corruption and crime has been strongly felt by the society.

In the Asian countries where media has limited freedom compared to the Western and
developed nations, despite its limitations, media has played a very strong role as a vigilante. In
these nations, the level of political and bureaucratic corruption has been very high. Media has
played the role of a social representative in combating this kind of corruption. In recent years
while the anti-corruption struggle kept growing stronger in China and India and produced mixed
results in both nations, the role of media in helping people fight the war was appreciable. Even
in US, media has kept rising in importance not only for criticizing government’s wrong economic
or political moves but for helping it build a progressive and globalized society. Even The media
houses are subject to several kinds of pressures. In the US, the government and law have
subjected them to limitations and these limitations stop them from playing as openly as they
can. This has been done because the media’s influence can torment civil unrest. If media
agencies were not there, the situation of immigrants and the colored population in the US
might have been worse.

Not just this several of the cases where public’s reaction has been able to bring out quick
outcomes, would have gone unnoticed and the government agencies would have been sitting
on a pile of cases hiding them from the public’s eyes. Whether it is the murder of a citizen of
80

color or cases of domestic violence, media has always brought the most troublesome issues to
everyone’s notice. In this regard it has also helped citizens by spreading awareness. Especially
in the times of crisis, media’s role gets highlighted. Whether it is during a war or during times of
health crisis, the media has helped people and made them aware of sources from which they
can find help and support.

In such times, you often see media working in tandem with the government agencies to
help people. In several corners of the world where criminals and terrorist organizations or
dictators rule, there is no other hope for people than media. Media does not just inspire hope in
such areas, but also helps build consensus over political and economic issues. In the backward
nations however, the media can play an even stronger role in helping the citizenry bring their
nation out of the dark. In the backward nations, the government and civil machinery can be
very weak.

People are easily exploited and fall prey to evils like drug and crime syndicates and
trafficking gangs. Innocent people often find it difficult to get help from the government agencies
and media’s role has mostly been instrumental at creating pressure on government agencies
for action. Whether it is genocide, war, terrorism or other types of crisis and even exploitation
of the immigrants, media has been able to fill the gaps through its efforts and create harmony
through social awareness.

Thinking specifically in terms of crime and its perils for the society, the media is not just
a whistle-blower. It has remained an active participant in crime control globally. It has the
largest influence on society and people‘s minds in terms of the knowledge of crime and deviance.
Most people’s knowledge of crime and crime patterns is derived from media. While sometimes,
it can give rise to unnecessary fears, it has also been able to warn the society and help people
take preventive actions. Not just this, the media has also played a role in highlighting people’s
contribution to the preservation of law and order. The overall picture of crime and justice that
the common citizen has in mind is influenced by the media. From sexual assault to murder,
burglary and even domestic violence a common citizen often tries to find a solution through
media. In the developed nations, the relationship between police and the media has been seen
as symbiotic where they together have been able to defend social order and peace. Media
 81

consumption has often been related with increased fear of crime but on the other hand media
has also been able to bring focus on crime and its havens using its investigative techniques
and strategy. If we check the overall image of media in this regard then it is seen the world over
as a vigilante that through various ways helps the society defend itself against crime and
several other social ills.

6.3. Summary

This lesson deals with the representation of women with respect to crime cases. The role
of media in preventing crime and creating awareness about the issues are explained. The
lesson also covers how mass media (Print, Electronic and Digital) creates an impact in making
and preventing crime. The steps to manage and overcome with effective crime related messages
in media is also discussed as a part.

6.4. Check your Progress

1. How women represented in crime news?

2. What are the steps taken to cover victims in crime news?

6.5. Keywords

Section 292 IPC: It deals with the sale of obscene books, pamphlet, inter alia
representation which shall be deemed to be “lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest”,

The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986: It means “the depiction
in any manner of the figure of a woman; her form or body or any part thereof in such a way as
to have the effect of being indecent, or derogatory to, or denigrating women, or is likely to
deprave, corrupt or injure the public morality or morals is punishable.

6.6. Review Questions

1. Discuss how the crime victims are covered in media.

2. What are the different laws say about crime reporting?

3. Explain the role of media in crime prevention.

82

6.7. Suggested Readings

1. Media and Crime, THIRD EDITION by Yvonne Jewkes - University of Bath, UK.

2. Media Representations of Police and Crime, M.Shaping the Police Television Drama, by
Colbran, Palgrave macmillan.
 83

LESSON- 7
CRIME REPORTING

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 learn the various types of crime reporting in media

 learn how to evaluate the sources in crime reporting

 understand how to deal with sensitive crimes and other issues in media

 learn the different techniques to get information or interview victims in case of children,
women and other excluded groups.

Structure
7.1. Introduction

7.2. Types of crime reporting

7.3. Dealing with specific kinds of crime

7.4. Evaluating sources

7.4.1. Weighing evidences and verifying facts

7.4.2. The process of verification

7.4.3. Broader sense of bias

7.5. Dealing with sensitive issues/cases

7.5.1. How to handle sensitive issues?

7.6. Interviewing women, children and victims of crime

7.6.1. Interviewing victims

7.6.2. Preparing for the interview

84

7.7. Summary

7.8. Check your progress

7.9. Keywords

7.10 Review questions

7.11. Suggested readings

7.1. INTRODUCTION

Crime reporting teaches some of the essential techniques of journalism. You learn how
to dig for a story, how to follow leads, how to interview people to extract information and how to
write crisp, clear, interesting stories under pressure of a deadline.

In small newspapers, radio and television stations, general reporters cover crime stories,
while in bigger organizations there may be a specialist crime reporter or team of reporters who
cover nothing else but crime.

These specialist reporters are occasionally called police reporters, although this title
gives a misleading idea of their task. It suggests that all they do is report on what the police are
doing when, in fact, crime reporting should cover all aspects of law-breaking - the police, the
criminals and the victims.

In this and the following three chapters, we define crime as any action in which people
break the law.

Why report crime?

Crime reporting has long been a central part of news coverage in free press societies,
because crime stories are usually newsworthy.

There are several reasons why you should report crime and why people want to read
about or listen to stories of crime:

 Readers or listeners often want an explanation of why crimes happen. They ask: “Could
it happen to me?” They may want to know so that they can prevent a similar thing happening
to themselves.
 85

 Your readers and listeners need to know how laws are broken, and how people who
break laws are caught and punished. This helps them understand what laws are and what
the penalties for breaking them are.

 Most people obey the law, so crime stories are about unusual events - one of the criteria
for news.

 Some people are interested in the way criminals get something without much effort. For
example, although a gang of crooks may spend weeks or months planning a robbery to
net them $100,000, it might take ordinary workers many years of effort to earn that much
legally. Some crimes may fascinate people who obey the laws but who wonder what it
might be like to break them.

 Criminals take risks and face punishment if they are caught. This may make them
fascinating to read about.

You have a role to play, in providing information to counteract rumor. People will hear
about crimes through casual conversations or rumor, or they may hear a siren as a police car
dashes along the road; they will be only half-informed. It is your job as a journalist to tell them
the truth about the rumored crime or explain why the police car went past. If you can establish
in a reputation for reliability in this field, people will buy your paper or tune into your station as
a way of making sure they know what is happening.

7.2. TYPES OF CRIME REPORTING

There are many types of crimes, criminals and victims. There are serious crimes and
small offences. There are professional criminals and ordinary people who occasionally break
the law. There are crimes which have obvious victims and there are the so-called victimless
crimes (although, as we shall see in a moment, all crimes have a victim somewhere).

It is not always the major crimes which make the most interesting news. Of course, your
readers or listeners will be interested to know about an armed hold-up which netted a million
dollars. But they may also be interested in the story of a sneak thief who broke into a poor
widow’s home and killed her much-loved cat.
86

As with all news, crime stories should be new, unusual, interesting, significant and about
people.

New - Crime reporting has to be as up-to-date as possible. This is partly because some
crimes depend for their news value on being current. For example, a story about a violent killer
on the loose will lose much of its impact (and its value in alerting your audience to danger) once
he is captured. Also, because in some societies crimes are a regular feature of life, todays
break-and-enter quickly replaces yesterday’s break-and-enter in the public’s attention. Crime
stories get stale quickly.

Unusual - Murders or armed robbery are not everyday events in most communities, and
so have news value. However, less serious crime can also have unusual elements. Someone
who sneaks on to a bus without paying or throws rubbish on the street may be breaking the
law, but it is not very newsworthy. However, if a person stows away on an international airliner,
that free flight becomes newsworthy. If the rubbish someone dumps fills three garbage trucks
that too is newsworthy.

Interesting or significant - As we have said, most law-abiding citizens are interested in
people who break the law in big or unusual ways. Crimes which by themselves are ordinary
can become significant when placed in context. For example, the car theft can be one of
hundreds in a city, but it may become significant if it is the hundredth car to be stolen this year.

About people - Crimes involve people, as criminals and victims. The so-called victim-
less crime does not really exist. The motorist parked in a No Parking zone at the very least may
inconvenience other people and at worst may cause an accident. People who make false
declarations to claim government benefits are taking money which could have gone to other
people.

Always try to tell a crime story in human terms. Do not concentrate all the time on the
police or the criminals. Look at what has happened to the victim. Your readers or listeners are
more likely to be victims of crime than they are to be either police officers or criminals.

Remember too that the person the police refer to as “the victim” or “the deceased” is (or
was) a real, living, breathing person. Try to visualize what their life was like before and after the
crime. How did the crime affect them, their family or community?
 87

News value

Most stories about crimes will have some news value. Exactly how much depends on
several factors, which you will have to consider.

Seriousness

We usually assume that more serious crimes are more newsworthy. A murder is more
important than an armed assault, which is more serious than a break-and-enter, which is more
serious than a parking offence. In terms of money, the bigger the amount stolen, the more
important the crime. Remember, however, that money has a different value to different people.
The theft of $100 will be more newsworthy when it is money taken from a poor widow that when
it is stolen from a rich businessman.

Unusual nature of the crime

The more unusual crimes are generally more newsworthy. A break-and-enter at a school
may be more newsworthy than a break-in at a home, but a burglary at a crocodile farm may be
more newsworthy still.

Size of the community

Crimes are usually viewed as more important by smaller communities. If you are a journalist
on a big city newspaper, an ordinary car theft may not be newsworthy at all. If you are a
journalist in a small community, a car theft may be the biggest news of the week. Everybody
may know the owner - they may all know the car. It is a sad fact that quite horrible crimes do not
make the news in a big city because they are so common and because the chances are small
of readers or listeners knowing the victims or caring about them.

Identity of the victim or criminal

Crimes become more newsworthy if they involve people who are themselves newsworthy.
An ordinary person attacked on the street may not be big news, but if that person is a local
chief, that will be very newsworthy. A fraud case becomes more important when it involves a
leading politician. A robbery becomes bigger news when police reveal that the robber was an
88

escaped prisoner with convictions for murder and rape. It is generally true that a crime becomes
more newsworthy if there is a strong chance of it happening again - usually because the
criminal is known and likely to strike again.

7.3. DEALING WITH SPECIFIC KINDS OF CRIME

When dealing with homicide. Special considerations for Act I stories involving
homicide include—

1. Avoid the inadvertent death notice. Check with your editors (and follow up with the police,
if necessary) before approaching family members of a homicide victim to make sure they
have been notified by police. Even when reporters are cautious, they can find that the
person they reach on the telephone or who answers the door has not been notified of the
death of a loved one. In those cases, the reporter must—

a. Verify the identity. Check with the person who answered to make sure you dialed
the right number or have the right address. Keep asking questions until you verify
that you have the right family. (One reporter did not find that he had contacted the
wrong family until he asked the fifth question designed to verify the identification.)

b. Apologize and acknowledge that your information could be faulty. Perhaps there
has been an error on the part of law enforcement or there is a mix-up of some sort.
Reporters should apologize for the problem and promise to help the family find out
what has happened.

c. Share information and discuss next steps. Assure the person you will follow up.
Give the individual the names of law enforcement agencies and officers to contact.
(Make sure the person gets something to write down the information or he or she
may forget what you said when you hang up.) It also helps to ask if the person is
alone. If the person is, encourage him or her to ask a family member, neighbor, or
friend to stay with him or her to provide support and, in cases in which an assailant
has not been apprehended, tend to any safety needs or concerns.

d. Follow up. Make sure that the family receives accurate information from the
appropriate authorities, either through their efforts or yours.
 89

2. Focus on life, not death. Instead of talking about the death of a loved one, it is preferable
to talk about celebrating or honoring his or her life.

3. Use care when asking for a photograph or video of the deceased. The request must be
done sensitively. It is also imperative that the reporter take personal responsibility to
ensure that the photo or videotape is returned to the family intact. Scan or dupe a copy
before the item leaves your sight at your news organization. You will also earn a reputation
for thoughtfulness if you provide a copy of your coverage to the family.

When dealing with sexual assault and rape…

The trauma that sexual assault and rape inflicts on victims, as well as the stigma still
associated with the crime, makes reporting on victims of sexual violence especially daunting.
It is important for reporters and editors to understand that sexual assault is not a crime about
sex but about violence, power, and control. Journalists should avoid reporting details about the
assault in ways that imply the victim’s behaviour caused the crime (walking alone at night,
drinking alcohol). Important as well is that news articles do not treat acquaintance rape as less
serious than so called “stranger danger” cases. Remember also that the preferred term is
acquaintance rape rather than date rape, since the latter implies a romantic relationship where
none may have existed and where the existence of any such relationship is irrelevant to the
crime. There are usually few instances when a news organization will try to interview a sexual
assault victim immediately following the crime. Most news organizations also have a policy of
refusing to reveal a victim’s name without explicit permission. Some victims may agree to an
interview only if their actual name is not used, or if an alias is provided in lieu of their real name;
it’s important to remember that this is the victim’s choice. However, there are situations in
which it can be more difficult to keep the victim’s name confidential.

i. Abductions. A news story about a disappearance can evolve into a case of sexual assault
or rape during the breaking news cycle. The case in February 2007 involving the young
boy abducted in Missouri later discovered at the home of a convicted child molester along
with a boy who had been missing for years highlights the problem of keeping identities
confidential. It is usually best to stop using the victim’s name once the sexual assault
becomes the focus of the story unless the victims and their families give permission.
90

ii. Incest. News organizations also need to exercise special care so that reporting the name
of the perpetrator and the nature of the crime in incest cases does not thereby reveal the
name of the victim. Some editors ignore such concerns because they insist that people in
smaller communities know the names anyhow, so the newspaper need not take special
precautions to protect the victim’s privacy. However, editors should consider that, especially
in today’s online news world, archived news stories can be accessed by people inside
and outside that community for years to come.

When dealing with domestic violence. Part of the dynamic that keeps many victims
from coming forward and reporting their victimization to police stems from feelings of shame,
combined with fear that others will find out what has happened to them. One of the most
difficult situations that newspapers face is when domestic violence results in a murder-suicide.
News organizations that treat the perpetrator who commits suicide as a victim risk offending
family and friends of the murder victim.

When dealing with drunk driving. Organizations such as MADD (Mothers against Drunk
Driving) have helped dispel the myth that drunk driving is not a crime. Victims are justifiably
upset when news accounts minimize cases of drunk driving that may or may not have harmed
others, since the crime always has the potential to claim lives and cause injury.

When dealing with potentially vulnerable populations. Reporters should exercise

special care when interviewing people at both ends of the age spectrum, from young children
to the elderly. Some children are simply too young to be subjected to reliving their experiences
during interviews without the danger of inflicting additional harm. Young children also risk being
more easily manipulated by inadvertently leading questions. Experts who debrief children about
their victimization for law enforcement agencies and courts receive extensive specialized training
in how to interview child victims without re-victimizing them or inadvertently eliciting false
statements. Reporters without such training are ill-equipped to do a good job and should not be
expected or ordered to do so. Elderly people and people with disabilities may also have unique
needs, especially with Act I stories when the trauma is fresh
 91

7.4. EVALUATING SOURCES

7.4.1. WEIGHING EVIDENCES AND VERIFYING FACTS

Evidence is closely related to but slightly different than source. Evidence is the proof that
the sources offer for what they know. It overlaps with how close someone is to an event. But
even highly credentialed sources may begin to speculate sometimes. They may be guessing.
So, first, identify the evidence that any source is offering. Circle it. Write it down. Do it as an
exercise a couple times. It becomes easy to recognize.

“Trust the material that offers more evidence, is more specific and more transparent
about the proof being offered.”

Is the evidence a document? Was it something the source saw as an eyewitness? Is it

hearsay, or second-hand? Or are they speculating about someone’s motives or what they
might have done?

Next, what if anything did the author do to verify this evidence? Did they check with a lot
of sources? Do these sources disagree? Can you see how they vetted the evidence?

If the report is specific, that helps. If it says “scientists agree,” that isn’t all that specific.
But if it says they interviewed 15 scientists and they all agreed, you have a better idea of how
much authority there is. If they say scientists examined 10 years of peer-reviewed scholarly
research, more than 10,000 pieces of research, that is even more evidence.

Look for signs of a method–a method of verification. If you can see how the author or
reporter checked or corroborated the evidence–if the method is explicit–that is a sign of more
credible work.

Looking for these signs–and identifying what evidence a story contains–isn’t as hard as
it might sound. You simply need to start looking for it. And once you do, you will trust the
material that offers more evidence, is more specific and more transparent about the proof
being offered.
92

One of the most useful tools in the arsenal of a journalist is the verification process and
we must be able to use it to sift through infotainment while drawing the line between journalism
and propaganda.

“With regard to my factual reporting of events ... I have made it a principle not to write
down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions;
either I was present myself at the events which I have described or else heard of them from
eyewitnesses whose reports I have checked with as much thoroughness as possible. Not that
even so the truth was easy to discover. Different eyewitnesses gave different accounts of the
same events, speaking out partially for one side or the other, or else from imperfect memories.”

Shifting through infotainment

Allow me to mention two journalists and their work in this regard. Both Bill Kovach and
Tom Rosenstiel founded organizations to better the quality of journalism, the Committee of
Concerned Journalists (CCJ) and the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), respectively.
Both Kovach and Rosenstiel said: “The essence of journalism is a discipline of verification.”

In their book, The Elements of Journalism, they emphasize the importance of verification:
“In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment,
propaganda, fiction, or art. Entertainment – and its cousin “infotainment” – focuses of what is
most diverting. Propaganda selects facts or invents them to serve the real purpose – persuasion
and manipulation.

Fiction invents scenarios to get a more personal impression of what it calls truth. Journalism
alone is focused first on getting what happened down right.”

Clarifying confusion and improving the discipline of verification may very well be one of
the most important steps journalists can take in order to improve the quality of news. A strong,
clear and transparent method of verifying the news is also the single most important step that
those who practice journalism could take to address and, if necessary, correct the rising
perception that the work of journalists is marred by bias.
 93

7.4.2. THE PROCESS OF VERIFICATION

Here are some wise principles of verification.

Never add anything that was not there. Do not add things that did not take place.
Never guess, invent or make things up. Never rearrange time and place of or characters in an
event in order to fit them to the narrative, and never hide anything.

Never deceive the audience. Do not mislead the readers or viewers. Fooling people is
a form of lying and it mocks the idea that journalism is committed to truthfulness. Lying by
omission is still lying

Be as transparent as possible about methods as well as motives. The only practical

way to relay to people what you really know is to reveal as much as possible about sources and
methods. Explain what you know and how you know it. Who are the sources? Are they consistent
in their accounts? How direct is their knowledge? What are the biases they might have? Are
there any conflicting accounts? What do we not know?

Rely on your own original reporting. Originality is important. Rather than republishing
stories of other news outlets, do your own investigation. Call the sources mentioned in the
news and try to find some other sources. Stories that cannot be independently confirmed
should not be repeated just because others did so. When in doubt, leave it out.

Exercise humility. Be skeptical about your abilities as a journalist. In order to avoid

misrepresenting events you should accept the limits of one’s knowledge and the power of
one’s perceptions. Be modest in your judgements, as the next person you talk to could change
the entire meaning of your story or even convince you that you have no story.

7.4.3. BROADER SENSE OF BIAS

“The discipline of verification, and particularly the notion of transparency, is one of the
most powerful steps journalists can take to address the problem of bias. By bias we do not
mean simply political or ideological bias. We mean bias in a broader sense that covers the
judgment, decisions, and beliefs of all journalists. Bias encompasses all kinds of predilections,
both appropriate and troubling. This could include a bias for truth or facts or giving voice to the
94

voiceless, as well as a bias toward one’s own personal social, economic or political leanings.
The critics are right that we are all shaped by personal history and the biases of the culture in
which we live. In this aspect, it becomes impossible to communicate without engaging some of
these biases, including those that make a story compelling.”

7.5. DEALING WITH SENSITIVE ISSUES/CASES

News is an aspect of human communication that has become more or less synonymous
with human civilization and every modern society has come to find it an indispensable part of
human progress. For people to share ideas and emotions, knowledge and wisdom in a dynamic
way there has to be a channel that can allow passage of information across the diverse segments
of the society with some level of credibility and consistency, and the mass media have emerged
to do this for modern society.

In addition there are some common characteristics in news stories that have been more
or less accepted universally and these are:

Timeliness

News stories tend to stress immediacy of events and issues as well as interest in the
subject. Journalists often focus on current events and try to report them ahead of their competitors
in what is referred to as ‘scoops’. And when stories that are not current are being reported,
they are reported from fresh perspectives and new details that had hitherto been used by
competitors.

Impact

Journalists often look for the effect of events or issues on institutions and people. Stories
are valued for the effects or the consequences the events being reported is perceived to have
on a significant number of people. The impact and importance of what is reported is often
considered as a proven characteristic of news.

Prominence

News stories are considered of high value whenever the event or issue can be associated
with celebrity or notoriety of the individual or institution involved in the event. Even routine
 95

events may be considered newsworthy when they involve prominent individuals or institutions
or places or even ideas. Sometimes stories about ordinary people are deemed newsworthy
where they are associated with something bizarre, unexpected or odd. In this case oddity
becomes another characteristic of news.

Proximity

The closer an event is to the location of the news organization and the people; the more
newsworthy it is deemed to be by journalists. Proximity may be geographical and this type is
the one most often reported, or it may be psychological in which case what is being reported is
deemed to resonate with a significant number of people.

Singularity

Newsworthiness may also be considered on the basis of the degree to which people
have a need to know about the event, and its significance to society. Deviations from the
normal, when they involve conflicts or controversies or competition and drama or change are
often considered newsworthy.

Human interest

The degree to which the event appeals to emotion or depicts human drama or is beneficial
may also indicate the newsworthiness. The story that expresses that which is of deepest interest
to the average human being and which may be of pleasure or enjoyment or curiosity is often
deemed  newsworthy.  Also, stories that  may evoke sympathy, indignation or anger or fear
may be considered to be of human interest. The key is that a story that benefits the people in
whatever significant way may be deemed of human interest.

7.5.1. HOW TO HANDLE SENSITIVE ISSUES?

News gathering, to be sure, is a highly imperfect art, and problems with basic facts, not
to mention nuances, are common. But when you are talking about conflicts that are at their root
racial, ethnic or religious, the stakes are higher. This is the stuff riots, wars and deep-seated
prejudices are made of, and the news media has an even greater responsibility than it normally
does to get it right.
96

Very little of what the news media does is conspiratorial. Most of the time we’re just not
good or sensitive enough about the many sides of volatile issues and often we respond to
news reporting in a pragmatic way that emphasizes results at any cost.

Here is one checklist:

1.     Is it true?

2.     What is the impact of the events or circumstances surrounding the issue?

3.     Is the news story fair to all concerned?

4.     Is it a public or strictly private issue?

5.     Will the story make a difference?

6.     Will the truth quell rumors?

7.     How would you justify your decision to your audience?

8.     How would you treat the story if you were the subject?

Here are 10 tips for reporting sensitive issues:

 Don’t write in clichés

 Don’t believe everything someone tells you

 Don’t hunt for the ‘definitive truth’

 Don’t get things out of context

 Don’t accept information without question

 Don’t forget the human face of suffering

 Don’t be sloppy with words

 Don’t be led by another’s agenda

 Don’t ignore the local pressures

 Don’t ignore history

 97

7.6. INTERVIEWING WOMEN, CHILDREN AND VICTIMS OF

CRIME

7.6.1. INTERVIEWING VICTIMS

People who have experienced a traumatic event may exhibit a wide variety of emotions,
reactions and physical pain, and journalists need to be aware of this throughout the interview
process. 

As a college media advisor, editor or student journalist, it’s important to know that how
you conduct an interview can impact an interview subject’s frame of mind, since, in most cases,
everything around them has changed dramatically. You should make every effort to minimize
harm to your subject and yourself. Being thoughtful and careful throughout the whole interview
process is key.

7.6.2. PREPARING FOR THE INTERVIEW

Do your research before going out into the field. Arrive at the scene knowing what
happened and how it has impacted people in the vicinity. Being an informed reporter will make
you an informed interviewer.

Talk with your editor or advisor beforehand. Before heading out to the scene, discuss
a plan for news gathering and interviewing. He/she may have additional advice to give you;
you can also inform them of your plans and discuss any concerns you have.

Be careful of your surroundings. When you arrive at the scene, be sure the area is
clear and safe. Ask yourself if you need to take shelter or find a place of safety. Traumatic
events can last minutes, hours, days or weeks and you must ensure your personal safety
before beginning your reporting.

Check in with your editor or advisor. Don’t forget to make contact with your editor or
advisor when you arrive at the location and before you do the interview(s). You want to assure
them that you are in a safe place, especially if there are safety risks associated with the event.
98

Be ready for the long haul. Depending on where the traumatic event occurred (on-
campus or off-campus) and the weather conditions at the time of the event, bring some basic
supplies (e.g. water, rain gear, hat, extra batteries, etc.) with you in case you are posted to a
spot for many hours.

Be careful when you approach sources – be transparent, calm and soft-

spoken. Identify who you are, what organization  you represent, what will happen with the
information you collect from the interview, how it might be used in the story and when it will
appear in publication. Tell them why you want to talk with them. If they are open to an interview,
then proceed. If not, then leave your contact information with them and ask them to contact
you anytime if they would like to talk. If they are not interested in talking, or willing to speak on
the record, there will be another opportunity to find another source.

Make sure your interview subject doesn’t need medical attention. Before jumping

into questions, first ask if they need any medical attention and inform them of the ways they
can get this attention.

Let the interview subject have some control. People who have undergone a traumatic

situation often seek ways to regain control in their lives. One way to honour this is to give them
a chance to make some decisions in the interview process – for example, where they would
like to sit and what photos or images they would prefer that you to use. You might also let them
to tell you when they want to stop or take a break. These small steps can go a long way.

During the interview

Be sincere when meeting with victims and survivors. Don’t patronize. Don’t ask “How
do you feel?” or say “I know how you feel,” – because in most cases nobody truly knows what
somebody else is going through. Be supportive in the way you communicate.

Consider empathic interviewing. Empathy is the capacity to participate in another’s

sensations, feelings, thoughts, and movements. Using specific words can make a difference in
the interview and in how your interview subject responds. The premise of empathic interviewing
shows the source your interest, attentiveness and care in telling their story. Such responses
include:
 99

 “So what you’re saying is…”

 “From what you’re saying, I can see how you would be…”

 “You must be...”

Ochberg Fellow Kelly Kennedy suggests several other tips for the interview process:

 Give ample time for the interview – you may need more time than you think.

 Record the interviews so  you can  always go back and  listen –  in case  you missed

something in your notes.

 Don’t rush into the hard questions first – ask softer questions before getting to the
harder ones.

 Don’t take things personally. Sometimes sources may be going through interpersonal
responses to trauma and may not be showing you signs in the interview of interaction –
don’t take this personally, it may be the way they are dealing with the situation.

Interview details can be hazy. Interview subjects may experience memory loss, and

may not remember all of the details of what happened – don’t pressure them to remember. It
may come in due time. Corroborate information with other sources as you would for any kind of
news story.

Post-interview

Check in with your advisor or editor. Don’t forget to make contact when you complete

your interview(s). You want them to know you are safe.

Don’t rush to publish. When it’s time to write the story, especially breaking news, it can

be a natural reaction to rush it (e.g. get a few anecdotes and throw the story together.) If you
have time, use it. Review your notes, listen to the interview recording carefully and don’t hesitate
to call back your source to confirm or verify information.
100

Your story does have impact. The story you write about the people you interview will be
an article your sources keep forever as a memento and historical artifact. Be aware of how you
tell the story and know that the story will impact the people you interviewed and others impacted
by the traumatic event.

Talk with your friends, family, advisor or editor. Don’t bottle up your feelings. Don’t
forget that covering a traumatic event can impact you too – be sure to find ways to talk about
the experience with your friends, family, advisors or editor. They may have covered something
similar and/or can just be a listening ear. You should not keep your emotions bottled up; sharing
your experience is one way of coping with witnessing and reporting on such a difficult event.

7.7. Summary

This lesson covers the most important aspects such as introduction to crime reporting
and different types of crime reporting. The reporting procedure with respect to dealing specific
kinds of crime is discussed. The sources of crime reporting, dealing it with efficiency, weighing
evidences, dealing sensitive cases are also carried out in this particular lesson. The different
ways to handle, interview and get information from the women, children and victims of crime
are clearly stated. Overall this lesson produced the most important aspects of crime reporting.

7.8. Check your Progress

1. What is meant by sources?

2. What is homicide?

3. What is domestic violence?

4. What is considered as unusual news?

7.9. Keywords

Evidence: Evidence is closely related to but slightly different than source. Evidence is
the proof that the sources offer for what they know. It overlaps with how close someone is to an
event.
 101

Timeliness: News stories tend to stress immediacy of events and issues as well as
interest in the subject.

Prominence: News stories are considered of high value whenever the event or issue
can be associated with celebrity or notoriety of the individual or institution involved in the event.

Proximity: The closer an event is to the location of the news organization and the people

Human interest: The degree to which the event appeals to emotion or depicts human
drama or is beneficial may also indicate the newsworthiness.

7.10. Review Questions

1. Explain the different types of crime reporting.

2. How to handle sensitive issues when reporting crime?

3. How to interview the victims while reporting crime?

4. Why is it necessary to report crime in media?

5. List the method to report sexual assault or rape crime.

6. Explain the steps to evaluate and verify sources.

7.11. Suggested Readings

1. Crime Reporting and The Journalism Hardcover – 1 by Rajnish, May 2008 by Sumit
Enterprises

2. Crime Statistics in the News Journalism, Numbers and Social Deviation by Lugo-Ocando,
Jairo, 2017. Palgrave macmillan.

3. https://www.thenewsmanual.net/Manuals%20Volume%202/volume2_35.htm
102

LESSON – 8
REPORT WRITING

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 learn the different writing styles and techniques in various media

 understand the role of different people working in journalism industry

 learn the news editing process and its symbols in different medium

Structure
8.1. Print media writing styles and techniques

8.2. Basic rules for copy presentation

8.3. How to edit a copy

8.4. Functions of a sub editor

8.5. Responsibilities of a sub editor

8.6. Qualities of a sub editor

8.7. News editing symbols and its explanations

8.8. Television news writing- basic principles

8.9. Writing for web media

8.10. Summary

8.11. Check your progress

8.12. Keywords

8.13. Review questions

8.14. Suggested Readings

 103

8.1. PRINT MEDIA WRITING STYLES AND TECHNIQUES

In a newspaper office, reporters are the ones who file stories. They may be given different
assignments. These may be on politics, economics, parliament, the stock exchange, sports,
courts or markets.

The reporter’s job is to write the story as quickly as possible with all the facts and figures.
In their hurry, they may not be in a position to polish the language. So the first job of a sub
editor is to see that the report is in good language and there are no mistakes. There can be
spelling mistakes, mistakes in sentence construction, grammar and factual mistakes. If the
sub editor finds a portion of the report ambiguous or incorrect or doubtful he has to cross check
it with the reporter. For example, if a report is filed on a train accident killing ten people, the sub
editor can improve the story by collecting information about other major train accidents that
happened recently. Similarly if a report is filed on the spread of dengue fever in the city, the sub
editor should take a backgrounder about the earlier outbreaks of such contagious diseases
and the measures taken to check these.

The sub editor then has to find a good heading for the story. The heading should be
sharp, attractive, and crisp and convey the spirit of the story. The heading should compel the
reader to stop and read the whole story. While writing the heading, a sub editor should know
the space available for the story, whether it is one column, two columns or three etc. The
heading should fit within that column. You must have noticed from this that the headings are
not of uniform type. The type, or font, of the letters in each heading differs according to the
length and width of the column. A sub editor should also know about the font sizes available.
Each paper has its fonts and types. While writing the heading, it should fit into the mood of the
story.

A sarcastic heading for a hard story will look odd. Similarly a hardline heading will spoil
the spirit of a humorous piece. The heading should also be suggestive. It should never be a full
sentence. The sub editor now has to see if there is a possibility for including photographs along
with the news item. Pictures or graphs can improve the visual quality of a report. For example,
if there is a report about the names of probable ministers in an impending cabinet reshuffle,
readers would be expecting their pictures also along with the report. So the sub editor should
104

get their pictures from the photo library. Similarly, if the report is about the change in income tax
rates, the sub editor should think of a graph to go along with that.

8.2. BASIC RULES FOR COPY PRESENTATION

Your newsroom may already have a style for the way in which copy should be presented.
If so, you should follow it. If your newsroom does not have a style, this is a good one to use.
(Later in this chapter, we shall see an example of copy presented in this style.) These are the
basic rules:

 The first page of each story or feature should have three pieces of information in the top
left-hand corner or – if your newsroom computer has a standard template for writing
stories – in the appropriate field:

o Your surname

o The date

o Catch line and page number 1

 The catchlines is a key word of the story, chosen by you to identify this particular story.
Keep the catchline short and simple, but avoid using general words such as “church” or
“meeting”, which might get used on another story by another reporter. Use distinctive
words such as “methodist” or “revival”.

 These three pieces of information will not be published with your story. It is not necessary,
therefore, to use initial capital letters for any of the words. Since it takes slightly longer to
type a capital letter than a lower case letter (there are two keys to press instead of one),
and since journalists are always in a hurry, you may type all this information in lower case
letters if you wish.

 Each subsequent page should have in the top left-hand corner the catchline and page
number: “methodist ... 2”, “methodist ... 3” and so on.
 105

 Use double or triple spacing so corrections can be made on printed copies or so the
newsreader can read the text comfortably on air, either from the printed paper copy or
the studio computer screen or teleprompt machine (often referred to as an Autocue).

 Leave good margins on the sides and bottom of the page.

 Never start a paragraph on one page and continue it on the next.

 Write the word “more” or the letters “mf” (more follows) at the bottom of each page if the
story is not finished.

 Write the word “ends” at the end of the story or “###” depending on the house style of
your organisation. [Traditionally in the United States, journalists typed the number “30” to
signify the end, but this convention is seldom used today.

8.3. HOW TO EDIT A COPY

Read the story once before you edit, a second time while you edit and a third time after
you edit. On the first reading, if you find any ambiguity, contradiction or structural flaw, summon
the reporter to demand a clarification or bring it to the notice of the News Editor or chief sub on
duty.

When the story has no glaring problem, it is fit to edit. A news story is divided into two
parts: the lead (the ‘intro’), which introduces the story and the body, which elaborates the lead.
While the lead tells briefly who, what, where, when, why and how of the story, the body elaborates,
details, and explains it. The lead is normally written in less than 35 words and should be crisp
and concise. Since World War II, the ‘inverted pyramid’ style of news writing has come into
vogue. This technique places the most significant information at the top and then places the
remaining details in the descending order of importance. Each succeeding paragraph should
add an essential detail without being dependent in content or style on what follows.

The inverted pyramid style has the following advantages: i. The structure of the story
remains intact even when paragraphs are deleted from the bottom for space shortage. ii. A
busy reader could skip over many stories in a short time by just reading the lead paragraph. iii.
106

It helps the sub editor to give the headline by reading the gist of the story in the Lead. iv. It is
easy to change the order of paragraphs or insert a paragraph or two. The chronological style,
which is narrating the story in the sequence in which it happened, has none of these flexibilities,
and often the most important part of the story may come at the end, putting the reader’s
patience on trial. If the most important point in a story is buried in the last paragraph, it needs
to be rewritten and brought it to the lead. In case there are more points fighting for prominence,
the point that has more reader appeal is chosen. If the second paragraph does not support the
lead, rewrite it. The third paragraph should further develop the second paragraph and the lead.
Ideally, each paragraph should not exceed three sentences. And direct quotes add flavour to
the story.

Rewriting

Rewriting is done for the sake of clarity and highlighting the right news point, but taking
care to avoid inadvertent tampering with the facts or the original meaning. Stories are also
rewritten to add punch to the lead and enliven a human-interest story. HEADLINES: Headlines
catch the eye of a reader in search of something interesting in a newspaper. After scanning the
headlines, a reader settles down to read the story in detail.

Leads

In the journalistic parlance, the word ‘lead’ is used in three or four different senses. The
story with the biggest headline on the front page of a newspaper is called the lead story and in
the order of priority the main stories are called Lead I, Lead II, Lead III or First Lead, Second
Lead, Third Lead and so on. In the second sense, it refers to the first two or three paragraphs
of a story. It is also called the ‘Intro’ (short for introduction). Reporters often use the term in the
sense of a clue to a story, upon which they work, probe, research and develop to make it a
complete story. News agencies use the term in the sense of a device for updating developing
stories of changing the emphasis of the story in the light of unfolding events. Examples of
developing stories that need updates are political conventions, budget proposals, an air crash
or a train mishap, floods or bandhs. Early reports of the Bhopal gas tragedy put the figure of
casualties at a particular number, which doubled and trebled by the hour till it crossed a thousand
by the midnight hour. Early dak editions carried the modest figures and looked stupid the next
 107

morning. Even early city editions could not tell the magnitude of the disaster which the late city
editions captured.

Language

Words are the building blocks of writing. So, pay special attention to words, and the way
they are constructed into a sentence. Misplacement of words could distort the meaning.
Punctuation marks are meant for clarity and readability, and too many of them will clutter the
story.

8.4. FUNCTIONS OF A SUB EDITOR

The sub editor adds life and movement to the piece by substituting active verbs for
passive verbs. He highlights the specifics and underplays the generalities. A sub editor adds
colour to copy by using words creatively. He maintains both brevity (shortness) and simplicity
so that readers can grasp the information and ideas more easily without reading long prose.
The sub editor looks for ways and means to incorporate the cannons of effective communication-
clarity, cohesiveness, completeness, conciseness, comprehensiveness, continuity, etc., into
the copy.

8.5. RESPONSIBILITIES OF A SUB EDITOR

Sub editors also have many other responsibilities. These are: ensuring accuracy, cutting
down unnecessary words, protecting and polishing the language, correcting inconsistencies,
making the story conform to the newspaper’s style, eliminating scandalous and libelous
statements, making sure the story is readable and complete.

8.6. QUALITIES OF A SUB EDITOR

Here we shall discuss some of the essential qualities of a good sub editor. These are
also essential qualities for other deskmen like Chief Sub editor or News Editor, etc.

CALMNESS: Never be excited or perturbed when major stories break. Your calm nerves
are important in objectively assessing the news and according it the priority it deserves.
Remember, you are dealing with history in the making of which assassinations; collapse of
governments, natural calamities and the triumph and tragedies of people play a part.
108

JUDGMENT: The ability to take quick and right decisions is quintessential to producing a
vibrant newspaper. FAIRNESS: The newsmen’s fairness is the credibility of the newspaper, the
absence of which will affect its circulation.

QUICK GRASP: The mental faculty to size up the situation as events unfold and the
ability to find the right words to express it is a must.

KNOWING YOUR READER: A good newspaper has a mind of his own, even as the
readership has a collective mind of its own; when the two are like-minded, a healthy relationship
is established. Hence, the ability to see a story from the reader’s point of view makes a great
deskman.

POSITIVE SKEPTICISM: While the gullible accept anything at the face value, an
experienced deskman cultivates a healthy skepticism to spot the source of potential errors.

KNOWLEDGE: A good general knowledge and familiarity with names of people, cities
and capitals of the world, currencies of countries, politics global and national, business,
academics, art and culture help edit copy meticulously.

MEMORY: A sharp memory facilitates recall of the past events and puts news in
perspective. Finally, a sub editor should be aware of the extent of freedom and the reasonable
restrictions. Also he should be fully knowledgeable about the Acts and laws pertaining to the
Press. Specific areas where subeditors should be more cautious are carelessness in editing,
libelous statements, Contempt of Parliament and Contempt of Court, right of privacy, plagiarism
and copyright infringement, etc

8.7. NEWS EDITING SYMBOLS AND ITS EXPLANATIONS

 109

Proofreading symbols for inserting, deleting and changing text

The mark in the

The instruction The mark in the margin
copy

Text to be inserted The text and then

Additional text supplied A letter in a diamond identifying

separately the supplied text, e.g.

Delete character through the

character

Delete text through the

text

Delete character and

through the
close space
character

Delete text and close

through the
space
text

Character to replace through the

The new character
marked character character

Text to replace marked through the

The new text
text text
110

Proofreading symbols for changing the look of the text

The mark in the

The instruction The mark in the copy
margin

Circle round character(s) to be

Change to the correct font
changed

Change this badly printed Circle round character(s) to be

text changed

under the characters to

Put this in italics
be changed
Remove italic, replace with Circle round character(s) to be
upright changed

under the characters to

Put this in capitals
be changed

under the characters to

Put this in small capitals
be changed
Circle round character(s) to be
Change to lowercase or changed

under the characters to

Put this in bold
be changed

Circle round character(s) to be

Turn this upside down
changed

Raise character(s) to Under at insertion point or through

superscript character(s) character to be raised

Lower character(s) to Above at insertion point or through

subscript character(s) character to be lowered
 111

Proofreading symbols for punctuation

The instruction The mark in the margin The mark in the copy

at insertion point or
Comma through character to be
changed

Full stop As above

Semi-colon As above

Colon As above

Apostrophe As above

Single quote
As above
mark(s) or

Double quote
As above
marks or

Ellipsis As above

Dotted leader As above

Hyphen As above

Dash Write the size of the dash As above

between the uprights

Solidus or slash As above

112

Proofreading symbols for layout

The instruction The mark in the margin The mark in the copy

Paragraph break

Remove paragraph
break

Indent
Specify the size of indent

Remove indent

Justify left or right or or

Centre

Insert space If it is not a single space, Insert between the

between characters give size characters

Insert space If it is not a single space,

between words Insert between the words
give size

Reduce space Insert between the

between characters Specify size of space
characters
Reduce space
between words Specify size of space Insert between the words

Remove space

The mark starts in the margin

Insert space and extends between the lines.
between lines If it is not a single line-space,
give size

Remove space The mark starts in the margin

between lines and extends between the lines

Source: Interactive training Limited.

 113

8.8. TELEVISION NEWS WRITING- BASIC PRINCIPLES

Follow these simple writing rules:

 KISS - keep it short and simple

 Do not use quotes on radio or in television scripts

 Avoid unfamiliar words

 Repeat important words

 Keep punctuation simple

 Simplify numbers

 Avoid abbreviations

 Show how to pronounce difficult words

A television report begins with a general, simple sentence signalling the beginning of a
story. It consists of reporter’s narration or voice over and video, which may include graphics,
either static or animated. Each story has a lead or intro, which captures the essence of the
broadcast item to follow.

The lead contains important information the viewers will need in order to understand the
news item to follow. It can come in various shapes and formats depending on the context and
content of the news item.

A lead-in can be very news oriented, limiting itself to facts. But if the broadcast item to
follow is more conversational or casual then the lead-in can be more creative. The reporting
follows the basic storytelling principles. The lead may not always include 5 Ws and 1H as it
would make it too long and too hard to follow. The two or three most significant points may be
selected and used in the lead. Rest can follow the lead.

Sentences in a TV news story should contain just one idea and avoid multiple clauses
and internal clauses to make easier for the anchor to read and for the viewer to understand.
114

Shorter sentence are used so it can be read aloud without running out of breath. Reporters
for radio and television must be attuned to the sound of the words they use. It is also important
to spell correctly for TV news coverage. Misspellings may result in stumbles or mispronunciations
on the air. The writing is more conversational than that in print. It is written in the way the
audience speak.

To maintain a conversational tone, TV news reports don’t need to use complete names
and titles in news stories. Generally speaking, middle initials are not used on the air unless the
initial is an essential part of the name.

Attribution can come first. Immediacy is a key feature of television news. The bites used
in television reporting are equivalent to the quotes used by newspaper reporters. This must be
carefully selected. It should be clear enough to understand.

In addition to sound bites, stories on television can include ‘natural’ or ‘wild’ sound, which
is captured while reporting a story. Using this sound in telling the story allows listeners or
viewers to experience a place or situation for them, instead of the reporter telling them about it.

Video is an essential part of television news reporting. It is combined with words to make
the story powerful. The visuals tell the ‘what’ of the story, whereas the words tell the ‘why’. It is
said that ‘seeing may be believing but it isn’t understanding’. The writing should be synchronized
with the video. It is found that viewers understand and remember stories much better when the
words and video match. When the video and words do not match, they surely fight each other
for the viewer’s attention, making it difficult for the viewer to understand the story. Also matching
the video and word does not mean that reporters should simply describe what the viewer can
see. Instead, the audio track should offer information that adds context and meaning to the
picture. Usually, news for television is written after viewing the unedited video tape. This helps
in logically arranging words and visuals.

All of the fresh information is given in the words, but it is the pictures that carry the impact
for the viewers. For some stories like economy, in which fresh video is not available, file tape
and graphics are chosen to explain the story. Numbers can be presented by using graphics
such as graphs, pie charts or other visual aids.
 115

8.9. WRITING FOR WEB MEDIA

The web is more flexible than other forms of journalism. It uses words, pictures, audio,
video, and graphics. A web journalist needs some knowledge in all of these areas to reach
maximum effectiveness. The web is more immediate. There is no lag time in how quickly a
story can be posted. It can be done immediately. In fact, the most successful web sites
aggressively update their pages as a marketing tool. If consumers can always get news instantly
on the web, why should they wait for a newspaper or magazine, not that these forms don’t have
their strengths? Finally, the web is permanent. Once a story regardless of length lands there,
huge files can be saved forever in a variety of digital ways, so our access to archival information
will expand exponentially over time. One adaptation in web journalism, involves the classic
inverted pyramid approach to writing news stories. This approach also works on the web, but
there is the possibility of layering stories and creating hypertexts with links to numerous sources
on the web. More detail can be added to portions of the story that follow the beginning, and
links can be added throughout the text. Readers do not necessarily have to approach a story in
a linear fashion. Their approach can be multi- directional, multi-layered. Given this possibility,
writers have a great deal of new responsibility and control over determining how people access
stories.

Another example of an adaptation necessary on the web regards the concept of a

summary. Summaries have been around in one form or another forever; however, summaries
are very important in web journalism. Instead of a typical lead paragraph, which tries to hook
readers with the most interesting idea in the story, a summary paragraph identifies the key
concepts and focus of a story. Readers can then decide whether or not they want to access the
whole story.

Writing News stories for the web only area of web journalism and involves the new skills
facing editors. Web site editors need to examine not only the quality and precision of the
writing but also the number and kind of links writers are using. The editor needs to play a more
pivotal role in deciding which links should stay, or which ones should be eliminated. This is a
new task for editors. Further, given that more stories on the web will have the possibility of
input from information from variety of sources and geographic locations, more stories will be
116

written in teams, and editors will need to manage this process on-line, as opposed to managing
it face to face. Finally, editors will be the people who pay most attention to the tone and style of
the web site, and this task will require a wide knowledge of things other than words alone.
Maximum access to information does not negate the necessity of someone processing this
information for readers, giving readers a sense of how it all makes sense and how readers
might access the information. This search engine needs to be a human being, not a computer
program. Also, all of this new “stuff” does not ultimately change the nature of the job of.

Being a journalist, this is to get readers information, the story. Finally, the biggest is the
new equation between readers and writers. No one knows for sure, and the answer to this
question will determine what web journalism and all journalism will be in the future.

8.10. Summary

This particular lesson deals with the various writing styles and editing techniques of news
copy in print, television and web media. The roles and responsibilities of editor, sub-editor in
news editing is also explained.

8.11. Check your Progress

1. What is catch line?

2. What is inverted pyramid?

3. Define lead.

4. Expand KISS

8.12. Keywords

Catch Line: The catch lines is a key word of the story, chosen by you to identify this
particular story.

Lead: The word ‘lead’ is used in three or four different senses. The story with the biggest
headline on the front page of a newspaper is called the lead story. In the second sense, it
refers to the first two or three paragraphs of a story.
 117

Jump: A story is said to have “jumped” when it is continued on another page – usually
with a tag such as “see Tree Page 8” at the end.

8.13. Review Questions

1. What is the purpose of headlines?

2. What is treatment?

3. Explain the techniques to write for print media.

4. Discuss the steps to edit a news copy

5. Discuss the functions of subeditor.

6. What is meant by news editing symbols? Explain

7. What are the different strategies available for writing web media?

8. Elaborate on the methods to write for television.

8.14. Suggested Readings

1. Jan Johnson Yopp and Kathrine C. McAdams , Reaching Audiences: A Guide to Media
Writing, Focal Press, 2002

2. Robert L.Hilliard, Writing for TV, Radio and News Media, Thomson Learning, 2005.

3. Antony Friedman, Writing for Visual Media, Focal Press, April 2001.
118

LESSON – 9
CONTENT ANALYSIS

Learning Objectives
After Studying this lesson, you will be able to:

 learn the techniques of doing content analysis of newspaper articles.

 understand the presentation of content analysis.

Structure
9.1. Content analysis in newspapers

9.2. Part I- getting started

9.2.1. Setting goals and designing questions

9.2.2. Deciding how many newspapers and stories to study

9.2.3. Selecting copies of your newspaper for analysis

9.2.4. Deciding how many stories to read

9.3. Part II- story analysis form (creation & analysis)

9.3.1. Story analysis form instructions.

9.3.2. Newspaper structure analysis instructions

9.4. Part III: reviewing and interpreting data

9.5. Crime news analysis- online techniques

9.5.1. Preliminaries

9.6. Summary

9.7. Check your progress

9.8. Keywords

9.9. Review questions

9.10. Suggested Readings

 119

9.1. CONTENT ANALYSIS IN NEWSPAPERS

Content analysis does not need to involve laboriously measuring every piece of news/
information in the paper over an extended period of time. If you follow the scientific sampling
methods presented here, and apply the guidelines with care and consistency, you will gain a
reliable picture with which you can make informed decisions.

9.2. PART I- GETTING STARTED

While content analysis is not difficult, you must be prepared to devote the time required
to do it properly and to assign diligent people to the project.

A project manager should take charge of the content analysis to see it through to
completion. The project manager’s main qualification is a commitment to the quality of the data
and a meticulous personality. The challenge in content analysis is making sure that everyone
is following the rules and coding in the same way. A proactive approach is the only way to
ensure quality, because even if people seem to understand procedures, that’s no substitute for
actually checking their work.

We recommend putting together a team of between five and 10 people (depending on

the newspaper’s size) to do the work under the supervision of a project manager. Content
analysis is a skill that improves with practice so it’s best if the team commits for the duration of
the analysis. The more people you have cycling in and out, the greater the potential for
inconsistent results. Don’t limit yourself to just newsroom staff. Well-trained interns, local college
students and other non-newsroom staff can be equally good.

The time needed to analyze a week’s newspaper content depends on the size of the
newspaper. The more stories, listings and content promotions that are printed in a typical
week, the more time it takes to complete analysis. Coding speed also increases with experience,
so if someone can dedicate 10 hours to coding, they will be more productive than two people
who dedicate five hours.

First allow two to three hours to prepare each edition of the paper for analysis. This may
seem excessive but it’s absolutely necessary. Then estimate the total number of stories to be
120

analyzed (see chart below). The story analysis is the most time-intensive and consumes most
of the time. A reasonable coding speed is 15 stories per hour – three minutes per story without
interruption. A proficient reader can code up to 45 stories per hour but only after many hours of
practice.

Analysis of listings, content promotion and overall newspaper structure requires between
two to three hours per edition studied. Also include time for initial training – we recommend
three hours. It’s probably the most valuable time in the whole process. See page 10 for a
trainer’s guide on how to lead such a session. Please note that the time estimates shown
exclude general organization and analysis of results, which vary by newspaper. As was
mentioned before, the project manager needs to be appointed to supervise the entire project.
Tabulation and analysis time varies greatly depending on the level of detail desired. Basic
analysis can be completed in approximately 10 hours, time needed can expand to hundreds of
hours for very detailed analysis.

9.2.1. SETTING GOALS AND DESIGNING QUESTIONS

Setting Goals

Before starting, be clear on objectives. What are you hoping to learn? Do you have any
areas of coverage that you want to focus on? How detailed do you want the information to be?
Will you look at seven-day averages only, or will you want to look at Sunday separately? Will
you want to look at certain story types in detail – food coverage, for example? All of these
questions determine not only the questions you ask but also the quantity of stories that should
be analyzed.

This guide offers an “off the shelf” approach to content analysis. Part II includes complete
instructions and all the forms necessary. By following these protocols you will be able to compare
yourself to other daily newspapers. Seeing how your newspaper compares with the industry,
for example, may very well be one of your goals. If that is the case, we strongly urge you to use
these same questions. In this guide, we include instructions and forms designed to measure
key dimensions of content including:

• Story theme (main topic)

 121

• Geographic focus (local, state, national focus)

• Treatment (narrative, inverted pyramid style)

• Origin (staff vs. wire etc.)

• Visual presentation

• Diversity of sources and photos

• Overall newspaper structure

• Content promotion

• Listings

In combination, these questions allow you to talk about how many local business stories
vs. national business stories are run, how many have photographs and how many were taken
off the wire and many other things. The flexibility allows a wide range of possibilities. The
sampling recommendations are also geared to evaluate the overall proportion of different story
types and how they compare to a national sample. If you have additional goals you will need to
make adjustments and design additional questions. Information on how to design questions
that address these additional goals follows in the next section. Otherwise, you can skip the
next section.

Designing New Measures

If you have content analysis goals beyond the ones mentioned above, you can add
questions or take a different sample. You may decide to be more specific in local coverage,
breaking down news from different counties or towns. There may be a topic of ongoing coverage
unique to your area that you may want to identify as its own theme. Any variation is possible.

Before getting started, first be selective in what you want to study. Content analysis
works best when you focus on a few key elements. Also recognize that designing questions
can become complex. As you think of new questions you’d like to ask, make sure that the idea
you want to measure is clear. If it doesn’t have some logic behind it that you can explain in one
sentence and some concrete attributes you could find in the newspaper, it’s probably not
measurable.
122

The idea must also be capable of objective measurement. There are a lot of interesting
aspects of content that are so subjective that there’s no way to create firm guidelines that
coders can apply consistently, both as individuals and amongst themselves. A good example is
trying to measure whether a story is “positive” or “negative.” Occasionally a content analysis
attempts to measure positive or negative coverage but it usually is very narrowly defined and is
often problematic and costly.

It’s also helpful to decide whether what you’re trying to measure is “latent” or “manifest”
content. Manifest content refers to concrete things that you can point to in the text of the story
– for example how many times a certain word appears, or how many different people are
quoted.

Latent content doesn’t have those same concrete cues and is usually the more subtle
result of many different things. Writing style is a good example of latent content. It might be
difficult to point to a specific word or sentence that makes a story “lively” but it is contained in
the story nevertheless. In general, manifest content is much easier to measure than latent
content. Latent content analysis requires extensive training and reliability testing and should
be approached with caution.

Even more difficult than deciding what you want to measure is creating categories.

Whole books have been devoted to the subject but here are a few guidelines:

1. Categories should be mutually exclusive. Make sure that they don’t overlap.

2. Make sure there are meaningful differences between rating categories. Fine distinctions
between categories or ratings cause confusion and make results unreliable. A good
example would be asking people to rate stories as: not local, somewhat local, primarily
local or completely local. You can bet that coders will get confused between “somewhat”
and “primarily” and would sit and wonder what a “completely” local story would be.

3. Make sure there’s a category for everything. If there’s no category, coders will try to force
stories into inappropriate categories and distort results.

4. Only create separate categories for things you see often. Don’t create a new category
specifically for a unique column that runs once a week. The goal is to be able to classify
 123

stories 95 percent of the time. There will always be 5 percent of the stories that are odd –
create an “other” category and use it judiciously.

These last two points may seem to be at odds. It’s a balancing act between having too
few categories and miscoding stories and having too many and creating confusion. The best
answer is to test categories using real stories. By coding a few dozen stories it will become
clear very quickly if you have too many stories that don’t have a category or categories without
any stories in them at all.

Once you feel like you’ve got a good handle on what you’re going to measure, and what
the possible answers for that measurement are, test it. Ask five to 10 people to read five or 10
typical stories and code them. Everyone should come up with the same coding categories 75
percent of the time. If they don’t, you may need to reduce the number of categories to eliminate
overlap and make the definitions clearer. If that doesn’t help, you may be measuring something
that’s just too unreliable.

9.2.2. DECIDING HOW MANY NEWSPAPERS AND STORIES TO STUDY

We recommend studying a week’s worth of newspapers, looking at a proportion of stories,

overall structure, listings and content promotion. This allows a very thorough look at a newspaper
in the most efficient way. Although tempting, studying a month of newspapers isn’t significantly
more reliable than a week’s worth of papers. Additionally, it isn’t necessary to study every story
to get a valid understanding of what a newspaper contains: good sampling can do that.

If you want to be very thorough, you can repeat your analysis several times, waiting a few
months between samples. This would give you a broader base from which to draw conclusions
and let you track changes over time.

9.2.3. SELECTING COPIES OF YOUR NEWSPAPER FOR ANALYSIS

The goal should be to select typical issues with a normal mix of coverage. Avoid
monumental news events that radically change coverage, major holidays, extraordinary special
sections or anything else that alters more than ten percent of content from the usual mix. Also
avoid major internal events. For example, don’t pick the week that a quarter of the staff is on
vacation or the week that the new computer system goes on line.
124

You’ll want to select a representative week, but in order to minimize the distortion one
major news event might cause, do not select consecutive days. We recommend selecting
every third day until you have an example of every day of the week. This will correct for any
normal differences in news that naturally happen.

For the Impact study we studied a final home/city edition of the newspaper. Select whatever
edition you would consider most typical of your coverage and make sure that you have all
sections. If you choose, you can study multiple editions of a section (to look at zoning).

Before adding more work to the process, make sure that content is truly different enough
to make it worthwhile. As you collect the papers, get two complete copies of the paper (put one
set of papers in a cabinet somewhere just in case something happens to the original used for
analysis).

9.2.4. DECIDING HOW MANY STORIES TO READ

We recommend you read only a portion of the stories in these seven days of newspapers.
The proportion of stories recommended follows. “Story Assignment Sheets,” will help you achieve
a random sample of stories while also showing you how to divide the work among five different
readers. If you follow these lists, you will automatically have the correct proportion.

Preparing the Newspaper for Analysis

Defining and Numbering Stories

There are several different parts of a newspaper that will be analyzed (i.e. stories, listings,
content promotion and overall structure). This section will explain the story analysis procedures.
Instructions for studying listings, content promotion and overall structure appear at the end of
this section. The first step in analysis is to go through the newspaper and identify all the stories,
differentiating them from the listings and content promotion. At first glance, this may seem like
an unnecessary step, but it’s critical for consistency and even distribution of work.

Newspapers are composed of various types of content including stories, advertisements,

listings and graphics. The differences between these categories can be sometimes confusing.
 125

Stories must meet the following criteria:

1. Longer than two inches in length. On a standard-sized column it can be measured with a
ruler.

2. Must be written in complete sentences with a central theme.

3. Must not be part of a paid advertisement.

4. Must be a complete story, not a promotional reference for a full story contained elsewhere.

Stories are often confused with listings, which are clearly editorial in content but must be
analyzed in a different way. The reason for differentiating listings from stories is that listings
often cover many different topics in one section, can have many authors etc. Refer to page 11
for instructions on how to measure listings.

Many times, several short stories and briefs share a common header, e.g. “Police News,”
“Around the City” etc. Each brief, so long as it meets the minimum two-inch length, should be
considered as a complete, distinct story. If a story or brief is less than two inches, it should not
be counted as a story although other briefs under the same header that do meet the minimum
length requirement should be included.

Question and answer columns and advice columns such as ‘Dear Abby’ or ‘Ann Landers’
should be treated as one story. The same should be done with celebrity and gossip columns
that may contain multiple sections but have a general topic and one identified author.

Stories do not Include

• Content promotion references that lead to stories elsewhere

• Sports agate

• Stand-alone photographs or graphics

• Death, birth, engagement, wedding or anniversary notices that are submitted

• TV and movie listings

• Stock price listings

126

• Weather maps

• Crosswords or comics

• Horoscopes

• Community listings or advertisement content, which must be paid for

Next you will learn how to number stories. All editorial content that is not considered a
story including weather maps, agate type and other such content is considered a listing. Details
on how to handle listings appear on page 10.

Numbering Stories

Before numbering, make sure that you have a complete edition of the newspaper and
that sections are in the correct order. Remove pre-printed advertisements and then verify,
using the printed index on the front page, that all sections are there.

Now you’re ready to number stories. Begin numbering each story starting on the front
page. Each time you find a new headline, write a numeral to the immediate left of the headline.
Number each story consecutively, from page to page, from section to section – don’t start
renumbering from one at the start of each section. Number from top to bottom, left to right –
being systematic reduces the chance for skipping stories. A few guidelines:

• If a story jumps, number it only on the first page it appears.

• Keep a ruler handy and ignore stories less than 2" in length.

• If you accidentally skip a story, don’t re-number everything to keep it consecutive, just
give it the next available number and make a notation at the bottom of the front page
where the “out of order” stories can be found.

• Watch out for advertisements that look like stories.

Highlighting Listings and Content Promotions

Go back through the papers and, using a highlighter, scan each page and draw a box
around each listing. Listings should not have been counted as stories and should not be part of
 127

a story. Listings are defined as editorial content that is not a story, not a paid advertisement,
presented as a collection of numbers and other information and is not in complete sentences.
A few guidelines:

• Listings are usually in smaller type, “agate,” and often are seen in long columns.

• Frequently-seen listings include sports scores, stock prices, entertainment listings, church
directories and similar information.

• Listings can include graphics and photographs such as the weather map.

• Statistics and numbers included in the text of a story are not listings. Listings must be a
stand-alone feature.

• Be careful of paid-advertisements that might appear to be listings. Examples include:

classified ads, personals, paid death notices and other obviously advertisement areas.

• If it’s unclear if a group of listings are paid advertisements or not, consider them editorial
listings (readers probably don’t know the difference either).

Once you’ve highlighted listings, go back through the paper using a different color
highlighter and draw a box around each content promotion (be sure to use a different highlighter
color than with the listings or it will be difficult to differentiate between the two). Content promotion
is very broadly defined as anything that:

• Highlights a content item contained elsewhere in the newspaper.

• Highlights a content item that will be published in a future edition or on the website.

• Promotes the newspaper overall using the brand name of the paper.

• Promotes any service or feature of the newspaper including circulation sales, classified
ad sales etc.

Content promotion includes (but is not limited to):

• The main flag (i.e. the title) of the newspaper.

• Refers, skyboxes, rails and many other front-page bits about inside content.

• All indices, front page or otherwise.

128

• House advertisements of any sort.

• All contact information having to do with the newspaper itself.

• All advertisements for any of the newspaper’s subsidiary publications.

Content promotion does not include:

• Author e-mail address at the end of articles

• Spacer ads contained in the classified section

This last exclusion is arbitrary and is done basically to simplify the work. Everyone runs
a quantity of small filler ads that are almost impossible to count. Although real, we don’t include
them.

Now you’ve prepared the newspapers for analysis. You’ve identified the stories that will
be studied as well as all the listings and content promotion. Now it’s time to organize the coders
and get started.

Selecting and Training Coders

You’ve selected your papers and are ready to start. Analyzing the listings, content
promotion and overall structure is a straightforward task that one or two people could do in a
few hours. Analyzing the stories is much more laborious and requires a team to work on it.

We recommend recruiting a group of between five and 10 people to analyze and code
the identified stories, with smaller newspapers working with a smaller coder team.

Select people who, in the course of their daily work, show good judgment. It is extremely
important that they also be people who can follow rules and who are detail-oriented. Avoid
people who are too intimately involved in producing the paper and who will be able to step back
from it and code it objectively.

There’s a rule-of-thumb about this type of work: 80 percent of the mistakes will come
from one coder. Often, it’s not the person who asks the most questions or spends the most
time learning the process. It’s usually the person who says that she understands but doesn’t
and makes the same two or three mistakes on every story that she codes.
 129

Having people work as a group will help with some of this: people can discuss problem
stories as they code and learn together. Nevertheless, you will still need to spot-check work.
Just select a few stories randomly and check to make sure that the decisions make sense.
Keep doing it throughout the coding process and it will greatly improve results.

Once you have the newspapers prepared for analysis and a crew of people set to help
you, there’s one last step before starting – that’s training. Convene the group of coders for an
hour-long meeting to review the definitions and procedures. Go over the coding sheet and talk
about what each question means and how to collect the information.

Then practice on five or 10 example stories from your newspaper. Everyone should
practice coding them on their own. Then go through each story and talk about how they were
categorized – this is extremely helpful in making sure that everyone understands the definitions.
Everyone can code the example stories using the forms and then discuss as a group any
doubts or confusion. This is usually enough to make sure that everyone understands.

We encourage you to take additional steps to ensure that personal bias and difference of
interpretation are minimized.

As we mentioned before, we strongly recommend coding be performed in a group setting.

Gather people together in a conference room for three-hour blocks. Not only will the project be
done faster, it will also increase consistency among the coders.

Dividing the Work Load

The next step is to assign stories for each person to analyze. It’s important to have
several people work on each paper – and each section. This is because it is inevitable that
coders will be a bit inconsistent. Some may have more strict standards about what a “feature”
story is than others. Others may simply be a bit confused about how a term is defined and may
make incorrect assumptions. If only one person read all the sports stories and they
misunderstood something, sports data will look very strange and you won’t know why. If several
people read sports, even if one of them doesn’t understand a point, distortion will be minimized
and you’ll still be able to make fair comparisons.
130

9.3. PART II- STORY ANALYSIS FORM (Creation & Analysis)

Make one copy of the following form for each story you plan to analyze. Each question
has a blank that must be filled out. Instructions for how to fill out each blank appear in the next
section. We have also created a “quick reference” sheet that can be photocopied for each
coder.

9.3.1. Story Analysis Form Instructions

Fill out one form per story.

Below you will find definitions of each question and how to answer them.

Story ID

Newspaper Date (6 digit) – Story # (2 digit)

November 11, 2001 newspaper story 4 would be: 111101-04

If analyzing more than one newspaper title, add another code at the front indicating
paper. For example 2-111101-04

Coder

Initials of coder

Data entry

Initials of data entry person

Front Page

Mark 1 if the story starts on the front page, 2 if it doesn’t. If a story starts on the front page
and continues inside, it’s still front page. This does not include promotion of the item on the
front page (if a skybox refers to a story inside, it does not count as a front page story).
 131

Section Front

Mark 1 if the story starts on a section front, 2 it if doesn’t. If a story starts on the section
front and continues inside, it’s still a section front. This does not include promotion of the item
on the section front (if a skybox refers to a story that doesn’t appear on the section front, it does
not count as a section front story).

Section

Mark the section that the story appears in from the list below using the appropriate number.
A section is a stand-alone entity, not just a themed page. Be careful not to confuse the story’s
content with the section in which it appears. (Note: you can modify this list to reflect your
newspaper specifically.)

1. Front Section

2. Local, State & Regional News

3. Sports

4. Business

5. Food

6. Lifestyle

7. Weekend Entertainment

8. Family & Parenting

9. Youth-oriented

10. Education

11. Home, Garden & Real Estate

12. Books

13. Editorial/Opinion

14. Fashion

15. Sunday Magazine (non- syndicated)

132

16. Science or Health

17. Computers & Technology

18. Travel

19. Classified

20. Other

Quadrant

Mark the location where the story starts on the page. If the story extends across two
quadrants, mark where the majority of the headline appears.

“Go and Do” Information

Includes:

• Times, dates and places where events will occur.

• Phone numbers to call and make reservations, join in etc. and not just with the author.

• Website URLs of non-newspaper sources of information.

• Recipes.

• Author phone number and e-mail is NOT go and do information.

Jump

A story is said to have “jumped” when it is continued on another page – usually with a tag
such as “see Tree Page 8” at the end. Jumping applies only to the text of the story itself and
doesn’t apply to a promotional bit (like a skybox) that may appear independently of the story.

Graphics

Graphs, charts and any non-photograph visuals used to help tell the story; note total
number of graphics and the number that appear in color.
 133

Photo

Mark the total number of photographs and the number of color photographs.

Photo Diversity

• Mark the number of photographs with visible faces.

• Mark the number of photographs that include only a face of color (which includes black,
Asian, Hispanic, Native American etc.)

• Mark the number of photographs that include only a white face.

• Mark the number of photographs that include both white faces and faces of color.

Total Area

Measure the total area of the story in square inches. Include headlines, photographs,
graphics and any other material relating to the story. If a story jumps, include material before
and after jump.

Photo and Graphics Area

Measure and total the area of all photographs and graphics in the story in square inches.
Round to the nearest square inch.

Origin/Source of Story
1. Wire/News Service: stories from the AP, Reuters or any other news service. We also
include stories credited to another newspaper (not the home newspaper).

2. Staff: stories with or without a byline that are identified as coming from the newspaper.
Includes “special to” and correspondents of the newspaper.

3. Reader: use only on either editorial pages where readers write columns or letters to the
editor, or in cases where stories are specifically identified as being written by readers.

4. Unknown: use when the source of the story is not stated.

134

Geographic Focus

Relative to the paper being published, determine the general focus of the story. In case
of doubt, think through the following questions to clarify:

1. Is a specific locality, state, region, or nation identified in the story?

2. Is the story significantly more interesting to state, region, national or international readers?

3. Does the story seem to be tailored for people from a certain locality, region, state or
nation?

By answering these questions, the geographic focus should become clear. Remember
that although mention of specific geographic areas is important to note, it can sometimes be
misleading. For example, there may be mention of the United Nations in New York, but that
doesn’t mean that it’s a New York story. Similarly legislation can be passed in Washington,
D.C., which deals directly with a local issue. It’s important to consider what makes the story
newsworthy, and, more specifically, why is it in this newspaper?

Treatment
The way that the story is written, not to be confused with the subject of the story.

1. General News: any story that emphasizes facts of a recent event. Often uses a straight
news or inverted pyramid style of writing.

2. Feature: longer, more reflective tone; often humorous or entertaining. Can be on a serious
subject but tries to tell a story rather than just regurgitate a series of facts.

3. Commentary/Criticism: any story that offers a first-person opinion or is a stated opinion of

the newspaper, e.g. editorials, opinion or advice pieces, art, music and entertainment
criticism and product advice etc.

4. Other

Themes

Most stories are complex and therefore involve more than one theme. You need to decide
which theme is most prominent. The questions to ask are: What is this story really about?
What is the main point in the story? What is the central concept described in the story?
 135

To answer these questions, use the following guidelines:

1. Look at the actions or developments in the story, rather than the context in which they
occur.

2. Focus on why this story is in the paper at all – usually something has to happen (a news
peg) that can give you a clue on how to classify the story.

3. If you cannot decide between two themes (or more) you can resort to paragraph counting
(i.e. choose the theme that has more paragraphs in the story).

4. Use headlines or section heads as clues only: a story in the Business section is more
than likely to include information relating to business, but it should not necessarily be
coded as “business” for theme.

5. Discuss the story with another coder if you’re still uncertain.

Example:

A story about the theft of the Oscar statues can be seen as a police/crime/courts/legal
story or as an entertainment story. In this case we would select the police/crime theme because
that is the main occurrence in the story; the act of theft is what the story is about. The fact that
it happened in the context of entertainment (and that it possibly appeared in a section on
entertainment), should not lead you to code the theme as entertainment.

Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun

Total # of pages

Total # of stand-alonesections

# of Stories

# of Full-Color Pages

Inventory of Sections

Front       
136

Local, State & Regional       

Sports       

Business       

Food       

Lifestyle       

Weekend Entertainment       

Family & Parenting       

Youth-oriented       

Education       

Home, Garden & Real Estate       

Books       

Editorial/Opinion       

Fashion       

Sunday Magazine (non-syndicated)       

Sunday Magazine(syndicated)       

Science or Health       

Computers & Technology       

Travel       

Comics       

Classifieds       
 137

Other:       

Other:       

Other:       

Other:       

Other:       

Other:       

Sources

This is a time-consuming question and should be considered optional. Count the number
of sources directly quoted in the story (references do not count). Count the number of officials
quoted, the number of ordinary people, identifiably male and female. Gender identification
should depend on more than name, also look for pronouns such as he or her etc.

General Reaction

Also an optional portion. Can give a general view of what’s in the newspaper and identify
stories for later discussion and teaching examples.

Structure Analysis

Listings Tabulation

Listings Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun

Area by category

Sports

Stocks

Television

Movies
138

Entertainment

Obituaries

Comm. Announcements

Other

Total

Count by category

Sports

Stocks

Television

Movies

Entertainment

Obituaries

Comm. Announcements

Other

Total

9.3.2. NEWSPAPER STRUCTURE ANALYSIS INSTRUCTIONS

Overall Structure

The inventory of your newspaper should provide a detailed and itemized list of the
publication’s components. Use the “Structure Analysis” chart to tabulate all data. For each
newspaper day, count the number of:
 139

Stories

You should have a total story count already from the story numbering process. Refer to
the last numbered story in each day’s newspaper.

Stand-alone sections

Must be stand-alone sections, do not count themed pages.

Color pages

Spot color or four-color pages count. Include pages that have any color editorial or
advertising content.

Total pages

You must measure the total number of printed pages in your edition. If you publish a
mixture of broadsheet and tabloid sections, convert them to all to broadsheet pages.

1. Count the number of standard pages. That should be each page on each printed side.
Set aside non-standard sized pages for now.

2. Measure the size of a standard page in inches. Calculate the area of standard page. A
typical broadsheet page might be 22.5 inches high by 13.3 inches wide for 295 square
inches per page.

3. For each non-standard section measure the size of each page and multiply it by the
number of pages. Then divide by the standard page area for the standard page equivalent.

Page Count x Page Size = Standard Page Equivalent Standard Page Area

4. Convert all non-standard pages to a standard size and total the number of pages.

Inventory of sections

Under “Inventory of Sections” check the box for each day a particular section appears in
the newspaper. Write the names of sections not listed in “Other” and check the appropriate
boxes.
140

Listings Analysis Instructions

If you haven’t already done so, mark all the listings in the paper using a highlighter. Scan
each page and mark all listings by drawing a box around it. Listings should not have been
counted as stories. Listings are defined as editorial content that are not stories, not paid
advertisements, presented as a collection of numbers and other information and not in complete
sentences. A few guidelines:

• Listings are usually in smaller type, “agate,” and often are seen in long columns.

• Frequently-seen listings include sports scores, stock prices, entertainment listings, church
directories and similar information.

• Listings can include graphics and photographs, such as a weather map

• Statistics and numbers that are part of story are not listings. Listings must be stand-
alone.

• Be careful of paid-advertisements that might appear to be listings. Examples include:

classified ads, personals, paid death notices and other obviously advertisement areas.

• If it’s unclear if a group of listings are paid advertisements or not, consider them editorial
listings (readers probably don’t know the difference either).

Once you’ve marked each listing, go back through and code each one. Measure the size
of the listing and give it a code according to the following scheme. Write both the square area
and the listings type in the newspaper itself – it makes it easier to keep track and correct errors
later. Then go back and tabulate the listings using an Excel spreadsheet or the attached
worksheet.

Listings Codes:
1. Sports

2. Stocks

3. Television

4. Movies

5. Entertainment
 141

6. Obituaries

7. Community Announcements

8. Others

9.4. PART III: REVIEWING AND INTERPRETING DATA

The final step in content analysis is the step where all of your hard work finally pays off:
computing results and interpreting the data. The analysis of the data requires a basic statistical
knowledge and ability to work with SPSS or Excel software. Analysis requires calculating
percentages and averages and can involve doing chi-square tests and comparing means. If
your staff doesn’t have the capabilities, most local colleges or universities may be able to help.

Contact the sociology or communications department and they may be able to put you in
touch with a student or faculty member who can complete the required analysis.

Before analysis begins the data must be organized. The story data must be put into a
spreadsheet or statistics program to allow rapid computations. The structure, listings and content
promotion analysis requires virtually no computation or analysis.

Before you begin analyzing your data, make sure that you are comfortable with their
reliability. By now you should have an idea about the quality of the coding. This is a crucial
step! If different coders cannot independently replicate each other’s coding, your data will be
seriously and justifiably questioned. Make sure that the data entry is done carefully and, if time
allows, double-check it for accuracy.

Organizing Story Data for Analysis

Once you’ve collected your story data, the first step is entering it into an Excel or Lotus
spreadsheet or other data analysis software. (This applies to the story data only – the structure,
listings and content promotion does not need computation.) Most analysis involves simple
computation, something that can be completed with a spreadsheet program like Excel. More
complex analysis may require SPSS or similar data analysis program.
142

The spreadsheet should be set up with a row for each story that you analyzed and a
column for each question (variable) that you asked. All data entered should be in numbers or
codes – it makes sorting and analysis much easier. This is an example of how the spreadsheet
should be set up (these are only the first few variables):

Basic Computations

The statistical analysis used in most content analysis is not sophisticated, but must be
completed by someone who is comfortable working with numbers.

We suggest that you first run a frequencies procedure on all. This allows you to see how
many cases (i.e., stories) you have in each category for each variable. For example, you’ll be
able to know how many stories are in the front section, how many are in each of the other
sections, how many have jumps, how many are national stories, how many are originated by
wire services, and so on. Use this procedure also to see if anything looks out of the ordinary. If
it does, go back to the data and make sure this is not due to an error in data entry.

The frequencies procedure will also let you see the distribution of some variables – the
minimum, maximum, mean, median, standard deviation, as well as how many missing cases
you have. This applies only to variables that count (interval-level variables), not those that
categorize (nominal-level variables). For example, number of graphics, number of photos,
total area of the story, area of photos and graphics, and so on.

The basic frequencies should give you a general picture of what the data look like. You’ll
be able to answer questions such as: How many stories do we typically run in the front section?
What percent of the stories includes graphics? How many local, national, or international stories
do we publish? What percent of our stories is about arts? What percent is about crime?

The data can address even more sophisticated questions, such as, what percent of the
politics stories we publish is local? Or, in what geographic focus do we rely heavily on wire
services? You can use a cross-tabulation procedure for that purpose This will give you the
count and percent of stories for each cell of the two variables, geographic focus and story
origin.
 143

You may want to conduct a statistical test to see whether the differences in the cells of
the table are significant. A good test is the chi-square test, which calculates how different the
actual cell distribution is from the expected distribution.

Comparing Yourself to Other Newspaper

Next, you may want to compare your results with other newspapers. Or you may want to
compare your present results with prior findings. Obviously, you should make sure you are
comparing the same variable, that the coders’ instructions were identical, and that it was
measured in exactly the same way – otherwise you’ll find yourself comparing apples to oranges,
and your conclusions will not be valid.

As you compare your content with that of other newspapers, remember that there are
very few absolutes in newspaper content – it takes judgment to decide what the results mean
for your newspaper. Similarly, the national average should not be considered a recommendation.

9.5. CRIME NEWS ANALYSIS- ONLINE TECHNIQUES

Crime analysis is one of the most important activities of the majority of the intelligent
and law enforcement organizations all over the world. Generally they collect domestic and
foreign crime related data (intelligence) to prevent future attacks and utilize a limited
number of law enforcement resources in an optimum manner. A major challenge faced by
most of the law enforcement and intelligence organizations is efficiently and accurately
analyzing the growing volumes of crime related data. The vast geographical diversity and the
complexity of crime patterns have made the analyzing and recording of crime data more difficult.
Data mining is a powerful tool that can be used effectively for analyzing large databases and
deriving important analytical results. This paper presents an intelligent crime analysis system
which is designed to overcome the above mentioned problems. The proposed system is a
web-based system which comprises of crime analysis techniques such as hotspot detection,
crime comparison and crime pattern visualization. The proposed system consists of a rich and
simplified environment that can be used effectively for processes of crime analysis.

There are various crime data mining techniques available. The most commonly used
methods are, entity extraction, clustering techniques, association rule mining, sequential pattern
mining and classification.
144

9.5.1. PRELIMINARIES

1) Web crawling: Web crawler is an Internet bot. It systematically browses the World
Wide Web typically for the purpose of web indexing. Crawlers can be selective about the
pages they fetch (Ex- crawl only the pages of selected newspaper sites) and are
then referred to as preferential or heuristic-based crawlers .Preferential crawlers built
to retrieve pages within a certain topic are called topical or focused crawlers.

2) Document Classification: Document classification is defined as assigning predefined

categories to text documents, where documents can be news stories, technical reports,
web pages, etc., and categories are most often subjects or topics. To perform an effective
document classification, syntactic (arrangement of words) and semantic (meaning of
words) aspects of the natural language have to be addressed. There are a lot of
algorithms available for text classification and among them SVM (support vector machine)
is the best . The most commonly used approach for document classification is the
utilization of SVM in combination with other linguistic related resources such as
ontology or word net . Classifiers which are built based on imbalanced datasets
usually perform well on the majority class data but they perform poorly on the
minority class data . Various approaches such as different error costs and sampling
techniques have been proposed in order to handle this problem

3) Entity Extraction: This is the main step of transforming the unstructured data into the
structured format. A named entity is typically a name of a person, a place, an organization
or a date. Extraction of named entities involves identification of small chunks of appropriate
texts and classification of them into one of such predefined categories of interest. For an
example if “Jim bought 300 shares of ABC Corp. in 2006 is used for entity extraction,
and then the output will be [Jim] Person bought 300 shares of [ABC Corp.] Organization
in 2006 Time where person, Organization and Time are predefined categories. In order
to do a successful entity extraction there is some amount of preprocessing needs to
be done on the unstructured data (e.g. ) Sentence splitting, tokenizing, POS tagging,
etc.).
 145

4) Duplicate Detection: Duplicates (i.e. documents that are exact duplicates of each
other due to mirroring and plagiarism) are easy to identify by standard check
summing techniques. A more difficult problem is the identification of near-duplicate
documents. Two such documents are identical in terms of content but differ in a small
portion of the document . Document similarities are measured usually in high dimensional
vector space but it is really computationally expensive. Fingerprints such as simhash
and shingles are used to produce sketches of the documents to process them efficiently.

9.6. Summary

This particular lesson deals with importance of content analysis in newspaper research
and the various techniques to do analysis is presented. Also the techniques to write a content
analysis results are also dealt in this lesson. The online tools used for content analysis with
respect to one particular tool is addressed in this lesson.

9.7. Check your Progress

1. What is crawler?

2. What is duplicate detection?

3. What is the use of coders?

4. What is the size of graphics area?

9.8. Keywords

Web crawling: Web crawler is an Internet bot. It systematically browses the World
Wide Web typically for the purpose of web indexing.

Document Classification: Document classification is defined as assigning predefined

categories to text documents, where documents can be news stories, technical reports, web
pages, etc.,

Entity Extraction: This is the main step of transforming the unstructured data into the
structured format. A named entity is typically a name of a person, a place, an organization or
a date.
146

Jump: A story is said to have “jumped” when it is continued on another page – usually
with a tag such as “see Tree Page 8” at the end. Jumping applies only to the text of the story
itself and doesn’t apply to a promotional bit (like a skybox) that may appear independently of
the story.

9.9. Review Questions

1. Elaborate on the steps to do content analysis of newspaper articles.

2. Write about the instructions to newspaper analysis.

3. Write about the online techniques of content analysis.

4. Write about the different parts in content analysis.

5. Write about the different elements associated with story analysis form.

9.10. Suggested Readings

1. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology by Klaus Krippendorff, Sage
publications.
 147

MODEL QUESTION PAPER

B.Sc. Psychology
Second Year - Fourth Semester
NON MAJOR ELECTIVE - II
CRIME AND MEDIA
Time : 3 Hrs. Max marks 75

Section A (10 x 2 = 20)

Answer any Ten questions
All questions carry equal marks
Each answer should not exceed 50 words

1, Define new media.

2. What is documentary film?

3. Define news values.

4. What is meant by news sources?

5. What is rumour?

6. Define crime.

7. What is meant by bias in crime news?

8. What is meant by leads?

9. What is inverted pyramid?

10. What is treatment?

11. What is crawler?

12. What is the purpose of news editing symbols?

148

Section B (5 x 5 = 25)
Answer any Five questions
All questions carry equal marks
Each answer should not exceed 250 words

11. What are the functions of Prasar Bharathi?

14. Discuss the principles of journalism.

15. What are the different concepts present in news?

16. What are the factors affecting the level of fear?

17. How are the women represented while reporting crime?

18. How to deal the specific kinds of crime while reporting the story?

19. What are the preliminaries required to analyse the crime news using online techniques?

Section C (3 x 10 = 30)
Answer any Three questions
All questions carry equal marks
Each answer should not exceed 500 words

20. Explain the history of newspapers in India.

21. Discuss about the different types of news reporting with examples.

22. Elaborate on the investigative reporting and its importance in reporting crime.

23. Explain the role of media in crime prevention with examples.

24. Explain the techniques while interviewing the crime victims with examples.