What is the News



What is the News? Getting you thinking …

Key Idea: The mass media select the information that they give us. We do not have a true overall picture of what is happening in the world, but a pre-selected view, which may or may not influence our opinions about what is happening around us.

Stories are printed in the newspaper for reasons other than their importance to people. Sometimes they are chosen because they are entertaining or support someone's political views.

Value laden and value free

You have come across the idea that people have values that affect what they think and do all the way through the modules of this course. Value laden is when opinions become mixed up with facts so that emotions are all tied in with arguments. The news presented by the media tends to be value laden.

Language contains emotions

This is a self-evident fact. Language is very emotional, and if it were not, we could not have poetry. Lots of words and ideas create strong emotions in people and you can influence people by the words that you use. Many words cannot be used in polite company at all. This is not because of the sound of them but because of the emotions that they create in certain people.

Value laden headlines

All words have emotional meanings and associations. Headlines often use such words to catch the eye so that people will buy the newspaper.

Take the following headlines:

* The vicar is guilty of sexual assault alleges mother of boy.

* Randy vicar groped my boy claims weeping and brokenhearted mother.

The first headline is value free. It states a fact. The second headline is value-laden because it carries facts and emotions. The emotional words are the ones that contain more than just a fact. Which headline would make you want to read the story? Probably the second would.

An editor needs to make his/her paper interesting to sell copies of it and to get advertising. S/he will have to use emotional language to sell the newspaper and make stories seem worth reading. Headlines have to be catchy and fun. They use short words and puns to save print and grab the attention. This helps to make the headlines value-laden.

How do editors choose what to put into the news?

An editor is a person who chooses what should be published in books, magazines or newspapers. An editor will choose what can be broadcast on a TV or radio programme. The most important consideration of an editor is to make the programme interesting to the potential audience. This will also apply to news programmes.

There are certain factors, which will influence the judgement of the editor and make some stories more likely to be in the news than others.

Pictures: Certain pictures and visual images stay in the mind better than others do. Newspapers like to have a big picture on the front page and TV editors like a story, which will have good video pictures. Picture stories are more likely to be in the news than other stories.

Pace: Papers and TV news programmes like a wide range of different stories to fill up the news. They often like funny stories or heart-warming human-interest stories. Stories about rich people and celebrities, or stories about the Royal Family are always good to make people take an interest in a story.

Silly Season Stories: Sometimes, when there is little happening in politics, there is not much to put into the newspapers. Almost any story will get printed. This is known as 'silly season publishing'. Stories about aliens kidnapping people or stories about corn circles or talking parrots will all find their way into the newspapers.

Ethnocentrism: This word means that we are only interested in things that happen in our own country. We like stories about people who are close to us and people that we know. Disasters at home will get huge news coverage, whereas problems abroad are often ignored.

Folk Devils and Moral Panics: Certain stories become fashionable because people can worry and get upset about them. Good examples would be stories about child abuse, famines and wars. The stories are about things that are really important, but although the famines, wars, child abuse and crimes still carry on, the news reports have moved on to something else which is fashionable.

Media Hype: People will do silly things just to get noticed. They say rude things, appear naked in magazines, wear silly hats and run the London Marathon dressed as clowns just to get themselves noticed and in the news. Lots of photographs in newspapers are examples of hype. Many charities use examples of hype to publicise their good cause.

Political bias: Many newspapers and magazines support certain political causes. They report news that favours their political point of view. They may be really unpleasant about people from the other political point of view. People will buy papers that give them a view of the world that they find reassuring and that they can understand.

• Go through a magazine or newspaper to find examples of hype pictures.

• What magazines specialise in news or stories about celebrities? Ask around and make a list. What types of stories do they specialise in?

Editing a newspaper: Practical exercise

Your group is the editorial committee of a major national newspaper. Over the past 24 hours each of these events has occurred. You have to sell as many copies of your paper as possible, so you have to make it very exciting.

A royal prince has announced that he is homosexual.

Thieves have stolen £40,000,000 in cash from the Bank of England.

Your local Town football club has won the football league.

The government intends to tax all meat products by 20%.

These are exaggerated but they do represent different types of news stories.

Decide which stories will affect the lives of ordinary people most.

Decide which stories will sell most newspapers.

Are your two lists the same?

Censorship and Free Speech

Although newspapers and news programmes can sometimes express opinions as though they were facts, you should also be aware that there are rules that govern what you can and cannot write and say in Britain. If the government allows people to write and say anything that they wish, they have the right to free speech. In theory, in Britain, we have free speech.

If people have restrictions over what they can say or do, this is known as censorship. In some societies, there is strong censorship so that if you criticise the government in any way, you can end up in prison or 'disappeared'. There is censorship in the following areas in British society.

Blasphemy laws: You cannot say anything that offends Christian belief. Many people of other religions feel this to be unfair.

Libel and slander laws: Libel means that you cannot print lies about anyone in a newspaper or book. Slander means that you cannot say anything untrue about anyone. It is not against criminal law to slander or label anyone. If you want to accuse someone of slander or libel, then you have to ask a lawyer to take the case to court for you. This can be extremely expensive so only the wealthy usually do this.

The Official Secrets Act: If you work for the government then you must sign the Official Secrets Act. You may not tell anyone about your work. This is to protect National Security, but the government could use it to protect itself if it makes a mistake or if it wants to spread propaganda.

Contempt of court: If a law case is in progress then you cannot write or say anything about what is happening. This is to protect people who are appearing in court. Things that they are hearing outside the court may influence the jury.

Prevention of Terrorism Act: Terrorists try to use the publicity that they gain from bombing and other acts of violence to make people think about and understand the cause that they feel that they are fighting for. The government has tried to stop this in the case of the IRA by making it illegal for anyone to broadcast the voices of the IRA or any other terrorist organisation. For a long period of time, actors had to say the words that were actually spoken by the terrorists.

Film grades: Films are allocated a certificate according to their sex and violence content. Children under certain ages are not allowed to watch certain films.

TV station rules: The television companies operate a number of their own rules, which are a form of censorship. Most companies only show films, which have a content of sex and violence after 9 o'clock. Political parties are given equal amounts of time to broadcast their messages. Films on TV often have swear words bleeped out or changed. Pop music that is really sexual in content tends not to be played on BBC.

The Race Relations Act: This Act makes it illegal to say or do anything that could be considered to incite racial hatred.

Independent Learning Exercise:

You will need to support the material on this sheet with your own reading and research drawn from textbooks.

Look at recent textbooks and research online to create a PowerPoint with examples drawn from current affairs and recent research to show how the media may create news.

Knowledge and Understanding

What do the following words and ideas in the sheet mean?

Editor, blasphemy, censorship, free speech, silly season, headline, value-laden, value free.

Personal Research

Are the film censorship categories for children effective? Do a survey of children to see how much sex and violence that the children are able to see on TV and on video.

Examination style question

Outline and assess the view that the mass media do not always give a true picture of the outside world in their coverage of the news.

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