978-1319102852 Chapter 14 Part 2

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• Bloggers are significantly affecting journalism by demanding more transparency from

journalists and media outlets. Leading this conversation are bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis

(http://buzzmachine.com; director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism

at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism), Jim Romenesko

(http://jimromenesko.com), and Jay Rosen (http://pressthink.org; professor of journalism at

New York University).

• Bloggers have become important conduits for journalists, who depend on bloggers’

independent investigations and often expert knowledge to uncover, contextualize, and sustain

important stories. Bloggers can often dig and aggregate information en masse faster than a

single journalist can pull and organize information.

• Bloggers have been key voices in the debate about objectivity in journalism practice. They

argue that objectivity doesn’t exist, that opinions matter in the public discourse, and that

transparency is needed in journalism—a key tenet in the blogosphere.

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V. Alternative Models: Public Journalism and “Fake” News

• The Project for Excellence in Journalism (http://www.journalism.org) released a study in

2004 revealing the pressure that media outlets are facing, owing to the Internet and twenty-

four-hour cable, to “tell the news” rather than “collect the news.” In other words, the “added

value” of context and thoughtfulness, both in print and broadcast, is diminishing. Here are

some specific points from the study:

• Continuous on-air reports don’t give correspondents any time to do any reporting.

Perhaps fading context and thoughtfulness are leading people to turn away from news

reading and viewership.

• Students do not pay close attention to the news (unless you count The Daily Show with

Trevor Noah).

• Day–to-day cable news ratings have been flat since 2001 (1.4 million daytime, 2 million

prime time).

• The Big Three networks experienced a 34 percent drop in viewers between 1993 and

2004 (although solid investigative news reports like 60 Minutes continue to make substantial

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profits, which again points to the value of context in news). The network news decline has

also been countered by a rise in Internet news readership.

• Trust in the media has steadily declined.

• In 2013, the Project for Excellence in Journalism released updated information about

television journalism. The study found:

• The average length of a TV news story remained steady from 2007 to 2012, at around

142 seconds.

• Commentary and opinion were far more prevalent on cable news networks (63

percent of airtime) than straight news (37 percent). In 2012, CNN was the only cable

news network to offer more reporting than commentary.

• Explain some of the conventions of journalism that are being undermined by The Daily Show

with Trevor Noah (or with Jon Stewart in the past), HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John

Oliver, The Colbert Report (until it ended in 2015), and online sites.

• With bandwidth costs plummeting and video cell phones and digital video cameras widely

available, sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and Snapchat offer places to upload visuals.

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• Bill Moyers and Jon Stewart engaged in two interesting dialogues about the relationship

between comedy and journalism, first in 2003 on Now and then in 2007 on Bill Moyers’

Journal. Transcripts and video recordings of both shows are available: “Bill Moyers

Interviews Jon Stewart,” Now, July 11, 2003 (video:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/stewart_vid.html; transcript:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/transcript1.html).

VI. Democracy and Reimagining Journalism’s Role

• Discuss some of the issues surrounding WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden’s actions. Point out

how these cases might relate to other instances of whistle-blowing, such as the Pentagon

Papers.

MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES

QUESTIONABLE/ILLEGAL REPORTING PRACTICES AND ETHICAL ISSUES

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Make a short list of questionable or illegal methods that reporters might use to get a story (e.g.,

withholding their identity as a reporter). Discuss the circumstances under which these methods

might be justified.

candidates for any public office, and they “may not wear campaign buttons or themselves display

any other insignia of partisan politics. They should recognize that a bumper sticker on the family

car or a campaign sign on the lawn may be misread as theirs, no matter who in their household

actually placed the sticker or the sign.”

NEWS VALUES

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Then have students react to Gans’s conclusion that these values do not fit neatly into a

particular political ideology. Responsible capitalism seems more centrist or liberal, but the news

is conservative in that it is biased toward tradition, nostalgia, and the defense of social order.

Gans writes, “If the news has to be pigeonholed ideologically, it is right-liberal or left

conservative.”

EXAMINING EXPERT SOURCES

The purpose of this Critical Process exercise is to extend your critical approach to the news.

your focus to local, national, or international news.

1. Description. Count the total number of sources used by each newspaper or network program.

Do the sources work in jobs that require professional degrees, or do they work in blue-collar

jobs?

2. Analysis. After completing your charts, write one or two paragraphs discussing patterns that

emerge. Who seems to get quoted most frequently? Among those quoted, what kinds of

occupations generally appear? Do male sources or female sources dominate?

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3. Interpretation. Write a one– or two–paragraph critical interpretation of your findings. How

are the sources used? Why do you think certain sources appear in this day’s news more

frequently than others? Why do reporters seek out certain types of sources rather than others?

Does the gender of sources mean anything?

4. Evaluation. Discuss the limitations of your study; compare whether print or television

handles sources better. Did circumstances on the particular day you chose suggest why one

type of expert appears more often than other types?

5. Engagement. Contact a print reporter, a TV reporter, and/or an editor responsible for your

selected stories. Report your preliminary findings, and document how the reporters came to

choose their sources.

(Note: This assignment works either as an in-class presentation or as a written project. Either

way, it should include charts that help organize the material.)

CONVENTIONAL NEWS AND PUBLIC JOURNALISM

Pre–Exercise Questions: Are there any important issues about your college or university

community that have not been in the local news? If so, why do you think they’re missing from

news reports?

1. Identify a problem on your college or university campus or in the larger community. For

example, “There’s not enough student participation at university events,” “Rising tuition is

forcing some students out of college,” or “There’s a new incident in the longtime adversarial

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relationship between the ‘townies’ and the college students.” (Realize that even as you decide

how to frame the question of any topic, you’re suggesting parameters for your story.)

2. Identify the information you’ll need to write the story from conventional- and public-

journalism perspectives. First, start with the conventional-news approach. Where do you go

for information? Do you think you already “know” what these sources would say? Does your

approach mean that there are some people you will or will not consider as sources? Because

you are a member of the campus/community in which this problem exists, what do you know

about the problem? Can you include your knowledge in the story? If so, how? Does the

information change if it is a broadcast story (television or radio) instead of a print story?

Address these questions using a public-journalism approach.

3. How will you organize the two stories? Does all the information fit into a two-sided story

framework? How many “sides” might there actually be to this problem?

4. Analyze the ways in which each approach framed the story. What story details did you

select? Which were emphasized the most? Which story details were excluded? Why? What

do the stories seem to suggest as the cause of the problem? What solutions, if any, do the

stories advance?

5. Evaluate each story approach. Which is more deliberative? Which is easier to write? Which

is more interesting to write? Which story do you think would be most interesting to readers?

What do you think was the ultimate goal of each story approach?

Options: This exercise could also be adapted as an individual or group paper assignment. You

might consider having advanced students actually report and write stories from both

perspectives.

ANALYZING THE QUALITY OF NEWS

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Method: Content analysis and comparison of various news outlets

One of the major jobs of news media is to keep the public informed about the nation’s

political institutions and the actions of its military. The goal of this assignment is to evaluate how

well the media report these important issues and then to compare the different forms of media.

1. As a group, select a pertinent topic (a political campaign or overseas military engagements

are good examples).

2. Each group member must take responsibility for a specific media outlet to monitor. Each

group should have a mix of TV newscasts, newspapers, and one Internet news site.

3. Your group must monitor the news for the same five consecutive days. The newspapers

should be daily. Those of you monitoring newspapers must use the paper editions, not the

online editions. However, it is okay for one person to monitor the print version of the San

Francisco Chronicle, for example, and another http://www.sfgate.com.

4. You must be consistent. If you are monitoring the 10 P.M. Channel 2 newscast for five nights,

it is not okay to skip a night or to substitute Channel 11 at 11 P.M.

5. Each person should keep a log of what stories relating to the chosen topic were covered,

noting what it was about. If there was no coverage that day, take note of the kind of stories

that were covered.

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6. Each group should generate one summary of the information that each member can use. You

can put this information in lists, tables, or any other form that is easy for your group to

digest.

7. Groups have a right to drop a member who does not perform the assigned monitoring.

Anyone dropped from a group will have to do all the monitoring alone.

Part 2: Individual Analysis

TRACKING RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN JOURNALISM: A SEMESTER–LONG

CRITICAL PROCESS EXERCISE AND PAPER

In this exercise students discover the most recent developments in the industry, and they become

familiar with industry trade sources. The paper they produce is due in sections, which correspond

with the steps in the Critical Process.

1. Description. Read industry trade sources to get a sense of the main issues affecting

journalism. Look at the Web sites of industry trade associations and professional societies.

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commentary in industry sources? (Focus only on information from the current year—and

only from trade sources.) Write a one-page synopsis of the information you found about

current topics in the industry. Cite your sources properly.

2. Analysis. Look for one development or pattern that has received significant attention on trade

sites and from trade journalists in the current year. Choose one specific trend, and write one

or two pages with details about the information you found about that trend. Continue to track

news about your topic as the semester progresses. Cite sources properly.

3. Interpretation. What does the trend mean for the state of the industry? Is it evolving? How?

What does it tell you about media in general at the current time? What might it say about our

culture or our society? Can your information help us interpret the role of the industry in our

lives? Write up your interpretation in a five-page paper. (The first page should be a synopsis

4. Evaluation. Is the trend “good” or “bad”? For the industry? society? culture? democracy? us?

What do you think might happen in the future?

5. Engagement. Are there any actions you can take (related to your trend and the industry)?

Possibilities include posting your views on social media, creating a petition, contacting

people in the industry to see what they think of your interpretation and evaluation, or going

to an industry event if any are held nearby. (This step need not be required if students are not

motivated to take action.)

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with information on how to access industry trade sources.

CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES

LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE:

launchpadworks.com

The Contemporary Journalist: Pundit or Reporter? (2010, 3:12 minutes). In this video, journalist

Clarence Page and journalism professor and author Richard Campbell discuss how today’s

new media age has blurred the distinction between a “journalism of verification” and a

“journalism of assertion” for contemporary reporters.

The Objectivity Myth (2010, 3:00 minutes). Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Clarence Page and

Onion editor Joe Randazzo explore how objectivity began in journalism and how reporter

biases may nonetheless influence news stories.

Shield Laws and Nontraditional Journalists (2010, 3:06 minutes). James Rainey and Frank

LoMonte discuss shield laws and their effect on journalism.

VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS

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Beyond the Frame: Alternative Perspectives on the War on Terrorism (2004, 126 minutes).

Fear and Favor in the Newsroom (1996, 57 minutes). The testimony of some of the nation’s

most distinguished journalists, including four Pulitzer Prize winners, shatters the myth

perpetuated by the media themselves that editorial decisions are made “without fear or

favor.” Available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTYmSe5xg2U.

Kill the Messenger (2014, 112 minutes). Based on the true story of San Jose Mercury News

reporter Gary Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” investigative journalism series implicating the

CIA in the crack cocaine epidemic in the United States because of the CIA’s involvement

with Nicaraguan contras who were drug traffickers.

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news is produced and in whose interests it works. Distributed by the Media Education

Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

NOW with Bill Moyers (2004, December 17, 60 minutes). In his final episode, Bill Moyers

reports on the intersection of media and politics and on how Republicans have used it so

successfully. Distributed by PBS Home Video, 800-531-4727; http://www.shoppbs.org.

Pew Research Center Takes an Inside Look at Fake News (2017, 18:13 minutes). ABC News

visits Pew Research Center. Available at http://abcn.ws/2kvdXIr.

Spotlight (2015, 128 minutes). Film about the work of Boston Globe reporters to expose sexual

abuse in the Catholic Church and the subsequent cover-up of the scandal by the Archdiocese

of Boston.

Truth (2015, 125 minutes). The story of the controversial 60 Minutes report about President

George W. Bush’s military record and the embattled producer, Mary Mapes, and network

anchor, Dan Rather.

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Veronica Guerin (2003, 98 minutes). Starring Cate Blanchett, this feature film is based on the

story of a devoted Irish journalist who wrote about organized crime and was ultimately

gunned down in her car. Directed by Joel Schumacher.

WEB SITES

American Press Institute: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org

American Society of News Editors: http://asne.org

Associated Press Media Editors: http://www.apme.com

Nieman Journalism Lab: http://www.niemanlab.org/about/.

News Media Alliance: https://www.newsmediaalliance.org

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism: http://www.journalism.org

Poynter Institute Online: http://www.poynter.org

Reporters without Borders: http://www.rsf.org

Society of Professional Journalists: http://www.spj.org

Vanderbilt Television News Archive: http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu

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