Week 11

Week 10 did not require any readings – because our class played the audio copies of interviews we had with various senior journalists.

The reading for week 11 is ch 14: ‘Journalism in the global village’ by Rhonda Breit. The chapter discusses the idea that journalism is increasingly being involved in the global village – global issues, global stories, global audiences.

New technologies are changing the way journalists get and report news. These technologies are not only affecting the way news is reported but also some local laws are becoming irrelevant in a world of mass information to mass audiences. The legal system is suffering under this media liberalisation and globalisation. “While freedom of speech may flourish in this environment, other rights such as personal privacy are suffering.” (Breit, p.213).

The global village has been enabled by increased developments in technologies. With this global audience – global corporations and TNCs have grown in power – the ten largest media corporations are: “Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Sony, TCI, Universal (Seagram), NBC (GE), and Polygram” (Breit, p.214). There are also other large corporations that specialise in targeting niche markets – such as the Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL). “Concentration of media ownership into the hands of a few TNCs is threatening the integrity of journalism. At the same time it threatens the legal systems that regulate the media and balance basic human rights.”(Breit, p.217).

Another large factor that impacts journalistic practice today is commercialisation. “..commercial considerations are tainting the news agenda in the global media, as they have done in the national media..” (Breit, p.216).

With globalisation come the aforementioned pressures on journalists (commercialisation, competition, mass audiences, largely US ownership and ideologies etc) which will consciously or unconsciously effect their productions. In such an environment, “It is vital that journalists rethink their functions in society.” (Breit, p.219).

Breit suggests that globalisation poses two major threats; it threatens the two most powerful ‘watchdogs’ – the judiciary and journalism.

The Judiciary is threatened, because “when publishing material globally, the media must comply with the publication laws of each jurisdiction in which they publish. For the journalist who writes the stories, this is an onerous task.” (Breit, p.222). The expectation that global media will abide by local laws set out in the judiciary system is asking a lot. The power of TNCs and the technologies allowing global reach of journalistic works are the two factors that Breit says are “undermining domestic laws” (p.222).

Journalism is threatened because of all of the pressures that globalisation puts on a journalist to shape their work a differently than if they were primarily serving their role as the fourth estate.

Breit suggests the only way to combat the negative effects that globalisation has on journalistic productions and on the judiciary system managing journalistic productions, is to have global cooperation (p.225). “Journalists must consent to a transparent system of accountability, supplemented by internationalised local laws that acknowledge the changing role of the global journalist.” (p.229).

I don’t really think it will be possible to come up with a global set of rules or laws for journalistic accountability. I think it would be too difficult to assimilate different countries’ views on censorship and defamation etc. These sorts of rules incorporate value systems that are often unique to one country. This global village that we live in poses many issues for journalists to face – some we can attempt to battle alone – others are best left to the diplomats.


References:

Briet R, 2001, ‘Journalism in the global village’, Tapsall S and Varley C, Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 213 – 231.

Week 9:

Literary Journalism:

We looked at literary journalism again this week with Joe’s presentation. This was one intense and emotional presentation! Joe decided to compare two pieces of work he wrote - a piece of news journalism to a piece of literary journalism - in order to highlight the differences between the two and the advantages and disadvantages of them. The issue covered was the Bali bombings. The piece of literary journalism that Joe wrote was really touching and brought the class to silence. It did highlight the emotional impact that literary journalism can have and thus how it can be more powerful than hearing facts and figures – like the hundreds that died on that day. Literary journalism can affect a reader/viewer far more than hearing a factual report – and this may be why we love to read literary journalism. This idea of being more affected by a piece of literary journalism about one death than by hearing the statistics of hundreds that died in the terrorist attack – was linked to people being desensitised by hearing about such tragedies every day on the news – but not always seeing the emotional impacts that this tragedies have on real people’s lives.

There are 6 essential elements to literary journalism –
Hard evidence (quotes, data etc)
Research (often for a long time)
Novelistic techniques
The writer has to have a voice (they are a part of the story)
There has to be a literary prose style (structure and words)
There has to be an underlying meaning or an argument to the piece

But – as was discussed last week – literary journalism seems like an undesirable field to get into. It can take a long time to research and it doesn’t pay well – you have to have a real passion for the story you’re writing to continue with it.

Chapter 12 - Public Interest v Privacy:

This issue is very interesting to me and it also seems that the answer to this question is different for every person and is dependent on personal morals and ethics.

In class we tried to classify what was public and what was private –

Public:
- Unrestricted public areas
- In public when a person in a position of power when on duty
- Social events
- Performances

Private:
- Home
- Car
- Workplace
- Family
- Grief/illness
- Church
- Hospital

Journalists work to reveal rather than conceal and this creates conflict with a person’s right to privacy. There are many pressures that journalists face that would drive them to invade a person’s privacy – from their employer and peers.

Normally the individual’s right to privacy will be outlined by a journalist’s union or association and their set of principles – but it can be difficult to incorporate such high standards into real journalistic practices (see again the conflict between theory and practice). “But while journalistic adherence to these principles is encouraging, it would be unrealistic to expect individual journalists to be able to carry the prime responsibility for withstanding the forces discussed earlier [from employers and peers]”. (Richards, p.195)

References:

Richards I, 2001, ‘Public Interests, Private Lives’, Tapsall S and Varley C, Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York.

Week 8

In class this week we again looked at the issues of representation in the media. Kate Carragher brought up some interesting issues in her presentation:
Representations in the media can be stereotypical and through this can perpetuate stereotypes within society – these stereotypes become so common that they eventually seem ‘natural’ and unmediated. This demonstrates the real power and responsibility that journalists have in the moulding of their words – they can (inadvertently or not) increase the marginalisation of minority groups or at least increase the stereotypes that exist in society.
Journalists have the powerful position of not only reporting on events – but shaping the readers’ or viewers’ perceptions of these events. Their words mould our understanding of issues and occurrences.
Photographic journalists share the same powers and responsibilities – the framing and composition of their photographs determine the viewers’ perspective on the subject.
Kate discussed the issue of identifying characteristics of a person that make them different from the majority – for example their ethnicity. Is ethnicity really an important issue to be reporting on? – unless it is the reason for the issue in the first place? If a person is Caucasian – their ethnicity is not identified in print media – but this is not the same for other races or ethnic groups – why is this??? It seems to be totally irrelevant to me- and only a tool for increasing racial and ethnic stereotypes.
Another interesting point was that it is often left to media bodies or journalists themselves to pick up on ill-representations in the media – eg – Mediawatch – is this really effective – should it be the responsibility of an independent body?
Most often, it is through complaints by certain groups in society (often the victims of misrepresentation) that bring such issues to light.
Kate mentioned also that people are becoming more media savvy and are able to read into the representations that are present in journalists’ works.
This is probably true to a degree – but I think that there is still a large amount of society that do not question everything that is represented to them in the media.
Literary Journalism:
· The main issue with this type of journalism that was identified in class was the potential for literary journalism to slip into narrative or for the facts to be lost with the literary techniques and structuring that this genre requires.
· An interesting technique that Christina mentioned was character-splitting – where, to avoid defamation – a journalist split one character from her ‘story’ into 6 different characters. I believe that this is completely losing the truth of the story. It may get the essence of the story across – but the facts are not there.
· This is something that I think is the real benefit of literary journalism. The essence of the story is better conveyed to the readers/viewers. However the essence of a story is a subjective understanding and therefore I question it being considered journalism. What do you think??

Week 7

Truth and Representation:

Chapter 8 has a focus on reporting on indigenous affairs.

“Indigenous people…have been positioned from, and within, the dominant ideas and assumptions of Anglo-European culture.” (Meadows and Ewart, 2001, p.127): This quote frames the context of reporting of indigenous people in Australia.

Reporting on Indigenous Australians, is like reporting on any other minority group in society. Reporting on issues surrounding minority groups can be criticised for being stereotypical, too negative or too forgiving. Journalists can also be criticised for reporting too often on minority groups for negative reasons, or for not reporting often enough.

Besides the subjective reporting on indigenous communities and people by Australian reporters (as is the case with any other community or people) – there is a problem with a lack of indigenous Australian perspectives in Australian reporting.

Chapter 9 deals with ethical questions in relation to cultural differences and ‘the other’. This relates strongly to the previous chapter of indigenous affairs reporting – in that journalists reporting on minority groups are faced with a set of ethical questions relating to cultural differences and differences in general.

If reporting on these minority groups, or ‘the other’ is unethical – or provides a distorted image to the public – it can have important impacts on society at large:
- reiterates societies’ stereotypes and stigmas of communities
- journalistic representations of groups in society can impact socially, culturally, politically and economically
- “The work of journalists in both news and entertainment media representations can cultivate and legitimise ways of understanding people, places, issues, and events,” (Scott, 2001, p.131).

During class we discussed the idea that university educated journalists may be able to better handle the ethically complex situations that journalists face when representing groups in society. Christina (our tutor) pointed out that university education provides us with a different, maybe a more analytical way, of thinking about things. And whilst at university we do study the ethical situations that arise in journalistic practice. However I feel that I am no more ready to face difficult ethical situations than someone else – because the decisions in such situations are inevitably subjective and you can’t learn this. One can refer to a set of ethical standards and make the best judgement they can about a particular situation, based on these standards – but this does not require a university degree. Perhaps the only advantage university educated journalists have, is that they are prepared and expect to face these difficult situations – and are aware of different sources of ethical guides that they can use to make their own ethical decisions. But I would be surprised to find that university educated journalists are better at dealing with ethical dilemmas.

References:

Meadows M and Ewart J, 2001, ‘More than skin deep: Australia’s Indigenous Heritage’, Tapsall S and Varley C, Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York.

Scott P, 2001, ‘On the fringe: journalism, representation and cultural competence’, Tapsall S and Varley C, Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York.