Journalism, Mass Communication & Contemporary Issues

Thursday, 21 August 2008

Study Material-DJ-IIMC 2008

DJ Course IIMC: Study Material on Story Ideas

Developing News Story Ideas
Development Journalism Programme, IIMC, August 2008
Source: BBC-IIMC
i-Learn Programme

An idea is an angle about a subject that you believe will interest the readers of your newspaper. Without new ideas the editorial pages would be pretty dull. But where do ideas come from? And how do you find them?

When you are lucky, an idea can sometimes find you. But more often you have to search for ideas. This sounds difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Every writer has their own way of developing ideas. The longer you work for a particular newspaper, the more attuned you will become to the type of ideas that will interest your readers.

By cultivating an alert mind and training your powers of observation, you will acquire the skill of spotting suitable material. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, think about every person, every experience and every event in terms of a potential story. Talk to people. Be interested in new subjects. There are feature ideas everywhere. It’s just a case of realising them. When you find them, write them down.

People relate to a wide range of subjects. Many are common to everyone, including relationships and emotional issues, work, money, family, health, education, self-improvement, local and community issues, children, transport…..The list is endless. The only limits are your imagination and your ability to make an idea relevant

Ideas from newspapers

When you read each edition of any newspaper, including your own, ideas for features should leap out at you from almost every page, provided you think laterally and allow your imagination to wander a little.

Let’s start with news stories, which can provide a wealth of feature ideas. Read the news with a feature journalist’s eye. Think about the story and the people who are quoted. Is there a wider issue that needs to be discussed? Is there an interesting personality who emerges from a news story and is worthy of a feature in their own right? Is there an element missing from the news story, one which could be expanded into a feature? And the most important question of all – will your readers be interested in it?

Here’s an example:

Your newspaper has carried a story about a community which has held a sale to try to raise money for the treatment of a child who is suffering from a rare disease that is causing her to gradually lose here eyesight. A new technique, only practised in one hospital in a city many miles away, might help her. Women and children in her community have taken a stall at a market where they sell home-baked bread, fruit from their land and craft items to raise funds.

Think about what feature ideas you might get from this story and write them down before going onto the next page to see how your ideas match ours.

Examples of feature ideas from a news story

There are at least three potential feature ideas in the story about the child with the eye condition that would be likely to interest your readers.

1. The child. Although the news story focused on the community effort, we learned little about the child and how her family coped with her illness. This angle gives us the opportunity to engage readers who enjoy human interest stories. An interview with the mother of the girl will give us enough material to write a feature.

2. The specialist treatment. In the news story we learn that one hospital offers hope for this child. But there is very little detail. We can expand this angle into a feature. A telephone interview with the specialist who has devised the technique will give us sufficient material. He may also tell us about other people who have benefited from his expertise and we can telephone them. Their stories could be used as case studies to run alongside the main feature.

3. The market: This is the most lateral-thinking of the three ideas. It really has very little to do with the sick child, who is central to the original story. But her community raised money using their talents to find items to sell on a market stall. How could your readers do something similar, either to raise money for a specific project or for their own family needs?

Provide them with a ‘How To’ feature guide – how to identify their talent for producing items of food, clothes, paintings or wood carvings, for instance. How can they make their stall stand out? How can they safeguard the money they take from customers? Ask readers who follow your advice to write and tell you about their stalls, so that you can photograph them and tell their individual stories at a later date.

4 Ideas from newspapers: Advertisements

Although you are more likely to find feature ideas from news stories, there are other sections of a newspaper which will give you inspiration. Reading the advertisements often sparks the imagination.

Here’s an example: You notice that a number of shops are advertising cut-price sales at an unusual time of the year. When you think about it, you wonder whether people are short of cash, causing a down-turn in trade. You telephone a couple of shop managers who confirm that their profits are suffering and that they are trying to boost trade by offering bargains.

Think about what feature ideas you might get from these advertisements and write them down before going onto the next page to see how your ideas match ours.

5 Examples of feature ideas from advertisements

There are a number of feature ideas from these cheap sales that would interest your readers. Here are two examples, one serious, one frivolous:

1. What is causing the economic down-turn? Investigate why people are not spending as much as they normally do at this time of year. Speak to shoppers, to organisations that represent traders and to experts in economics. Is this a local problem – in which case, find out the reason behind it - or is it affecting the whole country?

2. What is a bargain? Just seeing the word ‘sale’ in a shop window makes some people want to buy. Give your readers a questionnaire to test them on whether or not they get carried away by the idea of a bargain, but end up wasting their money.

6 Ideas from newspapers: What’s On Guide

In addition to news stories and advertisements there is another key element of a newspaper that will provide ideas for features. Many publications carry a What’s On guide to events that are happening in the area over the coming days or even weeks.

Here’s an example: You spot an item in the list about a popular touring theatre group that is coming to your town. They are well known in the country for exploring controversial issues in their plays. Their latest production is no exception. It is about adultery.

Think about what feature ideas you might get from this play and write them down before going onto the next page to see how your ideas match ours.

7 Example of feature ideas from “What’s On” guide

This play suggests at least two very different feature ideas:

1. Contact the leader of the theatre group in advance of their visit and write a feature about their history and why they choose such controversial subjects. How do they pick their subjects? Who writes their plays? Why do they think they are so popular?

2. The effects of adultery. Ask a relationship or family expert and a doctor to list all the adverse affects. Speak to one person who admits to adultery and use their story as an example at the side of the main feature. Use the forthcoming play as a peg for the feature.
8 Other printed material – books and magazines

If books and magazines are sent into your office, make a point of reading them, with a view to finding ideas. If they aren’t, buy them or find them in a library. In addition to books, libraries usually keep copies of national and foreign magazines and newspapers, plus reports and academic journals.

Books can provide ideas because they are likely to have been researched over a long period of time and authors will have dug out interesting stories on a wide variety of issues.

For example, if the history of a shipwreck off the coast of your country had been uncovered in a new book, you could interview the author for a feature. You could also talk to the team of divers who uncovered the secrets of the wreck, and even seek out descendants of any survivors of the disaster.

Magazines may focus on subjects as diverse as economics and politics or fashion and beauty. They might be glossy, national publications or stapled, community-based pamphlet-style magazines. They are useful background reading.

By using lateral-thinking skills, you will find a whole range of ideas to develop and adapt. For example, women all over the world enjoy buying clothes and looking their best. If your newspaper has a feature page which is geared towards fashion and beauty, magazines will help you spot trends to pass on to your readers.

9 The Internet Overview

The World Wide Web is an invaluable and unprecedented tool for journalists. Never before have we had so much information at our fingertips.

Search engines are useful in helping you to unearth masses of information on the subject you are researching. And, of course, you can remain instantly up to date on current affairs by using reputable international news sites, such as the BBC.

There is, however, a downside. The internet throws up so much information that it can take valuable hours to sift through the mass of data to find what you need. And not all internet content is reliable. Pick and choose your sites carefully, cross-checking your facts with other information sources when you are in doubt.

In general, however, looking for feature ideas on the internet can be far more convenient than any other method of research. Many newspapers and magazines publish their own websites.

10 The Internet Content

There are more ways to find feature ideas on the internet than just looking through search engines. Here are a few examples of where you can look.

Chat Rooms These are forums where you can ‘chat’ online with other people. You type in a message and it is displayed instantly. Other people then respond. If you already have a subject area in mind, choose a chat room appropriate to that topic and discover what the audience is talking about. Even going into a general chat room might enable you to pick up ideas.

Forums and Message Boards These are a bit like message boards in a university faculty or a sports hall, but they are based on the web. People post text messages about a particular subject – chemistry or basketball, for example – and wait for replies. Rather like the chat room, this is a way for journalists to join topical conversations on all kinds of issues. By discovering what your readers are talking about, you can tap in on the ideas and transfer them to newspaper features.

Newsgroups and Discussion Lists Like forums, each newsgroup or discussion list is made up of people interested in the same subject. The aim is to spread knowledge and information. The groups are classified by subjects – humanities, for example. They are then categorised by topic – fine art, philosophy, music, literature. Each topic has its own thread of conversations about specific aspects of the topic.

Individual websites Sometimes the ideas for features are just staring us in the face on the internet. It’s the websites themselves that are worth writing about. Take two of our basic list of target feature topics that appeal across the spectrum of readers – relationships and money. Two of the most successful websites in the UK in recent years have been Friends Reunited – aimed at putting together old friends from school, college and work – and ebay, which enables people to sell anything, even plastic carrier bags
11 Television and Radio

The world continues to shrink as the internet and satellite broadcasting bring people on different continents in instant contact with information and news reports of events as they unfold.

If your readers have access to television and radio, you should keep a keen eye on the content they are watching. It is forming an additional agenda in their lives, of which the newspaper needs to be aware.

People who appear on TV become popular with your readers. These personalities are useful to interview for features. Television and radio also produce documentaries, which are the elongated versions of newspaper features. Programmes such as these can fuel new ideas.

12 Contacts

When you have read all your newspapers, magazines and useful websites, listened to the radio and watched TV, yet find yourself still struggling for a good idea, what can you do next? Pick up the telephone and start talking to some real people!

From the outset of their careers every journalist should have established a contacts book or file. Each time you meet someone new, carry out an interview or find out background information, record the details in your book or on your computer file. The file should be organised in an alphabetical system, so that the data is easy to retrieve.

Enter the full name of the contact, their occupation, their home and business addresses and all phone numbers. If the person is not someone whose name you are likely to recall easily, but they have helped you with their expertise on business issues, for instance, cross-reference their entry under ‘business’ too.

Your contacts book should be jealously guarded. People give you their private phone numbers and details because they trust you. Some people lead very private lives and do not want to be pestered by constant phone calls. Don’t leave your book lying around for others to use.

If you treat them courteously, contacts become one of the best sources of new ideas and information because they multiply. You may have 100 contacts and each one of those 100 will have 100. The numbers start to build dramatically.

On days when it is difficult to find inspiration, make a few random calls to people in your book. Ask them what is happening. Are they doing anything new? Have they heard information about anything in general?

This is hugely useful when you write for a specialist feature section, like health, for instance, since your contacts will work and socialise with many hundreds more in that field, giving you the best chance of a scoop

13 Ideas File

If budding authors had money for every plot they have thought up for a brilliant novel in the middle of the night, but failed to write down, they might all be rich. It is the same with features.

When an idea occurs to you, write it down that instant. You can be sure you will not remember it if you leave it to chance.

Keep the ideas in one notebook or one computer file, so that you can browse through it from time to time. The idea may not be useful immediately, but something may happen in the future to trigger its use.

Organised journalists will take their ideas file one step further by filing away relevant newspaper and magazine cuttings, press releases, emails and website printouts in folders with each idea.

Chances are that if you get excited by an idea – and so do the people around you – then your readers will too
14 PR Departments

Public Relations or Press Relations departments in government organisations and businesses are staffed by people who have a three-way function in life.

These PR departments will set up interviews and supply background information for your features, which is useful and saves you time.

The same staff will also ‘sell’ you a story. They will telephone, email and send you press releases. They will also invite you to events to celebrate the launch of new products or premises, or policies.

It is important to realise when you are simply being sold an advert and when there is a real story worth printing. There is sometimes a fine dividing line between the two. You must decide whether there is a story worthy of public attention or whether it would be giving a product or organisation free publicity by mentioning it. Decide too whether you need to question the basis of the PR department’s story.

15 PR Departments: advertisement or story?

Let’s look at an example of how a PR exercise might work.

You are sent a press release about a new type of bed. The PR department for the manufacturer claims that it has been proved to be better for your back and that it is only half the price of other, similar beds because of a manufacturing breakthrough.

If you wrote a feature, based on this alone, you would simply be advertising the product. But, when a PR officer rings she tells you that the company are so confident of their claim that they have asked a man with chronic back pain to sleep in their factory for a week, to see if his condition improves.

Since back pain is one of the most common ailments in the world, this will be a feature that will interest readers. If we get the man to write a diary of how he slept and how his back reacted, it should make good copy and is a genuine test of the bed (albeit a very small-scale test with no statistical significance).

But PR departments do not simply survive on putting out press releases. Sometimes a company – or a government – find themselves in trouble. The PR officers are there to try to limit the damage.

So, let’s stay with the example of our bed. We discover that the man with the bad back who is testing the new product is less than happy. The bed collapsed when one of its legs gave way in the middle of the night.

The PR department, desperate to avoid bad publicity, is keen to try to pass the blame to a rogue supplier who put together the frame. Your job as a journalist is not to be swayed by these claims, but to get to the truth of the story.

16 Diary Events

Every newspaper should have a diary, which contains details of planned future events. These may include visits from government ministers, press conferences, court trials, sporting events, business announcements, anniversaries etc.

Each time you receive an interesting press release with a future date, enter the details into the diary. Each time you have a tip-off that something is about to happen, enter it into the diary. If you go to a court hearing and a date is set for trial, enter that too. Each entry should include a date, time, place and contact name with telephone number.

Even though most diary entries relate to news stories, it is useful for a feature writer to be able to look through the list. On some occasions a job will lend itself to both news and feature treatment. This is particularly so in the case of high profile court cases. The proceedings will be covered by news reporters, but there may be an interesting background feature which can be prepared in advance of the end of the trial.

Give yourself enough time to match up with a diary event. If you are aiming a feature to coincide with the anniversary of the death of someone important, it will be no use producing it for the week after the commemoration.

Ideas

Ideas are not difficult to conceive if you open your mind to the possibility that they can come from all around you. Be alert and train your powers of observation. Start to question everything that you see. Ask yourself how, what, where, who, when and why? You will start to look at the world in a different light. But when you are thinking of ideas, don’t select only the ones that appeal to you. Writing features is not a self-indulgent pastime. Think of your readers. Are they likely to buy your newspaper to read the feature you are planning?

Newspapers Both your own, and other people’s newspapers are a constant source of features ideas. Read news stories to look for missed or new angles. Read advertisements and look through the What’s On diary of events.

Magazines, books and other publications Read through magazines to spot trends and features that might adapt for a newspaper readership. Books often produce good story angles, particularly if they focus on real-life events.

The Internet The World Wide Web is an invaluable sources of information. But not all of the information contained in it is reliable. When in doubt, cross-check with another source.

TV and Radio Both television and radio are popular worldwide since satellite technology made them more accessible. If your readers are watching TV, it is useful to know what they are likely to view. Features can include interview with personalities from TV or spin-offs from documentary and factual programmes

Contacts There is no better source of ideas that are likely to produce exclusive material than your own contacts. Every journalist should cultivate contacts from the moment they start in the job. Keep a book or a file with the personal details of everyone interesting you meet or interview.

Ideas File The world is full of people who had a brilliant idea in the middle of the night, but forgot to write it down. Organised journalists jot down ideas for features immediately. Even better, they create files, with cuttings from newspapers and magazines, printouts from the internet, emails and other relevant background information.

PR Departments These will try very hard to ‘sell’ you an idea for a feature. The more space they gain for their client, without having to pay advertising charges, the happier the client becomes. Although good PR departments do come up with well-targeted ideas, beware that you are not being duped into carrying advertising material. Remain objective.

Diary Events All newspapers keep a diary in which to record the dates, times and places of future events. These may include visits by government ministers, major criminal trials, protest meetings, sporting events etc. Writers will find it useful to browse through this list, making a note of events that might lend themselves to feature treatment.

Thursday, 19 June 2008

The investigative process

The investigative process

 Tip –Tipsters

 Formation of story idea

 Formulation of the problem

 Preliminary research feasibility study

 Plan of action-Synopsis

 Minimum and maximum story

BASE BUILDING: THE SPIRAL OF RESEARCH

 Written sources

 Experts- the sources of knowledge

 Sources of experiences

 Reportage- Field trips- Observations

 Key interviews

Assessment and analysis

• Conclusions
• Outline of story
• Writing and revising
• Hand in before deadline

Functions of Media
Information
Education
Entertainment
Agenda Setting

Three streams of new media

News- “Page One” journalism

Entertainment – “Page Three” journalism

Education- “Page Seven journalism”

Emergence of infotainment
Commercialization of Media
Media as a Profit making business venture
Reader/ Viewer/Listener as Consumer

For citizens and information consumers, it is important to develop the skill of detecting bias

Objectivity and Bias

 Human communication always takes place in a context

 Through a medium, and among individuals and groups

 Who are situated historically, politically, economically, and socially

Bias is a small word that identifies the collective influences of the entire context of a message

Journalist attempts to be objective by two methods:

 Fairness to those concerned with the news

 A professional process of information gathering that seeks fairness, completeness, and accuracy

Critical questions for detecting bias

The media applies a narrative structure to ambiguous events in order to create a coherent and causal sense of events

 What is the author's / speaker's socio-political position?

 Does the speaker have anything to gain personally from delivering the message?

 Who is paying for the message? What is the bias of the medium? Who stands to gain?

 What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how and who data gathered the data? Are the data being presented fully?

 How does the speaker present arguments? Is the message one-sided, or does it include alternative points of view?

 If the message includes alternative points of view, how are those views characterized? Does the speaker use positive words and images to describe his/her point of view and negative words and images to describe other points of view?

Kinds of Biases
Commercial bias
Visual bias
Bad news bias
Narrative bias
Status Quo bias
Fairness bias
Glory bias

Two Major Streams in Journalism

Episodic Journalism
Thematic Journalism

 Reporting Event: What was happening
 Reporting the process that goes into happening of the event
 Explain why it was happening

Dominant Models in Today’s Journalism

The Watchdog
CNN Effect
News Management
Thought control
Manufacturing Consent
Mutual Exploitation
Role of News Media
How things work
How things are supposed to work
How things normally work

Introduction to Journalism

Introduction to Journalism

DEFNITION OF NEWS

News is a report of any current event, idea or problem which interest large number of people BUT it acquires different meanings and concepts in different political, economic and socio-cultural environment.

ELEMENTS OF NEWS
A News report must answer following questions:

WHO
WHAT Generally
WHEN Factual
WHERE

WHY Element of Interpretation
HOW is introduced

CREDIBILITY
Principles to be observed while reporting an event or editing news report

Accuracy
Fairness
Balance
Attribution
Objectivity

NEWSWORTHINESS
How to decide newsworthiness of an event, idea or problem (Evaluating information or any information package)
Audience
Impact
Proximity
Timeliness
Prominence (Size)
Context
Policy Parameters
Specific Informational Value
Unusualness

STRUCTURE OF A NEWS STORY
INTRO
EXPLANATORY DETAILS
DESCRIPTIVE DETAILS
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ETC.
(In order of descending importance)

Various Types of Journalistic Writings
FACTS
ANALYSIS
VIEWS

 News item
 News Report
 News Analysis
 Interpretative Reporting
 Feature/Featured Reporting
 Interview
 Commentary
 Article
 Editorial
 Profile, Review, Review Article etc.

The investigative process

 Tip –Tipsters
 Formation of story idea
 Formulation of the problem
 Preliminary research feasibility study
 Plan of action-Synopsis
 Minimum and maximum story

Functions of Media
Information
Education
Entertainment
Agenda Setting

Three streams of new media

News- “Page One” journalism
Entertainment – “Page Three” journalism
Education- “Page Seven journalism”

Emergence of infotainment
Commercialization of Media
News: Product
Media as a Profit making business venture
Reader/ Viewer/Listener as Consumer

Information +Entertainment
Combining Factors:
MARKET
INVESTORS
ADVERTISERS

MARKET DRIVEN MEDIA: some key elements
PRIMARY PURPOSE OF NEWS IS TO EMPOWER PUBLIC BY MAXIMIZING ITS UNDERSTANDING OF CURRENT ISSUES AND EVENTS THAT SHAPE ITS ENVIRONMENT. ONCE NEWS IS TREATED AS COMMODITY LOSE ITS INFORMATIONAL VALUE

Profit
Competition
Winning Audience Game

Entertainment becomes dominant replacing informational value of news which in turn might encourage ignorance at the Cost of UNDERSTANDING

MARKET JOURNALISM GATHERS AN AUDIENCE NOT TO INFORM BUT TO SELL IT TO ADVERTISERS. FEW POWERFUL CORPORATIONS WIN AND PUBLIC LOSES
-BEN BAGDIKIAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

COUNTER POINT
MARKET CONTAINS ADEQUATE SAFEGUARDS AGANST ABUSE
-PHILIP MAYER, UNIV. OF NORHT, COROLINA
For citizens and information consumers, it is important to develop the skill of detecting bias: Concepts of “misinformed consumer” and “informed citizen” (Consumer and citizen are one and the same but role differs)

Dominant Models in Today’s Journalism

The Watchdog
CNN Effect
News Management
Thought control
Manufacturing Consent
Mutual Exploitation

Two Major Streams in Journalism

Episodic Journalism
Thematic Journalism

 Reporting Event: What was happening
 Reporting the process that goes into happening of the event
 Explain why it was happening

Role of News Media

How things work
How things are supposed to work
How things normally work

The investigative process

 Tip –Tipsters
 Formation of story idea
 Formulation of the problem
 Preliminary research feasibility study
 Plan of action-Synopsis
 Minimum and maximum story

BASE BUILDING: THE SPIRAL OF RESEARCH

 Written sources
 Experts- the sources of knowledge
 Sources of experiences
 Reportage- Field trips- Observations
 Key interviews

Assessment and analysis

• Conclusions
• Outline of story
• Writing and revising
• Hand in before deadline

Objectivity and Bias

Bias is a small word that identifies the collective influences of the entire context of a message

 Human communication always takes place in a context

 Through a medium, and among individuals and groups

 Who are situated historically, politically, economically, and socially

Journalist attempts to be objective by two methods:

 Fairness to those concerned with the news

 A professional process of information gathering that seeks fairness, completeness, and accuracy

Critical questions for detecting bias

The media applies a narrative structure to ambiguous events in order to create a coherent and causal sense of events

 What is the author's / speaker's socio-political position?

 Does the speaker have anything to gain personally from delivering the message?

 Who is paying for the message? What is the bias of the medium? Who stands to gain?

 What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how and who data gathered the data? Are the data being presented fully?
 How does the speaker present arguments? Is the message one-sided, or does it include alternative points of view?
 If the message includes alternative points of view, how are those views characterized? Does the speaker use positive words and images to describe his/her point of view and negative words and images to describe other points of view?

Kinds of Biases
Commercial bias
Visual bias
Bad news bias
Narrative bias
Status Quo bias
Fairness bias
Glory bias

Dominant Models in Today’s Journalism
The Watchdog
CNN Effect
News Management
Thought control
Manufacturing Consent
Mutual Exploitation

Role of News Media
How things work
How things are supposed to work
How things normally work

Some Key Concepts
Journalism: Reporting on government, politics, policies, economics, and other news and issues.

Political Journalism: Reporting on the political process and other government and political entities.

Generate new ideas about scientific reasoning, democracy, and rule by consent of the governed and free criticism of government.

Journalism of Exposure: The process of uncovering information about practices those usually are illegal or unethical.

Objectivity: Looking at a story as though through a perfect lens uncolored by a reporter's thoughts about a subject; trying to view a story from a neutral perspective. Some critics believe pure objectivity is impossible and that fairness and balance are more important.

Narrative Tradition: Journalism as story. Many writers employ fictional techniques in writing nonfiction material.

Knowledge Gap and Media: Some studies show that those with information and access to technology are more likely to increase their knowledge more rapidly than those without access. Technological delivery of information, therefore, can increase the gap between those with information and those without.

Agenda-Setting Research: Media research that seeks to understand the relationship between readers' determination of important issues and politicians' and press's treatment of them. The research focuses not on how media cover an issue but on how they set an agenda through the choice of the issues they cover.

News Values: Newspaper editors and owners try to develop standards of value for determining which events and issues are newsworthy---that is, deserving of being given space in the paper.

The use of computer technology to gather and analyze information for news reports and articles includes the use of the Internet, spreadsheets, and databases. (To be covered in the next session)

Public Journalism: By creating a public conversation through journalism, modern news media hope to inspire “consumers” of news to become more involved in their own communities. The media encourage citizens, officials, reporters, and editors to identify and respond to the issues that confront their neighborhoods and their cities.

Media Convergence Case Studies

The idea of convergence means the combining of communication technologies to deliver a message. Media convergence is a phenomenon as revolutionary to communication as the invention of movable type or electronic communication. Such a monumental revolution has caused media owners, analysts and regulators to re-think the entire structure of information delivery to mass audiences.

The computer has made this convergence technologically possible. Large computers are used to gather, digitize, store, package and transmit information. Smaller, yet still powerful personal computers are used as receivers to bring words, sounds and sights to the audience.

Many scholars and analysts argue that someday people won’t need separate media to receive information. The messages delivered to previous generations through newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, and film will come to future generations through a single delivery system – and it will be digital.

True to their instincts as players in a free market economy, the owners of traditional media saw the future early and in the last two decades have positioned themselves to take advantage of the coming revolution.

In the marketplace of ideas, the marketers of those ideas, and the methods of delivering them, are converging, too. This creates a second definition of the new generation’s term "media convergence."

News Sources

News Sources

Examples of sources include:

1. official records

2. publications or broadcasts

3. officials in government or business, organizations or corporations

4. witnesses of crime, accidents or other events

5 people involved with or affected by a news event or issue

Reporters are expected to develop and cultivate sources. This applies especially if they regularly cover a specific topic, known as a "beat".

However, beat reporters must be cautious of becoming too close to their sources. Reporters often, but not always, give greater leeway to sources with little experience.

As a rule of thumb, but especially when reporting on controversy, reporters are expected to use multiple sources. Outside journalism, sources are sometimes known as a "news source".

Thursday, 1 May 2008

News: Definitin and Concepts

Concepts of News/Journalism

DEFNITION OF NEWS

News is a report of any current event, idea or problem which interest large number of people BUT it acquires different meanings and concepts in different political, economic and socio-cultural environment.

ELEMENTS OF NEWS
A News report must answer following questions:

WHO
WHAT Generally
WHEN Factual
WHERE

WHY Element of Interpretation
HOW is introduced

CREDIBILITY
Principles to be observed while reporting an event or editing news report

Accuracy
Fairness
Balance
Attribution
Objectivity

NEWSWORTHINESS
How to decide newsworthiness of an event, idea or problem (Evaluating information or any information package)
Audience
Impact
Proximity
Timeliness
Prominence (Size)
Context
Policy Parameters
Specific Informational Value
Unusualness

STRUCTURE OF A NEWS STORY
INTRO
EXPLANATORY DETAILS
DESCRIPTIVE DETAILS
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ETC.
(In order of descending importance)

Various Types of Journalistic Writings
FACTS
ANALYSIS
VIEWS

 News item
 News Report
 News Analysis
 Interpretative Reporting
 Feature/Featured Reporting
 Interview
 Commentary
 Article
 Editorial
 Profile, Review, Review Article etc.

The investigative process

 Tip –Tipsters
 Formation of story idea
 Formulation of the problem
 Preliminary research feasibility study
 Plan of action-Synopsis
 Minimum and maximum story

Functions of Media
Information
Education
Entertainment
Agenda Setting

Three streams of new media

News- “Page One” journalism
Entertainment – “Page Three” journalism
Education- “Page Seven journalism”

Emergence of infotainment
Commercialization of Media
News: Product
Media as a Profit making business venture
Reader/ Viewer/Listener as Consumer

Information +Entertainment
Combining Factors:
MARKET
INVESTORS
ADVERTISERS

MARKET DRIVEN MEDIA: some key elements
PRIMARY PURPOSE OF NEWS IS TO EMPOWER PUBLIC BY MAXIMIZING ITS UNDERSTANDING OF CURRENT ISSUES AND EVENTS THAT SHAPE ITS ENVIRONMENT. ONCE NEWS IS TREATED AS COMMODITY LOSE ITS INFORMATIONAL VALUE

Profit
Competition
Winning Audience Game

Entertainment becomes dominant replacing informational value of news which in turn might encourage ignorance at the Cost of UNDERSTANDING

MARKET JOURNALISM GATHERS AN AUDIENCE NOT TO INFORM BUT TO SELL IT TO ADVERTISERS. FEW POWERFUL CORPORATIONS WIN AND PUBLIC LOSES
-BEN BAGDIKIAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

COUNTER POINT
MARKET CONTAINS ADEQUATE SAFEGUARDS AGANST ABUSE
-PHILIP MAYER, UNIV. OF NORHT, COROLINA
For citizens and information consumers, it is important to develop the skill of detecting bias: Concepts of “misinformed consumer” and “informed citizen” (Consumer and citizen are one and the same but role differs)

Dominant Models in Today’s Journalism

The Watchdog
CNN Effect
News Management
Thought control
Manufacturing Consent
Mutual Exploitation

Two Major Streams in Journalism

Episodic Journalism
Thematic Journalism

 Reporting Event: What was happening
 Reporting the process that goes into happening of the event
 Explain why it was happening

Role of News Media

How things work
How things are supposed to work
How things normally work

The investigative process

 Tip –Tipsters
 Formation of story idea
 Formulation of the problem
 Preliminary research feasibility study
 Plan of action-Synopsis
 Minimum and maximum story

BASE BUILDING: THE SPIRAL OF RESEARCH

 Written sources
 Experts- the sources of knowledge
 Sources of experiences
 Reportage- Field trips- Observations
 Key interviews

Assessment and analysis

• Conclusions
• Outline of story
• Writing and revising
• Hand in before deadline

Objectivity and Bias

Bias is a small word that identifies the collective influences of the entire context of a message

 Human communication always takes place in a context

 Through a medium, and among individuals and groups

 Who are situated historically, politically, economically, and socially

Journalist attempts to be objective by two methods:

 Fairness to those concerned with the news

 A professional process of information gathering that seeks fairness, completeness, and accuracy

Critical questions for detecting bias

The media applies a narrative structure to ambiguous events in order to create a coherent and causal sense of events

 What is the author's / speaker's socio-political position?

 Does the speaker have anything to gain personally from delivering the message?

 Who is paying for the message? What is the bias of the medium? Who stands to gain?

 What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how and who data gathered the data? Are the data being presented fully?
 How does the speaker present arguments? Is the message one-sided, or does it include alternative points of view?
 If the message includes alternative points of view, how are those views characterized? Does the speaker use positive words and images to describe his/her point of view and negative words and images to describe other points of view?

Kinds of Biases
Commercial bias
Visual bias
Bad news bias
Narrative bias
Status Quo bias
Fairness bias
Glory bias

A presentation by Prof. Subhash Dhuliya

Dominant Models in Today’s Journalism

The Watchdog
CNN Effect
News Management
Thought control
Manufacturing Consent
Mutual Exploitation

Role of News Media

How things work

How things are supposed to work

How things normally work

Some Key Concepts

Journalism: Reporting on government, politics, policies, economics, and other news and issues.

Political Journalism: Reporting on the political process and other government and political entities.

Generate new ideas about scientific reasoning, democracy, and rule by consent of the governed and free criticism of government.

Journalism of Exposure: The process of uncovering information about practices those usually are illegal or unethical.

Objectivity: Looking at a story as though through a perfect lens uncolored by a reporter's thoughts about a subject; trying to view a story from a neutral perspective. Some critics believe pure objectivity is impossible and that fairness and balance are more important.

Narrative Tradition: Journalism as story. Many writers employ fictional techniques in writing nonfiction material.

Knowledge Gap and Media: Some studies show that those with information and access to technology are more likely to increase their knowledge more rapidly than those without access. Technological delivery of information, therefore, can increase the gap between those with information and those without.

Agenda-Setting Research: Media research that seeks to understand the relationship between readers' determination of important issues and politicians' and press's treatment of them. The research focuses not on how media cover an issue but on how they set an agenda through the choice of the issues they cover.

News Values: Newspaper editors and owners try to develop standards of value for determining which events and issues are newsworthy---that is, deserving of being given space in the paper.

The use of computer technology to gather and analyze information for news reports and articles includes the use of the Internet, spreadsheets, and databases. (To be covered in the next session)

Public Journalism: By creating a public conversation through journalism, modern news media hope to inspire “consumers” of news to become more involved in their own communities. The media encourage citizens, officials, reporters, and editors to identify and respond to the issues that confront their neighborhoods and their cities.

Media Convergence Case Studies

The idea of convergence means the combining of communication technologies to deliver a message. Media convergence is a phenomenon as revolutionary to communication as the invention of movable type or electronic communication. Such a monumental revolution has caused media owners, analysts and regulators to re-think the entire structure of information delivery to mass audiences.

The computer has made this convergence technologically possible. Large computers are used to gather, digitize, store, package and transmit information. Smaller, yet still powerful personal computers are used as receivers to bring words, sounds and sights to the audience.

Many scholars and analysts argue that someday people won’t need separate media to receive information. The messages delivered to previous generations through newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, and film will come to future generations through a single delivery system – and it will be digital.

True to their instincts as players in a free market economy, the owners of traditional media saw the future early and in the last two decades have positioned themselves to take advantage of the coming revolution.

In the marketplace of ideas, the marketers of those ideas, and the methods of delivering them, are converging, too. This creates a second definition of the new generation’s term "media convergence."

Teaching Tools: Source Analysis

Source Analysis

WHO-IS-WHO?
Analysis of the Stakeholders

WHO IS:
1. directly affected by the problem?
2. directly involved in the problem?
3. directly involved in the dealing with the problem?
4. indirectly affected by the problem?
5. not involved, but aware of the problem?
6. inspecting the problem on behalf of the public?
WHO MIGHT BE:

1. affected by the problem in future?
2. involved in the solution of the problem?
3. influential on decisions concerning the problem?
4. final decision makers?

WHO HAS BEEN:

1. affected by this or similar problems?
2. part of negotiations and decisions?
3. influential on decisions?
4. dealing with similar problems?
5. researching the problem scientifically?
6. commenting on this or similar problems previously?
WHO REPRESENTS:

1. directly affected and involved persons and groups?
2. persons and groups affected by or involved in similar problems?
3. persons and groups likely to affected or involved?
WHO HAS FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE ON:

1. personal experience with the problem?
2. scientific research or surveys of the problem?
3. decisions?
4. rules and practices in the field?
5. similar problems?

WHO KNOWS:

1. about the causes and background?
2. consequences?
3. decision-makers in the field?

HO WILL GAIN:

1. if the problem is exposed in public?
2. if the problem is solved?
3. by status quo?

WHO WILL LOOSE:

1. if the problem is exposed in public?
2. if the problem is solved?
3. by status quo?

WHO EARNS?
WHO LOOSES?
WHO PAYS?
- always FOLLOW THE MONEY!

WHO CARES ANYWAY?

- remember your audience...

Assess the reliability of the sources

Ask yourself if the sources are:

- real (as existing, not pretending to be)?
- close to the events (in time and space)?
- primary sources (opposite secondary sources)?
- having open or hidden motives (also experts)?
- blinded by opinion, prejudice, interests, fear, personal repression or the like

Mind map more sources

You may also make a mind map on sources. The mind map is a useful tool for journalists to develop our ideas and to find sources for our stories. You can always call on your colleagues to help brainstorming and record it on any piece of paper.

Journalism: Teaching Tools

Functions of Media
Information
Education
Entertainment
Agenda Setting

Three streams of new media
News- “Page One” journalism
Entertainment – “Page Three” journalism
Education- “Page Seven journalism”

Emergence of infotainment
Commercialization of Media
Media as a Profit making business venture
Reader/ Viewer/Listener as Consumer

For citizens and information consumers, it is important to develop the skill of detecting bias

Objectivity and Bias
 Human communication always takes place in a context

 Through a medium, and among individuals and groups

 Who are situated historically, politically, economically, and socially

Bias is a small word that identifies the collective influences of the entire context of a message

Journalist attempts to be objective by two methods:

 Fairness to those concerned with the news

 A professional process of information gathering that seeks fairness, completeness, and accuracy

Critical questions for detecting bias

The media applies a narrative structure to ambiguous events in order to create a coherent and causal sense of events

 What is the author's / speaker's socio-political position? With what social, political, or professional groups is the speaker identified?

 Does the speaker have anything to gain personally from delivering the message?

 Who is paying for the message? Where does the message appear? What is the bias of the medium? Who stands to gain?

 What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how were the data gathered, who gathered the data, and are the data being presented fully?

 How does the speaker present arguments? Is the message one-sided, or does it include alternative points of view? Does the speaker fairly present alternative arguments? Does the speaker ignore obviously conflicting arguments?

 If the message includes alternative points of view, how are those views characterized? Does the speaker use positive words and images to describe his/her point of view and negative words and images to describe other points of view? Does the speaker ascribe positive motivations to his/her point of view and negative motivations to alternative points of view?

Kinds of Biases
Commercial bias
Visual bias
Bad news bias
Narrative bias
Status Quo bias
Fairness bias
Glory bias

Two Major Streams in Journalism
Episodic Journalism

Thematic Journalism

 Reporting Event: What was happening
 Reporting the process that goes into happening of the event
 Explain why it was happening

Dominant Models in Today’s Journalism
The Watchdog
CNN Effect
News Management
Thought control
Manufacturing Consent
Mutual Exploitation

Role of News Media
How things work
How things are supposed to work
How things normally work

Sunday, 17 February 2008

International Communication-NWICO

The great debate of New World Information and
Communication Order (NWICO)

With the end of cold war conflict of ideologies and Third World position of collective bargaining sharply eroded, the post cold war information and communication order by and large is negation of what was pleaded in the numerous formulations of previous concept of the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). The flow of information news and information form developed to developing countries has intensified and world is witnessing a new scenario in which small and weaker cultures are finding if difficulty of ward off the information and cultural onslaught that has been unleashed through new channels of communications. With advances in communication technologies and advent of information revolution, the one-way flow of information has tremendously intensified.

In the wake of MacBride Commission Report (1980), strong differences arose on “balance versus free flow” of international news and information. The free flow doctrine was essentially a part of the liberal, free market discourse that championed the rights of media proprietors to sell wherever and whatever they wished. As most of the world’s media resource and media-related capital, then as now, were concentrated in the West, it was the media proprietors in the Western countries, their governments and national business communities that had most to gain.42

There were differences between notions of "press freedom" or "free flow". Western countries were not sensitive towards imbalance in the flow of information and news and the kind of distorted images it was generating.

The NWICO ideals were collective right to communicate, the rights of sovereign entities to protect their cultures, and the concept of a plurality of information sources. The essential criterion of information freedom resides in the plurality of sources and in the free access to these sources and to all kinds of opinion. The conflict between North and South over the dissemination of news is more intractable than any other contemporary debate over the unfair distribution of earth resources. The flow of news is vital because it is dominant channel that help people to form perceptions and images of world. The news intrudes into the very culture societies. The Western concepts that governed selection and dissemination of news had resulted into creation of negative images of developing countries. Images of Western audiences have become conditioned to a view of the Third World which is founded upon selective, wrong or ill-judged information and which can be characterized as "exploitive, patronizing, and distorted." Moreover, because of the vast market for news and increasing commercialization of news media, it remained difficult to provide a balanced view of the Third World. Almost all major global news organizations are controlled by a few Western nations; the third world perspectives and alternative visions are almost missing.43

Information users in the developed countries interpret, process, and act upon this information, redistributing it in turn to the client states, along with more information about their own activities, cultures, and politics. Thus, the Third World nations come to be viewed through the eyes of the information interpreters of the developed nations, whose organizations control both the finances and infrastructures of the distribution system, while the developing nations never quite receive the latest information, nor the latitude of interpreting it to their own advantage. As well, in terms of pure volume of information produced and consumed, the developing nations lag far behind.44

Struggles over communication policy have emerged as central in the post war system of international power and the communications industries as among the largest stakeholders in the public choice model. However, the problem is that these international information processes are in integral part of the dependency relations that determine the economic, political, and cultural organization of the current international order. In conjunction with the economic expansion of Western capitalism, Western techniques, symbols and social patterns were exported to the colonized territories.45

Thus, as Hamid Mowlana states, ``communication study is largely the outcome of global and national forces that have propelled the communication process to the centre of domestic and international attention and concern.''46

At the beginning of the 1980s as the information revolution began to unfold, many Third World nations realized the need to design and implement national information policies. MacBride Commission also stressed the need to develop comprehensive national communication policies linked to overall social, cultural and economic development. It was also the period when neoliberalism started to dominate US and UK policies- domestic and foreign as well. The new era set in and the predominance of neoliberalism negated the gains of Third World what ever they were. This resulted into the process, by which the existing policy and institutional framework for international communication has developed, only facilitated the corporate dominance in the creation of global civil society, and the surplus of communicative rights enjoyed by corporate speakers. The corporate mass media play a vital role in creating and channeling consumer demand to fulfill corporate marketing needs and objectives.''47

In the 1970s movement of Third World nations to establish a New World Information and communication Order (NWICO) in conjunction with a New World Economic Order, got wide support. It was widely accepted that there is need to rectify the imbalances built into the global political economy after four centuries of imperialism. The movement was squashed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was adamant opposition from corporate media and the U.S. and British governments. Indeed, the United States and Britain both withdrew from UNESCO in the mid-1980s in large part to express their dissatisfaction with that group's alleged desire to interfere with the operations of the global commercial media corporations. The aftermath of the NWICO defeat has seen the thoroughgoing demolition of anti-imperialist sentiments in the third world. In their place is the doctrine of neoliberalism, which calls for the fullest possible integration of national economies into global market system.48

The scholarly study of the political economy of communication entails two main dimensions. First, it addresses the nature of the relationship of media and communication systems to the broader structure of society. In other words, it examines how media (and communication) systems and content reinforce, challenge, or influence existing class and social relations. Second, the political economy of communication looks specifically at how ownership, support mechanisms (e.g. advertising), and government policies influence media behavior and content. This line of inquiry emphasizes structural factors and the labor process in the production, distribution, and consumption of communication.49

"The Third World has accused the West of cultural domination through its control of the major news- collecting resources of the world, through the unstinted flow of its cultural products across the world, and through the financial power of its advertising agencies, its international newspaper chains, its newsprint companies, and its hold over the electro-magnetic spectrum on which broadcasting, navigation, meteorology and much else depend. The seeping effect of this vast machinery has transferred the social fabric of Third World countries as it has repressed its traditional cultures"50

The news imperialism

Anthony Smith (1980) argued that "news imperialism" obtained from bias in content as well as economic factors. Due to marketing practices, the methods of news collection, and the structure of news itself, audiences in both the producing and consuming states received a biased picture of world. Our mental media picture of the world is compounded of our Western interests within it and is supportive therefore of those interests. The struggle to escape from our bad image of the Third World is an essential stage in its struggle for independence."51

NWICO assumption that information plenty is concomitant to and predetermined of economic prosperity remains at least arguable. Smith's Geopolitics, focused almost exclusively upon the imbalance evidenced in the news media. The choice of focus is far from arbitrary, since Smith viewed this area as the most contentious. "The conflict between North and South over the dissemination of news is more intractable than any other contemporary debate over the unfair distribution of earth resources, for it intrudes into the very culture of Western societies."52

The neoliberal era had resolved the conflict by incorporating the “elites” of Third World into new global multinational corporate culture. The new corporate interests of information age have incorporated the ever expanding additional purchasing power segment of the developing societies-the thriving middle class-that is becoming increasingly dependent on the somewhat 'magical power' of the new and ever changing information technologies. The new information instruments that have emerged have been adopted by affluent societies and again partially shared with the affluent sections of the developing societies and thus a “partnership of interests” has been created. The information and communication technologies, the neoliberal globalization and the controlled information revolution has played vital role in creating this “community of interests” in the “corporate global village” that is governing class today in the new world order. As a logical result, it accelerated the lop-sided social development, which has the potential of generating a news kind of social unrest. The world order that emerged as aftermath of information revolution helped the process of increasing power to the indigenous elites in the third world countries that was ready to collaborate with the multinational. The elites are Western oriented and now major challenge before dominant world order to perpetuate the power of Westernized indigenous elites. Citing the case of the Philippine press, Smith contended that western liberal schemes, such as, bilateral grants, training, or skill-transfer programmes resulted in "transplanted journalism", and the formation of elites who were in effect "internal émigrés", divorced from their own cultures. The existing information order is "a product of and has itself extended the historical relationships between the 'active' and the 'passive' nations.53

The images of nations are primarily created by means of the news. That is how the North comes to know the South and the interests that control news are also in control of the images. Smith contended, the exporting nations reinforce their own cultural images in the client nations through many other "physical and cultural" exports. Films, tourism, and consumer products such as automobiles are possible examples. As well, journalists from those nations and abroad report frequently on activities in the developed nations. With the emergence of global media, the flow of news is controlled by few big news organization and they are in control of news flows in all directions. However, because of the way in which news is constructed and marketed, emphasizing the most violent or dramatic images, the media present a selective or distorted image of the less developed nations.54

Disaster-oriented journalism

In interpreting Third World events for domestic audiences, Western journalists apply their own standards of propriety. The very concept of event to qualify to be newsworthy has to be “interesting” and “eye-catching” has resulted into what is termed as ‘disaster-oriented journalism’. The process of information gathering and dissemination that is involved in practice results into selection of only or mostly negative events and thus create only negative images. And, here lies the crux of media bias: "It is what the agencies and Western journalism does inadvertently which is the trouble. We think of the price of motor cars as necessarily rising through no one's fault; we think of the price of petrol rising as a direct result of the 'greed' of a few Arabs."55

It is widely known that almost over 90 percent of global flow of news (the "hard news"-the events of the day and the first report generally became trend setter in rest of coverage of the event) is controlled by Western news agencies. These agencies control even domestic distribution of news in developing countries through exchange arrangements with domestic news agencies. The Reuters of Britain, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Associated Press (AP) of USA, and Agence France-Presse (AFP) of France and DPA of Germany are major players in global news market that now control domestic markets in context of international news. These news agencies are the primary producers and controllers of news.56

The issues of cultural domination and the concept of national sovereignty got new meaning in the wake of collapse of Soviet model and world becoming unipolar and with the intensification of neoliberal globalization. In addition to being material "have-nots", inhabitants of the ‘periphery’ nations have become "know-nots" when it comes to possession of important decision-making knowledge, since raw data is increasingly processed into knowledge in the ‘centre’.57 With the end of Cold War, the Third World of the 1990s finds itself with only one ideological pole toward which to turn, and with the United States as the major viable source of economic assistance. It would seem that the basic NWICO assumption that information plenty is concomitant to and predetermined of economic prosperity remains at least arguable, if not dead.58

The Western/American domination over information and images has on the one hand let the western cultural domination of the world and at the same time it generated strong reaction and the burns of backlash are also being felt as domination does not allow “dissent’ and alternative visions or the gap between the dissent and alternative visions is not compatible any longer and the democratic institutions are failing to work as outlet of people anger and frustrations. The ‘rejection’ in the absence of ‘democratic outlet’ is heading in different directions. The resistance of negative dimensions of the new order is increasingly getting manifested in negative forms in the absence of any genuine ideological alternative. The most dominant form of negative rejection is religious fundamentalism that has become focal point in the wake of 9/11.The religious fundamentalism may not be creation of new order but is drawing a lot of strength from the new situation.

Threat to cultural identities

The threat to cultural identities is finding manifestations in various forms and in Islamic world dominantly in religious fundamentalist form and hardened attitudes in certain circles in the West. “That tells me that they see our culture as alluring but poisonous — the Ayatollah Khomeini used the word in Farsi that I am told — I do not speak Farsi — that translates as "West toxification," literally like they are being poisoned by the West. Apparently there is a big "Baywatch" cult in Iran, and can't you just see the Mullah saying, "We want to watch it too?" The only way to stop this temptation is to destroy the source, the West. I don't think you can have a dialogue with people like that.”59

Ideally speaking, new efforts might consist of developing better ways of exporting information from the rich nations of the North and West, to the poor ones of the South and East, and of importing knowledge of developing countries through development education activities.60 But it is not so. In the wake of emergence of new order as key product of information revolution, the intense public relations campaign of North American researchers, economists, and sociologists - supporters of free informatics, the free flow of information, private corporate enterprise, and the status quo - demonstrates the attempt to legitimize as a universally valid doctrine what is obviously an economic and ideological offensive. What makes the reordering of information flows all the more urgent today is that they have become, in just a few years, the common denominator of economic, political, cultural, and social activity at global level? The indispensable need for fundamental change is not solely due to the value assigned to information as a factor in development. The control exercised by a few elites over communications channels, and the storage, processing, and distribution of date and messages make these mechanisms one of the principal components of the dominant system.61

Due to marketing practices, the methods of news collection, and the structure of news itself, audiences in both the producing and consuming states received a biased picture of world. Our mental media picture of the world is compounded of our Western interests within it and is supportive therefore of those interests. The struggle to escape from our bad image of the Third World is an essential stage in its struggle for independence."62

On the one hand West insistence on free flow doctrine has been created massive imbalance in the flow of news and information but on the other hand governmental dominance of news and information in most to the developing countries; too often has been the handmaiden of dictatorships, oligopolies and generally repressive regimes. Very few developing countries had free press to name. This provided substance to the argument of “free flow of news and information.” Many Third World leaders have a strong bias against free enterprise as the basis for maintaining the communication process that under girds their national destiny.63 The developing countries perturbed of what commercial media have done to the flow of news and information both within the United States and, to some degree, in their own nations. In the U.S. the broadcast and print media have increasingly turned viewers and readers into a product to be delivered to the real audience -- the sponsors. As a result, the mass media’s primary objective has changed: its goal no longer is to inform or enlighten or even to entertain, but rather to reach and hold the largest possible audience, regardless of the damage done to other journalistic objectives.64

During the past three decades, it has been suggested that an imbalance in information production and distribution might underlie uneven world economic development. Fraught with ideology, the debate about a New World Information and Communications Order (NWICO), tended to focus upon media ownership and upon the contending concepts of information as commodity and information as social good, upon the freedom of information as an individual versus a collective right.65

This discussion paper summarizes the debate, and suggests that the collapse of the Soviet Union might provide an opportunity to overcome past political differences and to get down to the real business of assisting developing nations. The NWICO debate flourished, or perhaps one might more aptly say, raged, throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s in the halls of the United Nations, and particularly within UNESCO. NWICO proponents and opponents alike accepted the premise of a link between economic progress and the availability of information.66

Liberal theorists maintained that national cultures and sovereignty were not threatened by information concentration, while structuralists and socialist analysts argued that they were. In particular, the NWICO proponents, mostly drawn from the ranks of non-aligned nations, claimed that Western ownership and control of both the news media and their distribution channels constituted a form of cultural dominance whose covert goal was capitalist economic expansion.67 The NWICO movement began as a protest over the concentration of print and broadcast media ownership among de facto cartels, and developed into an argument about the cultural dominance of poor nations by wealthy ones. However, even before the Soviet collapse, some NWICO proponents were beginning to suggest that the issue of news imbalance was a red herring, and that supplying developing nations with current banking and business information was more crucial.68 The Third World has accused the West of cultural domination through its control of the major news- collecting resources of the world, through the unstinted flow of its cultural products across the world, and through the financial power of its advertising agencies, its international newspaper chains, its newsprint companies, and its hold over the electro-magnetic spectrum on which broadcasting, navigation, meteorology and much else depend.69

What this depressing experience appears to have taught the leaders of the Third World is that independence, political, economic and cultural, is the crucial prerequisite for all forms of satisfactory growth and change. Without independence in information and culture the gains of political and economic independence are rapidly eroded. But as new technologies of communication inevitably spread deeper and deeper into the new societies it becomes ever harder to maintain local cultural autonomy. The paradoxes of dependence multiply and a political backlash results, of kind, which we are witnessing, today in international debate over the flow of news.70

As a result of the colonial past, the industrialized world is not only trying to impose its particular value-system and way of life upon other civilizations, it is also dominating and channelizing the flow of information from the developing countries to the outside world which reduces their chances to present their own views in an authentic way. The sophisticated infrastructure of information in the industrialized world prevents the development of alternative infrastructures in the Third World, which was perceived to be contrary to the principle of freedom of information.71

It was in this backdrop, UNESCO appointed a commission in 1976 to study communication problems under the leadership of Sean MacBride. The commission completed its work in time for the General Conference in Belgrade, October 1980. The report titled "Many Voices, One World" (UNESCO, 1980), supported the principles of free reporting of news, but it also encouraged state regulation of the media and suggested that UNESCO give priority to “the elaboration of international norms” in its communication programme.

The Belgrade Assembly merely referred the MacBride Commission report to its member governments, without endorsing any of its conclusions. However, the assembly went on to produce its own shocks to the West. The Group of 77, a bloc of more than 100 developing countries, had come with a detailed description of a “New World Information Order.” After strenuous negotiations, the sections that were most offensive to the West were removed. These included “the right of peoples to comprehensive and true information,” “the right of each nation” to inform the world about its affairs, and “the right of each nation to protect its cultural and social identity against the false or distorted information which may cause harm.”72

Free versus balanced flow

The MacBride Report had been welcomed by the U.S. press with rage, panic and considerable bias. Joseph A. Mehan of UNESCO charges that “with amazing uniformity, U S. newspapers have accused UNESCO of encouraging censorship, state control of the press, licensing of journalists by the state, and, in general, of being the archenemy of freedom of the press.” The New York Times featured an editorial titled “UNESCO as Censor.” Time magazine issued a full-page editorial statement on “The Global First Amendment War.” Hundreds of newspapers carried stories similar to Editor and Publisher’s “Press Groups Denounce UNESCO Plan on Media.” On the other hand many Third World leaders see a chance for simple justice. 75 The New York Times featured an editorial titled “UNESCO as Censor.” Time magazine issued a full-page editorial statement on “The Global First Amendment War.” Hundreds of newspapers carried stories similar to Editor and Publisher’s “Press Groups Denounce UNESCO Plan on Media.” During the past year and a half there has flowed a small but steady stream of reports full of anger, fear and righteous indignation. For, in these actions the press sees mortal threats to its freedom -- while many Third World leaders see a chance for simple justice.73

This argument, played out in fora such as the Non-Aligned Movement and UNESCO conferences drew support from the Soviet Union, and hostility from Western administrations. It was partly due to fears of the growing "politicization" of UNESCO that the United States and Great Britain withdrew from that organization in the mid 1980s. Because many of these writers argued in particular against de facto media cartels, because of political problems within UNESCO itself, and because of the East-West rivalries of the times, the NWICO debate came to be treated as a confrontation between capitalist West and the Third World backed by Soviet communism. Opponents charged that the NWICO proposals were part of a larger communist agenda. The debate of "balanced flow of information" versus "free flow of information" was focus of the confrontation.74

And the heat was still on when the Western camp put forward its own agenda. In May 1981, some 100 representatives of print and broadcast organizations from the U.S. and 20 other nations met in the French Alps, where they adopted the “Declaration of Talloires,” calling on UNESCO to “abandon attempts to regulate news content and formulate rules for the press.” In June, Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, charged that UNESCO had “lent itself to a massive assault on the free flow of information” and challenged General Secretary M’Bow that if he did not remain “neutral” and avoid confrontation on the issue, he faced a battle with the U.S. “This is a war UNESCO cannot win,” Abrams declared.75

The insistence on absolute freedom or a “free flow” of information was seen by the developing nations as the freedom of the fox in the chicken coop. By a free press, in the West, you mean a press owned by a few people who have a commercial monopoly, really a monopoly of the conscience of mankind. They are “the good people” and they “know what is right.” A free press means, for you, that the owner of the press is free to prevent whom he wants from being heard. You don’t have a free press at all. You have a press imprisoned by commercial interests. A. J. Liebling also said it: “Freedom of the press is reserved for those who own one.” 76

After the fall of Berlin Wall the UNESCO stance changed and so the attitudes of dominant Western powers. In new situation neither UNESCO nor the Third World was in position to offer any resistance to the New (extension of the old) World Order. The then US State Secretary James Baker announced that the United States would continue to observe the UNESCO. The main complaint for withdrawn was "politicization" of UNESCO but in new era the organization suffered political bias but that of the West. UNESCO remained excessively politicized. It seems clear, therefore, that the "politicization" of UNESCO was merely part of a broader phenomenon.

It has become a truism that present information flows are marked by serious inadequacy and imbalance and that most countries are passive recipients of the information disseminated by translational corporations controlled by the developed world and most of them in the United States. The new communication technologies have only serve to widen the gap between those who have access to information and the means of using it and influencing others, and those who do not have these capabilities. In a situation where access to information id dependent solely on wealth and income, no change in this current flow of information seems likely in the future.77

During the past three decades, it has been suggested that an imbalance in information production and distribution might underlie uneven world economic development. Fraught with ideology, the debate about a New World Information and Communications Order (NWICO), tended to focus upon media ownership and upon the contending concepts of information as commodity and information as social good, upon the freedom of information as an individual versus a collective right.78 The collapse of the Soviet Union might provide an opportunity to overcome past political differences and to get down to the real business of assisting developing nations. The NWICO debate flourished, or perhaps one might more aptly say, raged, throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s in the halls of the United Nations, and particularly within UNESCO. NWICO proponents and opponents alike accepted the premise of a link between economic progress and the availability of information. However, liberal theorists maintained that national cultures and sovereignty were not threatened by information concentration, while structuralists and socialist analysts argued that they were. In particular, the NWICO proponents, mostly drawn from the ranks of non-aligned nations, claimed that Western ownership and control of both the news media and their distribution channels constituted a form of cultural dominance whose covert goal was capitalist economic expansion.79

Death of an idea

With the death of the concept of NWICO the power of technology and those who control it became more severe from third world perspective. In the New Order the technology became the power and new technology acquired the status of untrained power. The new information technologies are unbalancing relationships in societies- globally strengthening some societies and rendering others weaker.80

The intensification of one-way flow of news and information (images of world) tends to support a global process of cultural synchronization rather than autonomous diversity. Information techniques facilitate the emergence of an oligopolized leisure market that defines and produces cultural services. This leads to a rapid loss of self-defined mechanism through which people cope with their environment: the core of cultural development.81

Joseph Nye argues that at this stage in history, it looks like as if globalization is Americanization, because the Americans are the dominant economy and so forth. But it helps to take history back a little bit and realize that cultures are not static. They are continually changing and the idea that it is all homogenizing is simply mistaken. So I don't see a world in which India is going to be like New York. In fact, New York is actually becoming more like India, which is good for New York. But I do think that it is a great mistake to take such a narrow slice of historical time as to think that globalization is Americanization. It is not.82

Samir Amin put is differently: socialization in the modern world is founded upon the expansion of capitalist market relations, which gradually master all aspects of social life and suppress, or at least largely dominate, all other forms of solidarity (national, familial, communal). This form of socialization “by the market,” even if has enabled a stupendous acceleration in the development of productive forces, has equally aggravated their destructive characteristics. It tends to reduce human being s to the status of “people” without identity other than that of being passive “consumers” in economic life and equally passive “spectators” (no longer citizens) in political life. 83

Undoubtedly intercultural interaction has been there for a long time but this age is witnessing an intense one-way information bombardment, which is creating a unique situation with all kind of complexities. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” The intense one-way flow is virtually seems to be acquiring “blowing dimensions”. The media messages have become so complex by sheer quantity and quality that to comprehend their meaning has become beyond intellectual skills of man in street. The other challenge comes from globalization, which means the development of worldwide networks of interdependence, or sometimes, in shorthand, it has been called the "shrinkage of distance” which is largely facilitating massive and intense one-way information flow. The degree of interpretability of texts and the finite limits to consumer autonomy are still highly significant. Resistance by audience autonomy is frequently romanticized excess, and is, at most, some form of indirect autonomy over consumption, but never production.84
The free-flow doctrine simply "legitimates and reinforces the capability of a few dominant economies to impose their cultural definitions and perspectives on the rest of the world"85

The context of news and information is at least as important as content, since it allows the media to dilute and discredit information while still appearing to present it a fair manner. This is particularly problematic in media coverage of insurgency, war, and revolution since it means the public can be swayed to the needs of ‘national interests’ and policy. The justification for the Gulf War began with 'balance of power' in the region, then moved on to protecting national interests and the access to oil, and finally settled on protecting “democracy, our friends, and stopping a new Hitler and liberation of Iraq people from a ruthless despot”. And, the American and global media played merrily along. This is particularly problematic when coverage concerns insurgencies and the like, since the nuances of the language tend to lend legitimacy to which ever side is more beneficial to the West and demonizing the other side.

International Communication-Delhi University South Campus

Reading material international communication
Global Struggle for Communication
Since the first systems of mass media and telecommunications emerged, their control and structure have been political issues. It has been well understood that the control over the means of communication is an integral aspect of political and economic power. Perhaps the most striking feature of our current age is the increase in prominence -- for economics, politics, and culture -- of technologically advanced systems of communication and information, that are often global in scope. Moreover, the global communication system is in the midst of a dramatic transformation that is reorganizing industries and revamping modes of regulation. Yet precisely at the historic moment that the social implications of communication appear at their greatest, the subject of how communication systems are controlled and organized and for what purposes is effectively being removed from the range of legitimate political debate, as communication is turned over to the market for profitable exploitation. (Robert W. McChesney. May, 1996 for summer issue of Monthly Review)

The Communication Revolution

Two trends mark the communication revolution. First, there has been a rapid corporate concentration within media industries, along with a strong drive toward globalization. Although film, books and recorded music have been global industries dominated by a handful of corporations for much of the century, media markets otherwise have been primarily national in scope. A global oligopolistic market that covers the spectrum of media is now crystallizing with very high barriers to entry. National markets remain and they are indispensable for understanding any particular national situation, but they are becoming secondary in importance. (Robert W. McChesney. May, 1996 for summer issue of Monthly Review)

Considerable fuel for the growth of global commercial media will be provided by the large increase in global advertising, much of which results from transnational firms' expanding marketing plans. Global advertising is dominated by the 200 or so largest corporations and is conducted largely by a handful of global advertising agencies based in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.

The present and future growth of global media firms is being shaped by the widespread commercialization, deregulation, and privatization of domestic television systems. Until the 1980s most nations maintained these as nonprofit, non-advertising supported entities, which limited the capacity for a global media market to emerge. The current explosion in satellite digital television provides the basis for inexpensive global commercial broadcasting, and it will probably become a monopoly or duopoly in most parts of the world, based upon recent experience. This will not be a global market where everyone in the world will consume identical media products; it will be more sophisticated than that. But if the media products are differentiated by region, they nevertheless will be linked to global media concerns and determined by profitability. In short, the present course is one where much of the world's entertainment and journalism will be provided by a handful of enormous firms, with invariably pro-profit and pro-global market political positions on the central social issues of our times. The implications for political democracy, by any rudimentary standard, are troubling.

The second key trend is the development of digital communication and related technological breakthroughs such as wireless mobile communication that make communication much less expensive and more accessible. On one hand, digitalization encourages global communication as worldwide transmission can be nearly instantaneous and relatively inexpensive. It also encourages conglomeration and vertical integration because as all forms of communication turn to digital format, media products become more easily transferable between genres. On the other hand, digital communication can undermine the ability of communication to be controlled in a traditionally hierarchal manner, as it holds the potential of making it easy to produce and distribute high quality material. The most dramatic development along these lines has been the Internet. When one merely considers the social potential of these new technologies, and not the political economic context in which they are being developed, the prospects are breathtaking. (Robert W. McChesney. May, 1996 for summer issue of Monthly Review)

Digital communication also provides the basis for an eventual convergence of the media, telecommunication (meaning telephony primarily) and computer industries. As all communication and information, including data and voice communication, shift to digital format, there is no reason why telephone companies cannot eventually provide television programming over their wires and why cable companies cannot handle telephone traffic over theirs. At some point televisions can become personal computers and vice versa. Computer firms will provide the software necessary to make digital communication accessible and profitable.

This has two very important consequences. First, the combining the media, telecommunications and computer industries makes the resultant sector the largest and fastest growing component of the global economy. Based on market capitalization, three of the four largest firms and 13 of the largest 50 firms in the world fall in this sector. In the 1970s most of the world's telecommunication systems were nonprofit and state-owned monopolies. Today they are being privatized in perhaps the largest liquidation of public property in the history of capitalism. Most of the new for-profit telecommunication companies will be partially owned or formally affiliated with one of the three or four emerging global telecommunication networks.

The second consequence of convergence is a new air of uncertainty about the future of the media, telecommunication and computer industries. If the Internet or some digital computer network like it comes to eventually dominate, what happens to traditional media and telephone companies? Some technological determinists have taken the Internet to mean the end of corporate for-profit communication, because people will be able to bypass the corporate sector and communicate globally with each other directly. Although the Internet clearly has opened up important space for progressive and democratic communication, the notion that the Internet will permit humanity to leapfrog over capitalism and corporate communication seems dubious unless public policy forcefully restricts the present capitalist colonization of cyberspace.

With the rise of global media systems and a global media and communication market, one might logically expect that communication policymaking would enter global policymaking deliberations. In fact, the trend has been in the opposite direction. In the 1970s Third World nations used UNESCO as a forum to champion a drive for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), that would attempt to address the global commercialization of communication as well as the extraordinary and growing imbalance in communication resources between the rich and poor nations. The United States, urged on by powerful media interests, attacked UNESCO for even broaching the NWICO and withdrew from the organization. Since then UNESCO has formally backed down and made clear its desire not to tamper with the global media market in any substantive manner. Most poor countries have been pressured by the IMF and global capital markets to reject state or public involvement with media and communication, and to privatize their media and telecommunication systems. This is seen as indispensable to the integration of nations into the global market political economy. The public broadcasting systems in the rich countries have been advised to alter their mandates to conform to the global market and to become commercially viable. With the increasing significance of the global communication market for capital accumulation, the main global arena for the consideration of communication issues is now the World Trade Organization. The WTO battles to protect corporate intellectual property copyright in emerging economies and it has established the complete privatization and liberalization of global telecommunication as among its foremost goals for the 1990s.

In sum, the debate over communications policy is restricted to elites and those with serious financial stakes in the outcome. It does not reflect well on the caliber of U.S. participatory democracy, but it is capitalist democracy at its best. The politicians of both parties promised the public that the Telecommunications Act would provide a spurt in big-paying jobs and intense market competition in communications, a "digital free-for-all" as one liberal Democrat put it. An even cursory reading of the business press at the same time would reveal that those who benefited from the law knew these claims to be half-truths or outright lies. These are oligopolistic industries that strongly discourage all but the most judiciously planned competition. It is more likely that deregulation will lead to merger activity, increased concentration, and continued "downsizing."

Under careful examination, the market is a highly flawed regulatory mechanism. In markets, one's income and wealth determine one's power. Viewed in this manner, the market is more a plutocratic mechanism than a democratic one. In communication this means that the emerging system is tailored to the needs of business and the affluent. Nor do markets "give the people what they want" as much as they "give the people what they want within the range of what is most profitable to produce and/or in the political interests of the producers."

Much of the ideological strength of markets as a regulatory mechanism for media comes from the metaphor of the "marketplace of ideas." The image conjured by this term is one where as long as there is no government interference, all varieties of ideas will blossom under democracy's sun with the truth growing tallest. The market is assumed to be a neutral and value-free regulatory mechanism. In fact, for the reasons mentioned above, a commercial "marketplace" of ideas has a strong bias toward rewarding ideas supportive of the status quo and marginalizing socially dissident views. Markets tend to reproduce social inequality economically, politically and ideologically. The metaphor serves to mystify the actual corporate domination of our communication system and therefore provides the commercial interests with a valuable shield from rightful public criticism and participation in the policymaking process.