apply critical thinking skills to evaluate the context and assumptions on a problem or issue and formulate and support your conclusions.
Background:
While the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protects the right of journalists to gather and report information, it does not require them to be objective in their writing. If it did, American news consumers would not have experienced the eras of Yellow Journalism, Gonzo Journalism, muckraking, the penny press, or the sensationalism we still see today. Why is it that the First Amendment is not more specific about what it requires in “published” content?
Objectivity is but one standard that has been applied by the American news media to their work, usually to basic hard news stories or what some call “straight” news reporting. It is not a mandated format for all newswriting.
Interpretative news reports, which some call news analysis, is another format used by American news media. It has become more prominent since the emergence of news reports on social media and 24/7 cable news reports before that. But it, too, is not a mandated format for newswriting.
These formats are choices. And they can appear side-by-side with different choices on the same topic by journalists writing for the same publication.
The ethical standards by which American journalists determine and present “news” reflect normative theories about how the news content they write should be objective, accurate, balanced, fair, and contain complete facts. This view, which emerged in the 20th century but didn’t firmly take root for news producers or news consumers until the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate investigation, suggests the news media have an obligation, according to Emery and Smith (1954):
“…to strive for honest and comprehensive coverage of the news, and for courageous expression of editorial opinion in support of the basic principles of human liberty and social progress” (744).
The U.S. Constitution does not say that. The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; … “After Watergate, in particular, many Americans came to see news reporters as public servants or “prox[ies] for the people, maintaining a vigilant watch… and sounding the alarm when malfeasance, misfeasance, or extracurricular hanky-panky is discovered” (Hulteng, 1979, p. 48).
However, newspapers don’t sell news content. Radio, cable, satellite, broadcast, internet, social media, and streaming news platforms don’t sell video/TV news programs. The basic premise of advertising-supported media—their economic reality—is that they sell ears and eyeballs. They use their content to attract the interest of specific audiences for which they charge advertisers access. And those ears and eyeballs—and the standards used to attract their attention—can vary based on demographics.
The normative theory supporting our way of life—our democracy—is based on Milton’s ideas that good ideas will rise to the top. The U.S. news media have free rein with their content on the theory the public will seek out the truth. The reality is they are businesses and have always operated by business standards, within which certain of their journalists did one thing (objective news reporting — these are the people with their boots on the ground, so to speak; the ones who provide facts according to the standards you mentioned) while other of their journalists were tasked to inform (think investigate and analyze here) and entertain (think human interest and Dear Abby here as examples).
In other words, the U.S. news media write to get read. They focus on their specific missions for their specific audiences by exploiting what researchers call Uses and Gratification Theory. UGT says audiences have power over their media consumption and that they are the ones who assume an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. That is, news, information, and entertainment consumers gravitate toward material that has the most utility for them (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, p. 16).
Researchers who study Reinforcement or Phenomenistic Theory, on the other hand, have found that we tend to pay attention to what’s familiar and comfortable to us, and that:
• People expose themselves to mass comm messages that are consistent with their existing beliefs, values, attitudes, etc.
• If there is inconsistency, sometimes people don’t see it, or they reinterpret it to fit their preconceptions.
Combine this tendency with what you learned about media ubiquity, media dependency, media bias, and technological determinism and how these changes have manifested themselves as the fragmentation of the news, information, and entertainment markets, and you can see why allegations of “fake news” emerged.
For this activity, you will write a brief essay that compares U.S. views on what “news” is on any given day to those of people in different societies.
Activity:
A. Select a major national or international news topic from the last month that interests you.
B. Then, select two different newspapers or other reputable online news sources and explore the differences in how they reported the same news story.
C. Write a 1-2 page (about 250-500 words) paper that addresses the following questions:
• Why did you find this news story compelling?
• What journalistic approach (objective, interpretative, literary, etc.) do the different newspapers use to report the story?
• How does the newspaper’s audience affect the way in which the news story is presented?
• What style of journalism do you prefer when receiving your news?