INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES

Media Texts: Making Sense of News

PR. KHALID SAID

INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES
Media Texts: Making Sense of News

PR. KHALID SAID

 OBJECTIVES

1 2 3 4
Gendered
News Values News News,
What/who is ▪General Values Discourse, and
▪ Panic News technology
involved in Content Values
news ▪ Treatment
creation? Values
Media Texts:
Making Sense
of News

References Making Sense of News

1. What is News? Why News?
2. What/who is involved in news creation?
3. News Gathering=Source
4. Agenda Setting
5. News Values
6. Hard News and Soft News
7. Gendering News
8. Panic News
9. News Discourse
10. News and Technology
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is News? What characterizes news texts?
02 ❖ Simply put, news is information about events, people, or issues that the public wants or
needs to know. Reporters often refer to news as “stories.”

03 ❖ News texts are prepared to report information on new or current events and are
relayed/transmitted/ conveyed/ imparted/despatched/ communicated to a mass
audience by print, broadcast or the Internet.
04
❖ Most definitions cite this meaning, but then add: ‘news is interesting new
05 happenings as presented (or mediated) by news media’.

This raises several questions: ‘interesting’ to whom, why, and

for how long?
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is News? What characterizes news texts?
02
Economic concerns/interests guide
03
(drive) the production of news.
04 1. News production is expensive
2. Business is a prime funder of news
05 3. News is a cultural commodity.
4. News material is bought and sold every
day just like any other product.
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01
2 Why News?
02 ❑ The reason for giving news such a high profile in Media Studies is that
it is a prime source of information about the world.
03 ❑ News keeps us informed of the changing events, issues, and characters
in the world outside. News informs and entertains people.
04
❑ Most people trust the news machine and what it tells us. Often it is
05 endowed with qualities of neutrality and authority which, in fact, it
has not got, and could not reasonably be expected to have.

❑ So the ideas that follow will help demythologize news.

MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 3 What is involved in news creation?
02 A. News Gathering=Source
• News is not something complete and fully formed - it is
created/manufactured
03 • The term news gathering is commonly used to describe the first stage
of the manufacture of news. It implies that news is waiting to be
04 gathered in like fruit, and sorted and packed for the audience. But
news is not something complete and fully formed - it is created.
• There are news agencies whose job is to buy and sell news items
05 (Reuters, Associate Press..)
• The news material is paid for. “News" is whatever the news industry
sells
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
02 B. News Selection and Construction

03 • News, like any kind of media product, is the result of a process of

selection and construction. News Items are selected in or selected out

04 • For example, the fact that we never see the camera crew on television
helps construct a meaning that suggests neutrality and truth. We are not
05 made aware that someone was there choosing the camera angles
and indeed the subject matter

• The meanings do not just happen to appear, they are there because
someone made them. News is created to sell the programme or paper
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
02 C . Agenda Setting
• AGENDA SETTING is a process of making priorities
03 • The news organizations set up an agenda of topics that form the
news. Once more this opposes the idea that news is somehow a
collection of truthful events and facts from 'out there’.
04 • The editors choose the news, and in so choosing also choose an
agenda of items that become our view of what is important in the
05 world that day or that week.
• Editors decide what their lead items/stories are.
• For example, lead news items are often about people who are
powerful in politics and economics; their power is reinforced by being
in the news.
Lead items/stories: Introduction, or opening paragraph, is the most
important part of a news story
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
02 B . Agenda Setting= The process of making priorities
03 The agenda-setting theory rests on two basic assumptions.

04 ❑ The more attention the media give to an issue, the more likely the public will
consider that issue to be important.
05
❑ There is psychological merit of the agenda-setting theory. The more a story
is publicized in the mass media, the more it becomes prominently stored in
individuals’ memories when they’re asked to recall it, even if it doesn’t
specifically affect them.
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
C . News Values= Newsworthiness
02
❖ What is newsworthy?
03 ❖ Not all events are considered relevant enough to make it into the paper.
When you judge whether something is news, you’re determining whether it’s
newsworthy.
04 ❖ How can you tell if something is news? what makes a story potentially
newsworthy?
❖ A few primary factors determine this:
05
How can you tell if something is
news?
Give it the “Who cares?” test!
How can you tell if something is news?
Give it the “Who cares?” test!
 MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
Qualities of Newsworthy Content
How can you tell if something is news?
Give it the “Who cares?” test!
Personality Negativity
Stories on a personality, The news machine values the
preferably a public figure (the dramatic impact of bad news.
human interest angle.) “Bad news is good news”.

Simplicity Proximity
Familiarity= items that can News that is closest to the
be dealt with simply are culture and geography of the
preferred to those that may news makers is valued most.
be complicated to explain
Continuity Recency
value is placed on items Recent events are valued
that are obviously going above distant ones.
to have some continuity People believe that all the
when the original story This is what makes a story news is up to the minute.
Timeliness= immediacy
breaks potentially newsworthy.
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
Qualities of Newsworthy Content
How can you tell if something is news?
Give it the “Who cares?” test!
Treatment Values
The treatment of the message/the handling of
the story

A story may be chosen if it can

Pictures are valued be given visual impact

Unexpected or exceptional
Dramatization
events lend themselves to this
of stories treatment anyway

Disaster stories are handled in this

Human interest way. Interviews with victims and
relatives attract the audience
what makes this media text potentially newsworthy?
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
C . Hard news vs. soft news
02 ▪ Hard news has a high level of newsworthiness, and therefore need to
be reported urgently. They are factual stories with data.
03 Examples include news on politics, crime, economics, international
affairs, natural calamities, riots etc.
▪ On the other hand, ‘soft’ news covers general human interest stories or
04 entertainment news. Since these do not deal with serious subjects, they
are labelled as “soft”. Examples include sports news, celebrity news, or
05 human-interest stories that deal with emotions. ‘soft’ news does not
necessitate timely publication and has a low level of substantive
informational value (if at all), i.e., gossip, human interest stories.. Soft new
however tends to attract more readership and audience
This distinction is not straightforward; sometimes it becomes very
difficult to distinguish between the two. For example, where do we
classify a story done on the personal lives of politicians?
 MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01
1 What is involved in news creation?
C . Gendered News= Feminising News
02 • Although the categorization of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ news seems at first glance to
be a relatively objective matter, feminist critiques place this
dichotomization within a gender framework.
03
• A number of feminists would argue that the distinction is ideological. News
production is male-oriented. News texts are inflected towards masculine
04 interests and a masculine view of the world.

Is gossip 05
• News that is political and economic, dominated by facts and by male players,
by ideas about competition and winning and losing; and news that is more
news is social and personal, dominated by stories about personality and relationships.
Of course, there is a danger that one falls into another kind of sexism if one
female simply asserts that gossip news is female news.

news? • News photos reproduce inequalities - photographs of the mainly male

politicians, military leaders, scientists, and so on - photographs of women as
fashion objects, sex objects, accompanying articles on health and body
matters, figuring in stories about love and divorce.
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
02 C . News and Panic Panics sell News
o News creates panic among the public, for example panic about youth
gangs, immigrants, pandemic shopper buying
03 o News organization can give them this saliency by asserting that there is a
'crime wave' or a 'health crisis' or a 'disaster in the making’
04 o It is argued that they exaggerate those concerns. They foster anxiety.
They demonize the social group that is the object of concern

05
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News
01 1 What is involved in news creation?
02 C . News and Discourse
• News (especially television news) is often believed to be authoritative,
authentic and promotes consensus
03 Quality papers do convey authority and seriousness in their relatively print-
heavy front pages and discrete headlines. in television, authority is
04 1 communicated through elements such as the dress of its newsreaders,
reporters on the spot, up-to-the-minute information. This image is important
because it gives news a kind of power - the power of being knowledgeable
05 and important.
Credibility refers to the idea that the news and its newsreaders are to be
2 believed and trusted. This meaning is promoted by the dress, accent and
manner of newsreaders
News agencies like to present news 'as it really is’. The use of reporters in
real locations, of statistics through graphics, supports an idea that the news
3 we get is about 'the truth. Pictures can be particularly influential in this
respect - the cliche that, if you see it, it, must be true. 'we were there',
MEDIA STUDIES : Making Sense of News

01 1 What is involved in news creation?

C . Technology and the News/ Digitalised News
02
While news was transmitted for centuries only in newspapers, news is
now transmitted in all formats: via radio, television, and the Internet, in
03 addition to print. Even most newspapers have Internet sites today.

04 • New technologies/media contribute to news values and qualities such as

immediacy and actuality with an emphasis on up-to-date news.
05 • In the case of television this also means further emphasis on the value of
visuals. The audience expects to see up-to-date pictures.
• The use of electronic displays, graphics and captions have added to this visual
emphasis and a sense of drama in the case of television.
• Immediacy and reality had been enhanced
 THANK YOU
INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES

PR. KHALID SAID