Who Will Pay for Journalism?

With the growth of super powerful transnational corporations who make profits of billions of dollars every year; the media and therefore journalism have become commodities to package up and sell to audiences. Media companies must find news ways of marketing their product to audiences through new mediums that are emerging.
The audience has changed because people are easily bored and expect that television, radio, print and the internet will keep them continually occupied.
Audiences are not the only ones facing dramatic changes; journalism has seen massive changes in recent years. An example is the notion of ‘celebrity’ stories. Audiences want to know more about them to satisfy their hunger for being entertained.

All mediums of the media industry (especially the internet) are including more stories about celebrities because the audience buy it right up. They have found a new angle that sells and makes top dollar.

Pew Research Centre has discovered that the Public Blames Media for Too Much Celebrity Coverage. The graph Who Leads the way in Celebrity Coverage shows the results of a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre.

Just this morning I was on ninemsn.com and there was a huge picture of Britney Spears smiling at me with an article about how she is back on track in her life. Now I knew that the article would be pointless dribble about how a ‘good friend’ of Britney’s has confirmed that the singer is doing well and getting on with her life. I also knew that the only ‘credible’ sources in the whole article would be Who and NW magazines.
But I read on anyway. Somewhere in me there was the need to know the gossip of Britney Spears’ life… and then there was an article about Jenifer Aniston being pregnant! To John Mayer and it’s so sad because Brad and Jen would have had beautiful babies and then I realised that I knew too much.

Why and how had this occurred? Media outlets such as ninemsn.com have presented me with these celebrity stories and driven me to know more about them. Ninemsn.com has researched my demographic right down to knowing what I prefer for breakfast in the morning and so have been very clever in marketing to me these celebrity stories. Ninemsn.com has already figured out that I prefer celebrity gossip, lifestyle and beauty pages over the sport or business sections.

The media exist in a commercial context and so each article written and every program created is hoping to reach an audience to finance future articles, programs and most often this happens to be through entertainment.
More emphasis on celebrity and other facile forms of entertainment have meant that media organisations are finding the quickest ways to satisfy their audiences. This is costing professional journalism because it is continuing to dwindle. There are less and less investigative news stories and more about entertainment. Entertainment rather than news is becoming the most efficient, cost effective way of making money out of audiences. It is becoming a circular pattern of entertainment to audience equals money and this is diminishing credible journalism.

The funds for investigative journalism are being cut because it is easier for newspapers to cut and paste stories directly from Reuters or AAP.
Shared stories also become a problem as the diversity of opinions and view points are no longer presented. Audiences have more trouble participating if they don’t know the different points of view that are associated with events. Political policy is one of the main events that audiences have little understanding of because all the facts are no longer presented to them.

The platform of journalism and the media is changing and they change with social and cultural impacts. Technology has changed the way that audiences obtain news, information and entertainment. The media has to continually find ways to sell their product and currently the social landscape has moved away from selling investigative journalism to a society that constantly wants to be entertained.

Does anyone else feel that media outlets sell more entertainment than news?

Picture of Britney Spears obtained from http://www.twd.in/entertainment/

Globalisation v Localisation

Globalisation has changed the face of the media for good as new technologies means that the world has morphed into a global village. Telecommunication technologies have decreased the distance between people and places. Media companies are accessible all over the world via the Internet. Globalisation and new technology has allowed for mergers of already large media companies to join forces. ‘The latest technological advances have taken place in an environment of commercialisation, with the formation of ‘super powerful’ media giants, known as transnational corporations

or TNCs (McChesney 1997, p. 1 cited in Breit 2001, p. 213).

A consequence of TNCs is that the diversity of the media is reduced and there becomes less independent opinion and more ‘views’ that sell commercially. Most media companies pass around the same articles and footage of events and set agendas of how they want the public to perceive political, social and cultural events.

The TNCs include names everyone is aware of, and a guarantee is that you have come across the media they publish. Big names include, Disney, AOL Time Warner, News Corporation, Universal Studios, Bertelsmann and Viacom. The image above outlines six of the major TNCs and what they own. These transnational corporations have one main component in common- they are American. The Media Channel which the graph comes from has a very useful website about the diversity of the media. By providing a useful graph to see who owns what; media audiences can see were all the print, television and radio they consume comes from.

‘We, the public, can and should make our voices heard on these issues. We can learn about the debates and insist that our representatives work to protect and promote a media system that advances diversity of voices, freedom of information, public participation, independence, creativity, political debate and a rich, vibrant and open media culture’ (Media Channel 2008, online).

Global media theorist Daya Kishan Thussu discusses in, International Communication: Continuity and Change, globalisation is just another term for Americanisation. Thussu states that ‘The general pattern of media ownership indicates that the West, led by the USA, dominates the international flow of information and entertainment in all major media sectors’ (2006, p. 145). American dominated views are having a detrimental effect on local and national cultures; as Thussu (2006, p. 145) comments ‘ Some argue that such globally transmitted programming will promote a shared media culture, a global village based on the English language and Western lifestyles and values.

Not only is globalisation eroding culture, other local implications are that there is no legal system which can govern and enforce every country. Privacy is an issue discussed by Breit

‘Privacy is another area where local laws throughout the world vary greatly, despite a considerable amount of international agreement on the need to respect privacy. Australia, for example, has no general tort of privacy, whereas the United States does. These differing levels of privacy protection fuel the uncertainty of journalists publishing globally.’ (2001, p. 222)


There needs to be a set of international guidelines for journalists to abide by. While this is idealistic and these guidelines would be hard to enforce, issues like freedom of speech, copyright and privacy need to be addressed globally.

Eastern countries that are bombarded with American values, beliefs and customs are bringing the ‘local’ back to their citizens. Thussu (2006) describes global media as information flows. If the global media are viewed as a road, the traffic is moving on a one-way street from America to the rest of the world. The world receives the most entertainment and information from America. Television has been the medium that reaches the widest audience. ‘As a visual medium, television has a much wider reach than the print media, as millions of people still cannot read or write, even in the twenty-first century’ Thussu (2006, p. 145).

Contraflow, as discussed by Thussu (2006) is the flow of media from the peripheries to cater for markets that have been forgotten by Western media conglomerates. Countries such as, South America and India have used satellite and digital technology to create their own national broadcasting networks and bring a local connection back to their people.
‘Most famously is the growth of India’s Bollywood. India is among the few non-Western countries to have made their presence felt in the global cultural market. Particularly significant, though largely ignored in mainstream international scholarship and journalistic writing on films, popular music and television, is India’s $3.5 billion Hindi film industry based in Mumbai (formally Bombay), the commercial hub of India. In terms of production and viewership it is the world’s largest film industry: every year a billion more people buy tickets for Indian movies than for Hollywood films.’ Thussu (2006, p. 200).

South America has produced Telenovelas (soap operas) to bring local culture back to the people. ‘The transnationalisation of telenovelas has been made possible through such television factories as Televisa in Mexico, Venevision in Venezuela and Globo TV in Brazil, the leading producers of telenovelas, and their global distribution deals with such groups as Dori Media Group’ (Thussu 2006, p. 196).
Bollywood and Telenovelas are a positive step toward preserving diverse local cultures because with Americanisation, the world is rapidly becoming a homogenisation of culture.
Australia is not exempt from this, as Australian culture becomes more and more intertwined with American ‘popular culture’. Australia should ensure that our music and film industries are encouraged and Australian ‘identity’ preserved.

To quote the closing words of Breit (2001, p. 229)
‘Media globalisation is threatening society’s two most important watchdogs- the judiciary and journalism. Trans-national corporation dominance of modern communications makes it imperative that journalism and the judiciary are not at loggerheads.’
Media companies need to ensure that within the global village ethical and legal obligations are met and that high journalistic practice continues on global media technologies, like the internet.
Unique local cultures should be preserved to future generations to experience and also that when travelling the world each country is not a mini-America.

Do you think that local culture should be preserved?
Or do you think that one global culture would work?

Any other thoughts?

References

Breit, R 2001, ‘Journalism in the Global Village’, in S Tapsall & C Varley (eds), Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 213- 231.

Thussu, D. K 2006, International Communication: Continuity and Change, 2nd edn, Hodder Arnold, London.

Citizen Journalism

Contemporary journalism is derived from the ‘Public Sphere’ which Meadows states ‘in this way, modern journalism began as a cultural practice that was both of and for the public (2001, p. 40). The onset of the ‘post modern’ era has brought about new information technologies creating new media and transforming the notion of ‘professional journalism’ from elitist into popular culture. With new media technologies available to the public it is easier and efficient to access forms of expression previously unavailable. Nano technology and media convergence have allowed for more interactivity to occur between media and the public. Jay Rosen states in his video that the tools have been distributed to the public. These tools include mobile phones, laptops, cameras, iPods, video cameras, etc and the distribution occurs on the internet.

Aspects of new journalism have revived the media, for the public now has a greater interest and audience numbers have increased (Romano and Hippocrates 2001).
People from all walks of life now have forums of expression. Carey states that ‘important elements that influenced the movement of journalism away from its earlier, publicly accountable form- the emergence of national media, the growth of minority or alternative media, and the creation of the professional communicator’ (1997b, pp. 129- 33 cited in Meadows 2001, p. 41). This has been termed citizen journalism, which Jay Rosen defines as ‘When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism’ (Rosen 2008).


The Apple Company is the most famous for their developments in nano technology with a new version of the iPod nearly every week.
Mobile phone technology has evolve in leaps and bounds - once a mobile resembled a brick now it has a camera function including video, access to the internet, GPS components – the world is at the mobile users finger tips. And who knows what they’ll invent this week! Website software is available for ‘the citizen’ to create a website or blog and this has created a challenge for the media companies.

Who do they become if the Average Joe is reporting the news? So the media conglomerates have decided that if you can’t beat them, join them and now encourage citizens to send in their photos if they witness an event first hand. Does this mean that professional journalists are now on equal levels to the ‘citizen journalist’? While it is very interesting witnessing the digital world changing media in many ways, society still requires professional journalists. Whether you believe in objectivity or professionalism in journalism or if they just a bunch of unethical larrikins; ‘professional journalists’ have a role in society. ‘Journalism should be seen as part of the broader process of making culture – or ‘imagining’, to use Benedict Anderson’s term. If journalism is viewed as a cultural practice, it enables us to think about how it might be reformed so that it may again be both of and for the public’ (Meadows 2001, p. 41).

Citizen journalism has made way for the post modern times we live in by incorporating the ‘active audience’ which has been ignored by the media. With commercial radio and television stations competing for ratings and audience numbers; it is surprising that the audience has been treated like passive infants for so long as stated by Carey ‘and it is precisely the modern notion of the fourth estate, relying on the element of the adversary press, which has ‘stitched the citizen into a passive role of spectator’. Adoption of, and reliance on, the idea of the ‘objectivity’ under the fourth- estate banner ensured citizens would be cast into the role of ‘students’ to be educated by the media, rather than being participants in the process of self-government (Carey 1997c, p. 337 cited in Meadows 2001, p. 42).

All media can be considered a text to be interpreted by the audience. A text can be viewed in two ways as stated by McQuail ‘one refers to the physical message itself- the printed document, film, television programme or musical score’ and the second ‘is to reserve the term ‘text’ for the meaningful outcome of the encounter between content and reader’ (2005, p. 385). A popular myth is that the meaning is already in the text.
However poststructural research (Wolff 1981, Belsey 2006, Barthes 1977) has found that the audience give a text meaning by understanding it through their own context. So while the media are sending out messages it is up to the audience to decide the meaning. With citizen journalism the audience can now state what their meaning is and actively participate (using the platform of the internet) in political, social and cultural matters which will affect them.

While citizen journalism is a positive step forward it has not been embraced by all. Journalists, who have trained, studied and actively understood the domain and field of journalism are now probably wondering what the point is? As a University student majoring in Journalism I too have to wonder where does that leave me now and in the future? James Farmer for The Age states in his Blog that if a citizen has gathered, analysed and disseminated information to the masses they are longer a citizen but now a journalist (Farmer 2006). Farmer concludes with this statement:

‘So bring on the revolution. Let's have sites that are built on citizen media and far greater and more worthwhile interaction between readers, journalists and editors. It's a riveting and powerful development in the world of online news, information and entertainment, but it's not citizen journalism and nor will it ever be’ (Farmer 2006).

An interesting statement that Farmer makes is that the term ‘citizen journalism’ is an insult.

“The very term is a somewhat insulting assumption. Journalists suffer a similar fate to teachers in that everyone is or has been exposed to their work on a very regular basis - everyone's got an opinion and they're not afraid to share it. As a bit of a reality check, when was the last time you encountered a "citizen doctor", valued a report by a "citizen researcher", took off in a plane flown by a "citizen pilot" or saw justice meted out by "citizen policeman"? (Farmer 2006).


Jay Rosen’s Blog Press Think gives a very interesting perspective to the citizen journalist concept that is changing the way the media is viewed. A very important point that Rosen states is ‘there are now closed and open editorial systems: they are different. They don’t work the same way, or produce the same goods. One does not replace the other. They are not enemies either. Ideas that work in one—that describe the world in that system—often do not work in understanding the other: they mis-describe the world’ (Rosen 2008). Being able to blog takes freedom of expression to a new level and that is a positive for society. Reporters Without Borders continually fight for freedom of the press and the internet is creating a freedom of the press platform.


In articles and comments on NYU Local about blogs there appears a trend that the audience realises that a blog is not objective and has a biased opinion. From comments on the NYU Local it appeared that this was an appreciated way of disseminating information. That it was breaking away from convention and embracing the opportunities that new media has allowed. However, one person’s opinion does not equal fact or ‘good’ information. Having a rant was why the personal journal was invented and now the internet provides a public forum for people’s personal tirades.
So while new media should be embraced, is embraced and moving journalism forward, society still requires objective, authoritative voices. Where we have come from cannot be entirely abolished and journalism’s history should apply no matter what platform it is on. New media is important and taking the journalism industry into a new era and while opinion is important it is not the be all of reporting on a topic, it is just a different way of doing journalism.
Meadows has a very good point when he states ‘Public journalism professes admirable aims, but how effective can these experiments be when journalists and journalism maintain perceptions that naturally set them apart from ‘the public’ (2001, p. 52).


These are views which are shaping the citizen journalist debate as the media and journalism continues to transform. There are those who are for and those against but either way this phenomenon is occurring. Meadows concludes by giving little hope for the journalist if they choose to remain in the old ways, ‘until there is a return to the forms of ‘public conversation’ from which modern journalism emerged, there seems little hope of journalism and journalists regaining a credible place in the public imagination and, by association, in the process of the formation of culture’ (2001, p. 52).

References

Barthes , R 1977, ‘The Death of the Author’ in Image, Music, Text, Noonday Press, New York , pp. 142- 153.


Belsey, C 2006, ‘Poststructuralism’, in S, Malpas & P, Wake (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Critical Theory, Routledge, London, pp. 43- 54.

Meadows, M 2001, ‘A Return to Practice: Reclaiming Journalism as Public Conversation’, in S Tapsall and C Varley (eds), Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 40- 54.

McQuail, D 2005, McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory, 5th edn, Sage, London.

Romano, A and Hippocrates, C 2001, ‘Putting the Public Back into Journalism’, in S Tapsall and C Varley (eds), Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 166- 184.

Wolff , J 1981, The Social Production of Art, Macmillan, London.

What is a journalist?

What is a journalist? This question, while it may appear simple, has many levels. It could be stated that a journalist does journalism and therefore a journalist is what it does. This is a circular notion which can continue to go around. Could, what a journalist is then be defined by journalism? So to define a journalist according to the activities they participate in would mean that they are the gatherers of news. However journalists no longer just gather the news. A contemporary journalist is required to be interpretive, analytical, creative and flexible when distributing the information they have collected to the masses. The term news is problematic because as the role of a journalist has changed so has the information they gather.

A major reason for the transformation of the media landscape in which journalists belong is due to the ‘rapidly changing technological environment’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006).
When logging on to The Sydney Morning Herald website the content and how the information was obtained has changed. There is more celebrity content than in the newspaper and a great deal of information is attributed to news services.

Has technology made contemporary journalists lazy? Is that a new definition for the professional journalists of our time? Yes and no. It could be argued that with the ease of access to information, that technology has made available, a journalist’s job is more efficient. Or that the quality is no longer there. No matter how this is viewed the journalism landscape is going through the motions of change.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (1999) define a journalist as:

Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, comment and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be responsible and accountable.

This definition of a journalist covers a wider range of elements that have to be taken into consideration. By incorporating democracy into the definition of a journalist it is remembering were the role of journalists began- with the Fourth Estate. Tony Harcup in Journalism: Principles and Practice discusses the fourth estate and its importance, ‘Initially referring to the parliamentary press gallery, the term became a more general label for the press as a whole, locating journalists in a quasi-constitutional role as ‘watchdog’ on the workings of the government’ (2004, p 2). The Fourth Estate is central to the freedom of the press, an integral part of journalism and therefore being a journalist.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance definition takes into account the macro world of the journalist and the activities they participate in while also including the responsibilities in society that journalists have. Journalists do have power. More power than they sometimes know what to do with. Journalists can choose to distribute information as well as with hold it. They must be able to decide what is newsworthy and hopefully in an ethical manner. Harcup discusses journalists having responsibility of information in the definition he provides, ‘Journalists have a more social role that goes beyond the production of commodities to sell in the marketplace. Journalists inform society about itself and make public that which would otherwise be private’ (2004 p, 2).

Another way that journalists can be defined is through the type of journalist they are. It is a mistake to generalise a contemporary journalist, although this has been the flow of this article to hopefully define what a journalist is. A contemporary journalist does not have to be associated with only being an investigative reporter. There are journalists to cater to the niche markets of sport, fashion, arts, culture and food to name a few. Types of journalists include broadcast, freelance and online among others. Suellen Tapsall and Carolyn Varley editors of Journalism Theory in Practice cover the wide range of tasks that journalists are required to do, ‘Journalists can be defined as information gatherers, news workers, reporters, entertainers, historians, researchers, explainers, probers, writers, communicators, storytellers, producers and presenters’ (2006, p 6).

Defining a professional journalist is an insurmountable task due to the ever changing media landscape. ‘Attempts to define journalists are made more difficult by the complex nature of their function and the huge diversity in news or pseudo news products, programs, and publications’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006, p 6). There are many definitions for a journalist found in the text books were one can study this very large industry. Each definition has important elements however what a journalist is could never be summed up in one sentence. What a journalist is contains so many elements on social, cultural and business levels that the simple question of what is a journalist becomes far harder to answer than just someone who gathers and disseminates information. ‘There is no longer – if there ever was – one colour, shape, or size of a ‘typical’ journalist’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006, p 6).

References

Harcup, T 2004, Journalism: Principles and Practice, Sage, London.

Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, 2008. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from http://www.gwb.com.au/99a/ethics.html

Tapsall, S & Varley, C (eds.) 2006, Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, Oxford.