The seminar demonstrated that the lines between public and private are blurring. The term ‘celebrity’ has become a term used loosely because what the public are interested in has changed. There is a difference between the public interest and what the public are interested in. Australians are protected by the Privacy Act, but there exemptions for reporting providing that journalists subscribe to the specific industry codes of practice. There are no clear rules or guidelines for journalists.
An example used was Princess Diana who reached celebrity status and became ‘the people’s princess’ and she was constantly in the public eye. Her death in 1997 had paparazzi taking her photograph in her last moments and this became an invasion of privacy.
Celebrities, politicians and their families have a right to privacy in their own homes because this is a private place, not a public one. The more the public crave the celebrity gossip the further reporters and photographers push the boundaries.
Journalists should be reporting for the greater good and in recent years the concept of greater good has changed. Public and private are heavily influenced by law and ethics. The ethics of journalists plays a role in the information they are willing to obtain. While journalists have a duty to convey information and animate democracy the privacy of an individual does not mean secrecy.
The case study of Derryn Hinch was an example used by one of the presenters. Derryn Hinch is a journalist who received 28 days in jail for contempt of court. Each situation is different and journalists must take precautions.
The MEAA Code of Ethics clause 13 states that ‘Accept the right to privacy of every person. Public figures’ privacy may be reduced by their public role. Relatives and friends of those in the public eye retain their own right to privacy.’
Journalists are faced with issues of privacy almost every day. It is their job to assess the legal, ethical and moral dimensions associated with every report and make a decision that is fair, honest and balanced.
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Truth and Objectivity
Truth and objectivity are important elements in the media and should be practiced by journalists and media corporations. Truth is important to the public. Tickle (2006, p. 90) states that ‘journalists face the task of truthfully representing in words, numbers, sound, and pictures, events that have occurred at a particular time and in a particular place.’
An example is the documentary ‘Out Foxed’ as a case study, which is about Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corporation. The documentary portrays how on a daily basis, the News Corporation journalists have to follow the agenda of Mr. Murdoch. This removed truth and objectivity from their reporting. Mr. Murdoch was asking his journalists to be subjective and ultimately bias. This creates problems for the journalists because journalists have a responsibility to communicate truth to the public. As a consequence of Mr. Murdoch having an agenda, the public does not receive an honest ‘truth’. As Tickle (2006, p. 91) argues ‘news media producers reject claims that they cannot represent the truth in their news stories, while the cultural theorists say that it is futile to try to represent the truth because it is a situational and subjective construction of reality.’
News Corporation is not the only media outlet guilty of blurring the ‘truth’. Photographs have been tampered with changing an image and distorting the truth. This is usually done to sensationalise a story often found in celebrity magazines. This is also the case with footage being edited to show a particular point of view. An example is that Bill O’Reilly.
Journalists decide what the ‘truth’ of a story is by selecting which facts to include and those which need to be left out. This process of reporting the important facts should not misrepresent what actually occurred; just provide the most vital information, as Tickle (2001, p. 95) argues ‘journalists must also exercise their judgement; that is, they must select from among many choices the crucial elements of the story and structure it appropriately.’ Journalists should ensure that all their stories have balance and fairness.
Using words such as ‘allegedly’ can also warp the ‘truth’ of a story and journalists may believe that using such words are a protection from defamation, etc. A journalist should be clear and concise and provide many points of view. Journalists should ensure that the three stages of enquiry are covered and these are reactive reporting, analytical reporting and reflective reporting.
Tickle discusses the post-modern view of journalism stating that ‘for the post-modernist, all truths and assumptions must be continually subjected to direct testing with the understanding that knowledge is relative and fallible, rather than absolute or certain’ (2001, p. 92). Another post-modern perspective is that audiences create their own truths through the material they are presented with. Creating a universal truth is hard because everyone lives in a different social and cultural context. What one person accepts as true is what another person questions.
How would you define truth?
Do you think that journalists are truthful?
Reference:
Tickle, S 2001, ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but…’, in S Tapsall & C Varley (eds), Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 89- 101.
An example is the documentary ‘Out Foxed’ as a case study, which is about Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corporation. The documentary portrays how on a daily basis, the News Corporation journalists have to follow the agenda of Mr. Murdoch. This removed truth and objectivity from their reporting. Mr. Murdoch was asking his journalists to be subjective and ultimately bias. This creates problems for the journalists because journalists have a responsibility to communicate truth to the public. As a consequence of Mr. Murdoch having an agenda, the public does not receive an honest ‘truth’. As Tickle (2006, p. 91) argues ‘news media producers reject claims that they cannot represent the truth in their news stories, while the cultural theorists say that it is futile to try to represent the truth because it is a situational and subjective construction of reality.’
News Corporation is not the only media outlet guilty of blurring the ‘truth’. Photographs have been tampered with changing an image and distorting the truth. This is usually done to sensationalise a story often found in celebrity magazines. This is also the case with footage being edited to show a particular point of view. An example is that Bill O’Reilly.
Journalists decide what the ‘truth’ of a story is by selecting which facts to include and those which need to be left out. This process of reporting the important facts should not misrepresent what actually occurred; just provide the most vital information, as Tickle (2001, p. 95) argues ‘journalists must also exercise their judgement; that is, they must select from among many choices the crucial elements of the story and structure it appropriately.’ Journalists should ensure that all their stories have balance and fairness.
Using words such as ‘allegedly’ can also warp the ‘truth’ of a story and journalists may believe that using such words are a protection from defamation, etc. A journalist should be clear and concise and provide many points of view. Journalists should ensure that the three stages of enquiry are covered and these are reactive reporting, analytical reporting and reflective reporting.
Tickle discusses the post-modern view of journalism stating that ‘for the post-modernist, all truths and assumptions must be continually subjected to direct testing with the understanding that knowledge is relative and fallible, rather than absolute or certain’ (2001, p. 92). Another post-modern perspective is that audiences create their own truths through the material they are presented with. Creating a universal truth is hard because everyone lives in a different social and cultural context. What one person accepts as true is what another person questions.
How would you define truth?
Do you think that journalists are truthful?
Reference:
Tickle, S 2001, ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but…’, in S Tapsall & C Varley (eds), Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 89- 101.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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).
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.
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