Learning objectives

At the end of this module, you will be able to

• distinguish between information and opinion in media accounts
• evaluate the information from newspapers, magazines and other news media.

Evaluating the popular media

The time-honoured role of the journalist is to "find out what was going on and to print it". This was the view expressed by Michael Davie, a former editor of The Age. According to this perspective, the news is (or should be) an objective image of reality. Recent studies has thrown doubt on this interpretation. In practice, journalists almost never just report the news. More often, what they do is to make the news.

Commercial pressures, rather than a desire for objectivity, determine how the news is reported in the mass media. The goal of most journalists is to write newsworthy stories that will attract an audience. The larger the audience, the higher the potential revenues from advertising. The ABC is only a partial exception to this rule. It must still compete with commercial radio and television for market share. If its market share falls too low, it risks further funding cuts.

The creation of newsworthiness involves selectivity. Journalist rarely report everything that they know about a particular story. Events pass through a number of filters before reaching the airwaves or the printed page. There is a process of emphasis and ommission, exclusion and inclusion. Each piece of information is interpreted and re-interpreted. Some "facts" are not disclosed and others are downplayed. Opinion is often used to fill in the unknown.

Mass media formats impose severe limits on depth of content. Most radio and television news items tend to be short. Stories are often no longer than a few sentences with accompanying images. Newspaper articles are longer, but rarely more than a few hundred words. The result is that treatment of complex issues is often ill-informed or misleading. What actually happened, as far as it can be known, can be simplified out of recognition.

Another reason for caution is that most journalists are non-experts. Take the example of journalists engaged in reporting on the political scene. Political reporters are part of the political process, and find it difficult to stand outside events. Even veteran political journalists are sometimes strikingly naive in their reporting of daily politics. They give greater weight to trivial incidents or the latest news story than is probably warranted. Political scientists can often offer better — if less dramatic — explanations for events.

Information and opinion

Journalist often distinguish between "straight reporting" and "commentary". The trend in recent years has been to blur this distinction. Newspaper reporting provides the clearest example of this trend. Most newspapers have now moved opinion pieces from the traditional "op-ed" pages to the hard news section. Major news stories are increasingly likely to be reported once as a straight news story and again as an opinion piece, sometimes on the same page.

The result is that what is presented as hard news is embedded in a mass of commentary, much of which is highly subjective. There is evidence that readers are finding it harder and harder to distinguish between news and commentary, even assuming that they wish to make the effort.

Fair comment? If the above comments on journalists seem unfair, read the article below. How valid are criticism contained in the Belinda's Weaver's article? Belinda Weaver The fewer the facts the stronger the opinion, 2001, eJournalists, 1(1), 1–8.

Media concentration

Media ownership in Australia is extremely concentrated by world standards. News Ltd controls just under 70 per cent of total metropolitan dailies in terms of circulation, and publishes the only national daily, The Australian. John Fairfax Holdings Ltd controls over 20 per cent of metropolitan dailies. Only one major metropolitan daily paper, The West Australian, is independent of either News Limited or Fairfax.

Although the concentration of ownership is greatest in the print media, the situation in relation to radio and television is similar. The number of independent stations and regional networks is in sharp decline. Recent changes in cross-media ownership laws have accelerated this process of consolidation. Most radio and television stations in Australia are now owned by one or other of a few large companies.

Media concentration has almost certainly reduced the quality of reporting in the Australian media. The likelihood that the business interests of firms such as News Limited, Macquarie Bank or Fairfax will influence the content of their publications is reasonably high. Further, newspapers and other media outlets are rarely disinterested observers in relation to state or national politics. The editorial interventions of proprietors such as Rupert Murdoch or the late Kerry Paker are notorious. The New Ltd papers, The Australian in particular, have functioned for decades as champions of economic libertarianism.

Self-censorship

Self-censorship can also influence reporting of crime and justice issues. If a journalist offends his best sources, the likely result is that these sources will "dry up". Journalists and newspapers sympathetic to police perspectives are somtimes been given inside stories, while journalists from newspapers critical of the police, might be informed only through media releases and other slower channels.

Weekly World News One newspaper with a notorious reputation was the US publication Weekly World News. Under its notorious editor, the late Eddie Clontz, this newspaper gained a reputation for publishing the most unlikely newstories, with regular articles about BigFoot, secret NASA bases on the Moon and Elvis sightings. The terrifying thing is that tens of thousands of readers took the WWN seriously. The obituary of Eddie Clontz from The Times is well worth reading. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Web meant that a rapid fall in the circulation of WWN, as readers found alternative, free sources of fantastic stories. Although the WWN has folded, its Web site continues to amaze. Spend a few moments reading the articles on this site. What does it tell you about human credulity? How much of what you read in your favourite newspaper do you believe?

Media management

Much of what is reported in paper and on the airwaves consists of media releases or statements made by public relations (PR) firms, politicians, union leaders and government officials. Most of these individuals are concerned with 'spin' or putting their own slant to the news. The claim has been made than more half the new stories in Australian newspapers are based on media releases from PR firms.

This is not to say that this information is worthless. Newspapers and general interest magazines become primary sources when used by historians and other researchers to reconstruct past events. Even the most misleading media release tells you the official position: what an agency or firm wanted members of the public to believe at a particular point in time. Successive media releases can illustrate changing corporate or political strategies.

When evaluating material from the popular media, consider the following:

• Has the writer presented a balanced view or simply the appearance of fairness?
• What is the likely source of the news story? Is it the result of independent
  reporting or does it come second-hand?
• Are there signs of sensationalism or emotional language?
• How credible are the conclusions drawn by the writer from his or her evidence?
• Can you see any holes in the writer's arguments?
• Are there alternatives to the explanations provided by the writer?

Above all, compare the information you have gained from the popular media with
that contained in other, more reliable sources (such as peer-reviewed journal
articles).

Media Watch Media Watch, a weekly TV program on the ABC, specialises in revealing distortions and errors in the popular media. Have a look at two recent Media Watch programs, Fact Deficit Disorder and Journos Sold a Pup. Look through the next newspaper you buy and see if you can spot articles which don't quite ring true. Stories of new medical triumphs or unexpected environmental hazards are frequently worth a closer look.

A word on reputations

Distortion, exaggeration, bias, selective interpretation and deliberate omission are all against journalistic ethics. Unfortunately, this does not mean they are unknown or even rare. Even the "quality" metropolitan broadsheets or respected media outlets such as the ABC fall short of their own standards on occasion. The process of making the news can spill over into deliberate deception. This happens when the mass media report rising crime rates at times when victim surveys and official statistics alike indicate that rates are falling

Summary

This module examined

• distinguishing between information and opinion in media accounts
• evaluating the information from newspapers, magazines and other news media.