1.4 News
Learning Objectives
After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:
What is news?
What is objectivity?
How do journalists acquire the news?
How do journalists assemble the news?
What is bias?
How is the news presented?
How do people in public life try to influence their depictions by and in the media?
What are three common ways journalists cover people in public life?
NewsReports by journalists of selected events commonly involving violence, conflict, disasters, and scandals. is an account of some of what is happening or has (usually recently) happened in the world. Common subjects are violence (e.g., wars, terrorism), crime (e.g., scams), natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), and scandals (sexual, financial). Information about or relevant to politics, government, and public policies commonly appears in the media as news. The statements and actions of powerful or prominent people, especially the American president (e.g., President Trump’s tweets) are news. So are human interest stories, such as the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch discussed in the preamble to this chapter. Few stories or issues receive news coverage at any time.
News is timely, a breaking event like an assassination attempt on a president, or newly revealed information, such as a video made years ago of presidential candidate Donald Trump expressing disdainful views about how to interact with women. Slow-moving processes that may be of vital importance (e.g., global warming) take time to become news, often requiring a “peg”—the release of an alarmist study, a congressional hearing, or presidential speech—on which to hang the story.
News can be divided into three spheres. The sphere of consensus, consisting of unquestionable values and unchallengeable truths, lacks controversy. The sphere of deviance consists of people and opinions outside convention. They are usually deemed unworthy of being reported. The sphere of legitimate controversy is where much of the news, especially about government, politics, and policies, takes place and is reported.
Journalists
News is mainly reported by journalists. They work under time pressure, often with tight deadlines to come up with stories around the clock. Competition can be intense as can be the pursuit of readers and ratings. The job has become more difficult in recent years as budget cuts have led news organizations to rely on fewer reporters for more stories for more outlets.
The profession can be dangerous and deadly: at least seventy journalists are killed annually worldwide. A few of these deaths receive international coverage, notably that of the intrepid war correspondent Marie Colvin. Far more attention was given to the assassination and dismemberment in 2018 in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul of the Saudi citizen and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly by a hit squad from his country of origin. His murder stayed in the news for several weeks because he was an occasional columnist for the Washington Post and the ineffectual and unconvincing efforts of the Saudi government, abetted by President Trump, to deny knowledge of and then acknowledge responsibility for his death.
Any influence of reporters’ characteristics and opinions on their stories is limited by their profession’s code of ethics and the norm of objectivityIn news reporting, impartiality and fairness, and the reporting of facts without opinion and including different sides of an issue. they learn in journalism school or on the job. These include reporting accurate, verified information, and different sides of an issue, and being impartial and fair. They should exclude their personal opinions, not deliberately distort, and separate reporting from opinion, commentary, and advocacy.
If they are found out, journalists who deliberately and blatantly violate the profession’s ethics are punished. A New York Times reporter was dismissed in 2013 after it was discovered that he had fabricated or plagiarized around forty of the six hundred articles he had written for the paper; editors resigned in the wake of the discoveries. A star foreign correspondent for USA Today, who had worked for the paper for over twenty years, resigned in January 2004, accused of plagiarism and of inventing parts or all of some of his stories.
Few journalists are guilty of such egregious violations. That said, abiding by professional standards and journalistic norms, and adhering to objectivity, can be complicated, even difficult. This will become clear in our discussion of the processes of “acquiring” news, “assembling” news, “presentation” of news, and “interactions” that follow (after “Comparing Content”).
Comparing Content
Depictions of Journalists
The first type, exemplified by Hildy, is the journalist as intrepid seeker after truth and crusader for justice. The most famous real-life equivalents are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who helped uncover the Watergate scandal and wrote a book about it, All the President’s Men, which was turned into a popular Hollywood movie. Even some caustic satires of the news business contain versions of the journalist as noble loner. In Network, Peter Finch plays a television news anchor who begins to go insane on camera, shouting, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” In the movie, his pain and anguish are exploited by amoral network executives. In real life, his battle cry became the theme of citizens’ tax revolts in the late seventies and could be heard at Tea Party rallies thirty years later.
The second type of journalist, typified by Walter Burns, is more common in the entertainment media. At their worst, as in Billy Wilder’s classic Ace in the Hole, such reporters cynically and callously exploit the disasters of the human condition. But even less bitter films show reporters as led astray from their devotion to the truth to the point that they destroy lives and reputations in their reckless search for an exclusive story ahead of other reporters (a scoop) that is dramatic and shocking. In Absence of Malice, Sally Field plays a reporter who ends up besmirching a good man’s (Paul Newman) reputation. In Broadcast News, William Hurt and Albert Brooks compete to become a news anchor. Hurt—good-looking, smooth, unscrupulous, and none too bright—wins out over the dumpier, knowledgeable, and dedicated Brooks.
A contemporary example of the second type is Rita Skeeter. Introduced by J. K. Rowling in her enormously popular Harry Potter series, Skeeter writes for the Daily Prophet, Witch Weekly, and other publications. She is untrustworthy, unscrupulous, vindictive, and vile. She justifies her behavior with the motto, “Our readers have a right to the truth.” But her news stories are error-strewn and full of lies. They destroy friendships, inflict pain and suffering, and deprive decent people of their jobs. Rita Skeeter gets scoops by turning herself into a bug. The moral is that such journalists are nasty bugs.
Acquiring the News
Journalists follow standard procedures to obtain the news. They hunt it together in “packs.” They go to the scene, especially of wars and disasters. They talk to people who have participated in, witnessed, or claim to know what happened. They dig into records. Easing their job, many events, such as press conferences, trials, and elections, are scheduled in advance.
In hunting the news, journalists, akin to the unscrupulous one in Ace in the Hole (discussed above), can be obnoxiously intrusive to the point of wreaking harm. Flooding with their numbers and equipment into communities stricken by violence, they undertake a “feeding frenzy” for news: violate people’s privacy, demand interviews, and besiege the vulnerable victims and witnesses.
Beats
News organizations guarantee stories by assigning reporters to cover certain beatsInstitutions, organizations, and subjects that a reporter is assigned to cover regularly. such as the White House or specific subjects such as environmental policy. Institutions and subjects not on reporters’ beats (off the beaten track, so to speak) generate few stories unless something newsworthy thrusts them into prominence, as when the banking crisis of 2008 provoked questions about the regulatory ineffectiveness of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other government agencies.
Sources
Journalists frequently interact with and rely on sourcesPeople, often in government, who, for one reason or another, provide reporters with information.—especially people in government and politics—to provide them with information, facts, quotes, and scoopsNews obtained ahead of other reporters..
The desire and competition for scoops can lead reporters (and their editors) into egregious errors. In January 2019, BuzzFeed reported the sensational news, citing as the sources “two federal law enforcement officials,” that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, investigating the possibility of collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian authorities, had evidence that President Trump had instructed his former lawyer to lie to Congresss. The story spread like wildfire through cable news and social media, becoming the object of widespread discussion, until other news outlets failed to confirm it and the Office of Special Counsel quickly denied the story’s validity. Justifiably, President Trump attacked BuzzFeed for promoting fake news.
Often, sources supply material openly and unreservedly. Other sources, commonly dubbed “whistle-blowers,” reveal dubious activities, outrages, and scandals. They may “leak” material of their own volition or as authorized by superiors that is confidential or secret or classified. Leakers usually require anonymity.
Sources can be unreliable—their memories fallible, their revelations one-sided; they may omit information, even lie. Among sources’ possible motives for communicating with reporters are the national interest, dissent from or disagreement with government policies or actions, self-interest, ambition, anger, frustration, revenge, undermining rivals or opponents, and defeating secrecy.
The reporter-source relationship is symbiotic: they need each other. Reporters need sources for news that is otherwise hard to obtain. Sources need reporters to get their views and information as favorably into the news as possible.
Sometimes the relationship is adversarial, with reporters pressing a reluctant source for information. Sources must often respond to reporters’ ideas of what is news. Information from one beat may produce a news story that another beat wants to keep quiet. Refusal to reveal information may result in negative coverage and in sources becoming targets in reporters’ and columnists’ stories.
Government Reports
Legislative committees, regulatory agencies, and governmental departments and commissions conduct investigations, hold hearings, and issue reports and press releases. Journalists sometimes draw on these for their stories. Typical is a New York Times front-page story headlined “Terror Suspects Buying Firearms, Report Finds” (in the United States), based on an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.
Investigative Reporting
Some journalists specialize in investigative reportingIntensive research by journalists, usually into subjects that those involved don’t want exposed., pursuing information that may involve legal or ethical wrongdoing and that is likely to be concealed. Sometimes known as “muckraking,” this reporting requires detailed and thorough digging into a story. It is often time-consuming and expensive. The New York Times, Washington Post, Vice News Tonight, and the New Yorker engage in it, as do the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org), ProPublica (http://www.propublica.org), and the Center for Investigative Reporting (https://www.revealnews.org/). Examples of award-winning investigative stories include exposure of secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons in Eastern Europe, the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces, appalling care in veterans’ hospitals, and job-related deaths of Mexican workers in the United States.
Wire Services
The media rely on the wire servicesAgencies, particularly the Associated Press (AP), that cover and transmit news stories from throughout the world to their subscribers, resulting in similar coverage in many of the news media. for much of their international and national news. Wire services cover and transmit stories worldwide from their own staff and from reporters who work for the many newspapers and other organizations that belong to the services. Prominent wire services are the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. The AP sends news to approximately 1,700 newspapers, 5,000 radio and television stations, and 8,500 other media outlets in over one hundred countries.
Video feeds supplied by the AP and Reuters are the source of much of the televised international news. Subscribers are sent video accompanied by natural sound without narration and brief printed informational scripts. Some foreign correspondents are based in London doing voice-overs for these feeds for broadcast on their networks’ news programs.
Assembling the News
In assembling the news, journalists make choices, starting with what stories, subjects, and issues to report. They are also influenced by their assumptions and values. Some of these, such as democracy and freedom, usually produce positive stories. Others, such as terrorism (terrorists) and racism are inherently negative. Journalists also decide how to “frame” the story, what “facts” to include (and exclude), what “words” to use, and the “tone.” Such choices often lead the stories to have particular perspectives, even bias.
Framing
Facts
Reporters imbue their stories with facts. It is facts that help give them validity and credibility. But facts may be hard to find or establish. People can benefit from concealing them. Facts may be challenged, contradicted, denied. Moreover, to make sense or be given meaning, many facts require context and/or interpretation.
Facts are not necessarily self-evident. As then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously responded at a press conference (on February 12, 2002), to a question asking “if there was any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction?”
“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.... There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”
Responding to questions on NBC’s Meet the Press (January 22, 2017) about President Trump’s contention that the size of his inauguration crowd was larger than reported by the news media, his counselor Kellyanne Conway said the White House had put forth “alternative facts.” (Critics use such phrases as “post-factual” and “truth-averse”.) But to those who believe that a fact is a fact is a fact, the phrase “alternative fact” is problematic, a denial of reality: it is not a fact, indeed it is more likely to be false.
Fact-checking is an integral part of reporting. Internal checking scrutinizes facts for accuracy and validity before publishing them. External fact-checking, prominent during the 2016 election and subsequently, undertaken by PolitiFact and the like, consists of making judgments about the veracity, the truth, of questionable factual assertions made by people in the news, especially public officials, above all by President Trump. External fact-checking sometimes deters lying, but it may not stop people from believing the lie, such as those who support President Trump and often distrust the press.
Words
The words used in a story can influence its meaning. Conflict in Congress is inherently negative when called “gridlock” but less so, even positive, when described as “debate” or “deliberation.”
Consider the dilemma of journalists faced with untrue statements by President Trump but reluctant or unwilling to call him a liar (that is, statements made with intent to deceive). Among the possible synonyms, most of them less blatant than “lies,” were erroneous assertions, disputable or bogus claims, post-factual, and truth-averse.
Tone
A final element in assembling a story is its tone: that is, a distinctive way of expressing its contents. There are myriad possibilities. Tone can be ironic, skeptical, snide, cynical, sarcastic, insulting, aggressive, hostile, harsh, but also sympathetic, supportive, and congratulatory.
Bias (Slant)
It should be clear by now that the processes of acquiring and assembling the news make it difficult for journalists, no matter how dedicated, to achieve objectivity. This has contributed to persistent accusations against the mainstream news media of and widespread discussions about bias.
We will not reiterate this extensive literature here. But we will make three key points. First, much depends on how one defines bias. We define it as intentional (a central term), favoring one side (individual, ideology, viewpoint) over another, expressed through selection of subject, frame, facts (liable to omission and distortion), and skewed language (as in Fox News’s “Obama fled Washington” to describe the president’s departure for Camp David).
Second, bias assumes motivation, that is, intent. But intent can be hard to identify or unravel, let alone prove, unless evidence of it is persistent and consistent. Third, motivation is often ascribed when a story or report favors or disfavors its subject. But this may be a function of the subject itself, not the deliberate intent of the journalist: an account in the U.S. news media of a terrorist attack in the country is inherently unfavorable to the terrorists.
Presentation
As a result of widely agreed-upon criteria of newsworthiness, the process of gathering the news, especially in packs, and the use of news services, the news media often report many of the same stories. Only a few stories are featured prominently at any one time due to limitations of resources and of broadcast prime time and front-page print space.
Nonetheless, there are some differences among the media in the range and type of news on which they focus. For example, the New York Times, with its stable of reporters in Washington, DC, and its foreign correspondents, emphasizes government and politics in the United States and abroad. Cable news channels focus mainly on U.S. politics, often repeating stories from the New York Times and Washington Post. They give short shrift to foreign stories. In fact, the Fox News Channel has a segment titled “Around the World in 80 Seconds.” In contrast, the BBC World News covers the world.
The media also differ stylistically in how they present the news. The Times does it with relative sobriety. Cable channels dramatize their reports by announcing “breaking news,” using graphic captions, accompanying stories with pulsating music, engaging in fast-paced editing, and repeatedly admonishing viewers to “stay with us.”
Television news is picture driven: stories with appealing, dramatic, or even available camera footage are more likely to be played prominently than those without. Viewers are unaware of what is not shown, what happened before or after the picture was taken, and whether or not the shot was staged. Camera angles, distance from the subject, especially close-ups, length of shot, camera movement, and editing, all influence viewers’ impressions. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it can also mislead.
Enduring Image
The Overthrow of Saddam Hussein
The toppling of a dictator’s statue is an enduring image, symbolizing the literal collapse of a regime’s authority and the massive uprising and joy of a population freed at last from tyranny. On April 9, 2003, a U.S. mechanized vehicle using a cable pulled down Saddam Hussein’s mammoth statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. The square was sealed off by U.S. marines. The few people in it were U.S. soldiers, Iraqis from the United States, promoted “Free Iraqi Forces Militia” (comprising exiles who had recently been returned to the country by the Pentagon), and journalists.
On television the statue falls, the crowd cheers. On the front pages of newspapers in the United States and around the world, the Reuters news agency photograph shows the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue under the watchful eye of an American soldier. The images symbolize the U.S. defeat of the dictator and his regime and the Iraqi people celebrating their newfound freedom. Wider shots of the square, revealing that only a handful of people were in the plaza, were far less common.
This clips explains how the destruction of the Saddam statue in Baghdad was used as propaganda.
The first photograph of the statue being pulled down reflects news values of vividness, drama, and conflict. It spectacularly harkens back to the removal of statues of Lenin and Stalin after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union. The alternative photos, showing much more of the relatively empty square, lacked dramatic news values and thus their symbolic effects.
Because the news media found the dramatic image to be irresistible, they reinforced a frame, pushed by the Bush administration, of a jubilant Iraqi population welcoming its liberators. But the meaning of an image can change. Now, for many people, the falling statue represents the illusion of a U.S. military success that turned into a quagmire of frustration.
Interactions and Types of Coverage
As we document throughout this book, many of the people involved in public life understand that their election and reelection, their effectiveness in office, and their ability to achieve their objectives, often depend on how the media portray them, their deliberations and debates, disagreements and conflicts, cooperation and consensus, action and inaction, struggles for power, and their decisions. They know that media depictions can influence people’s opinions, understandings of policy problems and possible solutions, and can encourage or discourage participation in politics. So, they bestow favors, such as giving access to sympathetic journalists. (President Trump’s press secretary gave White House press credentials to media organizations previously denied them, but known to favor the president.)
People in public life and their staffs look to interact with news media personnel. Of course, many of them are of little interest to the media and are thus ignored by them. Others are of intermittent interest. A few, notably the president and his associates and party leaders in Congress, are of consuming interest, particularly if involved in controversy or scandals.
Nonetheless, many of these individuals, abetted by aides sometimes dubbed “spin doctors,” try, more or less, to manage and manipulate the news: to influence journalists’ selection of stories and their contents. They deploy a plethora of techniques.
They make public appearances, give speeches, hold press conferences, and stage newsworthy events. They “stay on message”: repeating it and refusing to be diverted from their position-perspective. They speak in brief, pithy phrases known as “sound bites.” They adhere to their “talking points.” They opportunely release bad news when it is least likely to be noticed (known as “taking out the trash”). They deplore, decry, rail against, but may engage in, leaks. They devise “scripts” or “narratives” to depict their behavior, activities, actions, policies, and the consequences of these policies, as positively as possible. They try to identify themselves and their parties with positive policies, known as “branding.” They conceal, minimize, or put the best gloss on their mistakes and blunders.
President Trump has pursued a new type of attack against some news organizations, particularly CNN and the television networks, accusing them of promulgating and perpetuating “fake news,” that is, stories with no basis in reality and probably intended to mislead and deceive people. His primary example was the charge that members of his campaign staff, if not the president himself, were possibly aware of, perhaps involved with, and may even have colluded with Russian agents in the hacking and release of emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign—a charge of which he would be absolved after an investigation of almost two years. (More on this in the Chapters on Campaigns and Elections and the Presidency).
They are aware of the news cycle: that is, of how long an event is likely to remain newsworthy, usually twenty-four hours, before it is replaced. They come to understand “optics”: that is, of how their actions, as communicated and interpreted by the media, will look to the public.
Favors! Persuasion! Manipulation! Pressure! Intimidation! Despite and because of all these techniques, the news (and often opinion) media’s coverage varies. Three common types are “lap dog,” “watchdog,” and “attack dog.”
Lap Dogs
Journalists usually rely on policymakers as knowledgeable and convenient sources of information. Much news, therefore, consists of the issues and policies among officials and politicians. Political scientist Lance Bennett and his colleagues call this indexingWhen journalists index the news to the debate about an issue and policy among officials and politicians.. The news media serve as lap dogsJournalists, when the government’s perspective (overwhelmingly) dominates their news stories. when the government’s perspective dominates. This particularly takes place when leaders and prominent figures of the opposition party refrain from or are reluctant to criticize and challenge the government’s policies or do not articulate an alternative viewpoint to reporters to include in their stories.
A notable example of the news media as lap dogs was their coverage of the George W. Bush administration’s claims in 2002–2003 that the U.S. must attack Iraq because that state possessed weapons of mass destruction. Leaders of the Democratic Party did not forcefully challenge the White House’s official story, plans, and rationale. Most of the news media then transmitted the administration’s arguments without subjecting them to sustained analysis, criticism, and rebuttal.
Watchdogs
The news media are sometimes watchdogsJournalists, when their news stories hold people in power accountable by scrutinizing and reporting their statements, activities, claimed accomplishments, and failures., holding people in government and other powerful institutions accountable by scrutinizing and reporting their statements, activities, claimed accomplishments, and failures. This type of coverage can be provoked by dramatic events, such as Hurricane Katrina, to which the George W. Bush administration responded unconvincingly. Journalists went to the scene, saw the devastation and havoc for themselves, and showed it directly to viewers. Outraged reporters asked so many impassioned questions of administration officials about their inadequate response to Katrina that the Salon website compiled a “Reporters Gone Wild” video clip.
Attack Dogs
The news media can be attack dogsJournalists whose stories about government and politics are highly negative and focus on blunders and disasters, scandals and corruption.. President Richard M. Nixon observed, based on his many years in public life, that “for the press, progress is not news—trouble is news.” The news about government and politics is often negative, about blunders and disasters, scandals and corruption. This “gotcha” journalism can provoke a “feeding frenzy” in which reporters, like a pack of dogs, search for, uncover, and chew over every morsel of the story. News coverage of President Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky exemplified such a feeding frenzy.
Key Takeaway
In this section, we have explained how journalists decide what is news; how they acquire it (through beats, sources, investigative reporting, and other ways); how they assemble the news (by making decisions about stories, values, frames, facts, words, and tone); and how they present news. We briefly discussed bias. Then we described the techniques that people in public life use to manage and manipulate the news media to try to obtain positive and avoid negative depictions. And we specified three ways that the news media can behave toward people in authority, especially government and politics: as lap dogs, watchdogs, or attack dogs.
Exercises
What makes something news? How do journalists decide what to report as news?
Why was the close-up photograph of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down so much more widely used in the media than the wide-angle shot? How does the need to tell an interesting story affect how the news gets reported?
What factors determine how journalists cover politics? When is their coverage of politicians more likely to be favorable, and when is it more likely to be critical?