241mc news as a communication practice john keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

241MC

News as a Communication Practice

John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

Give me back the Berlin wall

Give me Stalin and St Paul

I’ve seen the future. It is murder...

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions

Won’t be nothing you can measure anymore

1. How will you get into the news?2. How will you control the news?

You have a church fete in aid of the newsteeple and you want The Coventry EveningTelegraph to cover it

Your child needs an operation in Americaand you need to get public donations

You are an animal rights activist group andyou want to publicise the plight of batterychicken farms in Turkey

You are on strike against the car firm Nissanand you want to get national support foryour cause

You are the Green Party and arestanding for election so need to publiciseyour manifesto

ationConglomerAmericanisDumbing downisCommercialisCelebrificEconomis

cheaper

Less equipment

Smaller buildings

Fewer staff

Centralised printing

global news- a global village

news audience widening

W I D E R

everyone linked straight into media

more information more frequently in less time

FASTER

‘technology allows us to package, graphicise and meld five minutes of old TV information into 60 seconds of new TV time’

Jon Snow Newszak

MOREMORE‘‘Information blizzardInformation blizzard’’ Baudrillard Baudrillard

‘‘message gluttony’ Lyotardmessage gluttony’ Lyotard

digitalisation

binary language

1000100100 11001110001 10100100100

1111000011 10000010010 00010111011

0001111100 10011001001 11101111110

0111011111 00000010101 00011101010

CONVERGED

Neophiliac

information highway Bill Gates utopian vision

Public Sphere - Jurgen Habermas

Cultural pessimist

divided increasingly unequal world

Control by big business

We’re going down, down, down cos that’s the only way to make this cruel cruel world hear what we’ve got to say

Dumbing down-isation

Public Communication

How will you get into the media?

How can you control the message?

Dumbing down-isation

SMALL EARTHQUAKE IN CHILE, NOT MANY DEAD

Dumbing down-isation

Golding and Elliot from Making the News (1979)

Studied TV news in Nigeria, Ireland and Sweden finding the same news values

Drama - news stories ‘are stories as well as news’ p.115

Visual Attractiveness - visually arresting

Entertainment - humorous, amusing, diverting

Importance - significant to a large number of people

Size - number of people, scale of event

Proximity - cultural and geographical

Brevity - happens quickly

Negativity - ‘Bad news is good news’ p.120

Recency - up-to-date

Elites - includes famous people

Personalities - ‘make stories comprehensible by reducing complex processes and institutions to the actions of individuals’122

Accessibility- is it accessible to the media for pictures and quotes?

Dumbing down-isation

The Fourth Estate

FIRST Church

SECOND Lords (Law)

THIRD Commons (Government)

FOURTH Media

Dumbing down-isation

Fourth estate

Dumbing down-isation

How many volcanoes erupt every year?

Known - 720

How many children die from starvation every day?

40,000

Number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads in 2011

37,214

2.5 million children died from starvation in Africa in 2012

In 2012 2.5 million people got AIDS mainly in India and Africa and 1.7 million died from the disease

Every minute, 20 football pitches of rainforest are cut down

Prince Harry was photographed naked in Las Vegas

2.5 MILLION DIE OF STARVATION IN AFRICA

Drama - X NOT A STORY

Visual Attractiveness - X

Entertainment - X

Importance - TO UK X

Size - Y

Proximity - TO UK X

Brevity - X

Negativity - Y

Recency - Y

Elites - X

Personalities - Y

Accessible - N

RESULT - 4/12

Dumbing down-isation

1.7 MILLION PEOPLE DIED FROM AIDS LAST YEAR IN INDIA AND AFRICA

Drama - X

Visual Attractiveness - X

Entertainment - X

Importance - TO UK X

Size - Y

Proximity - TO UK X

Brevity - X

Negativity - Y

Recency - N

Elites - N

Personalities - Y

Accessible - N

RESULT - 3/12

Dumbing down-isation

EVERY MINUTE 20 FOOTBALL PITCHES OF FOREST ARE CUT DOWN IN BRAZIL

Drama - X

Visual Attractiveness - X

Entertainment - X

Importance - TO UK ?

Size - X

Proximity - X

Brevity - X

Negativity - Y

Recency - Y

Elites - X

Personalities - X

Accessible - N

RESULT - 2/12

Dumbing down-isation

Drama – Y

Visual Attractiveness – Y

Entertainment - Y

Importance – X

Size – X

Proximity – Y

Brevity – Y

Negativity – X

Recency – Y

Elites – Y

Personalities – Y

Accessible - Y

RESULT - 9/12

Dumbing down-isation

PRINCE HARRY WAS NAKED

Using news values, how will you get into the news?

News is a ‘limited exercise of choice’ p.96 based on 3 criteria:

‘First convenience, in the shape of availability of someone to do the job..Second its intrinsic news value, and third, external encouragement, that is, pressure from news sources, the government or the corporation to cover it’ p.96

We are amusing ourselves to death

Neil Postman

Dumbing down-isation

Economisation

I want money, that’s what I want

i. Primary court, emergency services, politics

ii. Secondary: education, pressure groups

iii. Public Relations

iv. News Agencies

v. Freelancers

News Sources

Economisation

‘They (journalists) know less, cost less and are approached by ever more publicists, lobbyists and spin doctors but they produce material that is disseminated more powerfully to more places’

Curran and Seaton Power Without Responsibility

Economisation

Hot-seating

Economisation

http://www.72point.com

It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

and that’s what gets results

Celebrification

Celebrification

Dead-batted questions she did not want

Revealed through her terms

Body Language - puppy-look

Dress – black

Order of questions – depression, enemies, Camilla, adultery

Were you unfaithful?Yes, I adored him; yes I was in love with him

37mins

Celebrification

Conglomeration

I got the power

Conglomeration

Silvio Berlusconi

Conglomeration

‘the newspaper staff has been left to get on with the job’ because proprietors, ‘have global problems of trade and investment to occupy their minds’

John Whale in Power Without Responsibility

Murdoch gave The Times to right-wing Andrew Neil if you wrote a story against his views, ‘what would happen is you would write a story and it would disappear’ PWR

Wider reading

The Good, the Bad and the Unacceptable by Raymond Snoddy

Conglomeration

The agencies are agenda-setters ..for they make the first decision on how and if international stories..will be covered for television

Paterson

Conglomeration

As we are technically capable of becoming more and more informed and better and better informed, we’re at risk of becoming less and less informed by fewer and fewer people

Dimbleby in Paterson

Conglomeration

News Agencies

•Reuters

•Agence France Presse

•Associated Press

•World Television News

Conglomeration

Reuters:

In 91 countries - 192 countries

196 bureaux - 22 in the US

Conglomeration

‘The agencies are agenda-setters ..for they make the first decision on how and if international stories..will be covered for television’

Paterson

Conglomeration

globalisation

instrumental

Marshall McLuhan

A global village

Space-time collapse

globalisation

All my life, watching America

Americanisation

Jeremy Tunstall (1977)

The Media are American

..and vodka is Russian. So what?

Americanisation

20th July 2004 Bangladesh vs (New Orleans)

2/3 of country flooded (one city)

1,000 + deaths (83)

500,000 starving children (10,000 people removed)

Americanisation

Mobile phone fears. British Health Council warns that over half-an-hour a day can cause brain tumours

BBC gets record viewing figures. On average 6 million more than any rival

Car gridlock fear by 2016. RAC warn that if car ownership keeps increasing the average speed will be 12 mph

Israel bomb - 300 feared dead in café explosion

Divorce rate at all-time high in UK. One in two marriages now fail Home Office report

Woman, 94, killed in Edinburgh. Shot at 7pm while collecting fish from a chip shop

Princess Caroline of Monaco in hospital after drug overdose

Fire in Bradford, 7 dead including 4 children and one 81-year-old. Thought to have been started by chip pan.

Bruce Willis has cancer. Film career over for star as tests reveal lung cancer to be inoperable

Queen in fall, has to cancel all appointments for next 4 days. She fell on her arm and badly bruised it while walking in Balmoral

Health scare. Innocent smoothies contain dangerous toxins claim scientists at Cambridge University. Tesco withdraw it from shelves

Manchester United are cheats says Arsenal boss. Arsene Wenger accuses rivals of being ‘morally corrupt’ after Theo Walcott penalty dive won them the match

4x4 cars are damaging the environment says Lady Gaga who fronts a Greenpeace campaign to point out that . The effects of global warming effects are increased by 50% compared to other cars.

commercialisation

sponsors the weather

commercialisation

commercialisation

How advertisers affect the news

Allow news to be produced

Target the audience

Change content

Create supplements

commercialisation

Your company Cognia has had an explosion – 30 dead.

Your company McMartins has been found to be exporting live chickens from the UK getting them processed in Argentina and then selling them as British meat.

Your company London School of Ergonomics (LSE) has been found out to have given a degree to a dictator’s son

HOW TO WRITE A PRESS RELEASE

HOW TO WRITE A PRESS RELEASE

Activity

• As a group, go through the press releases provided.

• For each press release, identify either a good or a bad point

What a press release should do

• Convey new information• Capture editorial coverage• Consider all stakeholders

– Client: reinforce strategy, set agenda, align with advertising and marketing effort

– Audience: address appropriately– Media: news values/establish working links

Activity

• Now write a press release for Bosco’s

• Now pass your press release to the group to your left

Risks • For the media:

– credibility

• For the PR: – PR results not guaranteed– empty press conferences – PR backfires

Activity

• Now write a press release for Bosco’s

• Now pass your press release to the group to your left

Typical Mistakes1. No names/contact details 2. No business card3. Spelling mistakes4. Informal tone5. No 5Ws6. Adding irrelevant info7. Embargo risks8. Graphics and pictures