journalism & mass communication quarterly 2011 riffe 240 1

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Journalism & Mass

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DOI: 10.1177/107769901108800201

2011 88: 240Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyDaniel Riffe

An Editorial Comment

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A N EDITORIALCOMMENTBy Daniel Rifle,Universityo North Carolina

Influences on ews ContentThe myth that news media content represents a mirror image of eventsand happenings of the world was dismissed decades ago. Traits, states, and

contextual factors-ranging from individual journalists psychologies androle perceptions to professional routines and practices,* and from marketcompetition and organizational profit orientatiod to the structural pluralismof a community-have long been acknowledged as influencing all the newsthats fit to print.

In Mediating the Message: Theories of lnjluences on Mass Media Content,Shoemaker and Reese5 created a model illustrating the range of influencesthat help shape the content of mass media. Writing at the beginnings of thedigital age, when the Internet was viewed by many mass communicationscholars simply as an alternative delivery means, the authors could not haveforeseen how communication activities like blogging and Tweeting wouldinfluence reporters and news content.

Nonetheless, in their hierarchical model of influences, they identifiedthe attitudes and values of individual media workers as nested within con-centric circles of professional media routines; organizational roles, structure,policies, and economics; extramedia forces; and ideology.

It is a fairly straightforward process to place particular influencing fac-tors within one of the rings of the hierarchical model. journalists ethni-city, sexual orientation, or personal religious orientation, for example, wouldclearly rest within the innermost circle at the individual media worker level.Patterned reliance on expert sources for science news falls within the mediaroutines circle. Changes in ownership of a media company would be identi-fied as an influence occurring at the organizational level. Bowing to adver-tiser pressure not to cover something is an extreme example of extramediainfluence.

Finally, consistent, non-conspiratorial patterns of media coveragethe result of institutional, occupational, and cultural practices that make up

the mass media)b hat lend support to military actions advocated by power-ful elites and executed by government would be evidence of how ideologyinfluences media content. The ease of dealing with this ring becomes a bitmore problematic because of ideologys influence on each of the innerrings.

0

The first four articles in this issue demonstrate how scholars can tra-verse-both conceptually and in method-the rings of the Shoemaker andReese hierarchical model. Two feature a contemporary focus, with Reichsreconstruction interview data exploring commonality in reporting practicesacross print, radio, and online cultures, while Correa and Harp examinehow individual media workers gender and an organizations gender balanceinfluence coverage of a gendered issue.

However, the first two articles use an historical lens to discover howextramedia and perhaps ideological influences affected individual journalistsand media content. Meg Lamme examines how the first two elected presi-dents of the national Womens Christian Temperance Union employed asophisticated program of communications that at once embraced mass com-munication and interpersonal outreach, reflecting the Social Gospel andwomens roles as spiritual and moral guardians of the home. [p. 2451 These

240 ] O I R N A L I S M M SSO M M U N I C A T I O N Q U A R i t R l Y


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WCTU public relations pioneers strategy resonated with the press, recruited as anally in influencing public sentiment. [p 2541Matthew Cecil also chronicles an extramedia organizations recruitment of indi-vidual journalists to a cause, one with clear ideological implications, but one thatappealed to the chosen journalists individual values. Cecil documents how, fordecades, iconic FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover used stuff-written personal lettersover Hoovers signature) to Special Correspondents who were working journal-

ists, in order to cultivate a community of journalist-adjuncts, friends of the bureauwho stood ready to promote and defend the FBI in their publications, [p. 2671 and,in at least one case, to provide Hoover with information about the nascent civilrights movement in the Deep South.

Other articles in this issue include Kim, Scheufele, Shanahan, and Chois explo-ration of effects of attention to news coverage of a controversy in South Korea overrelocating a government center. The data reveal how news media use relates to in-formed issue assessment and identification of specific arguments about the issue. Inthe next article, Coleman extends her program of research on journalists ethical rea-soning about using photos to accompany stories, finding that black student journal-ists did not demonstrate preference for their own race in deciding ethical dilemmas.

Beginning with the US Supreme Courts landmark Tinker TI Des Moines studentspeech case, Kozlowski concludes that subsequent court interpretations have leftTinkev toothless, with the Supreme Courts vision of education and student speechdistorted and replaced instead by a hands-off judiciary that all-too willingly defersto school officials actions. [p. 3641

Bates brings historical analysis to another legal question-invasion of privacy.Sidis D F-R Publishing is an invasion-of-privacy case familiar to media law scholarsand students, but Bates provides a close examination of the life of the man at the cen-ter of the case, William James Sidis, who was originally a celebrated child prodigy.A 1937 ew Yorker article written under a pseudonym by James Thurber profiled hislife, mocking him as an eccentric failure. Sidis sued the publisher, alleging that thearticle constituted malicious libel and invasion of privacy.

The last article in this issue is a methodological essay / commentary by LanaRakow, outlining and highlighting key conceptual assumptions and approaches inthe use of interviews and focus groups in critical and cultural research. This is thesecond in a series of peer-reviewed contributions on methodology7 part of a plannedeffort to introduce particular methods and techniques to young and establishedscholars, and to shed light on what journal reviewers anticipate in manuscriptsemploying them.NOTES

1 E.g., David H. Weaver, Randdl A. Beam, Bonnie J. Brownlee, Paul S. Voakcs, and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, TheAmrricari [ournnlist iri TIIPZl st Ceirtury: U LWSPmple nt The Dawn A New Millennium Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates, 2007) For an earlier exploration, see the classic lthiel de Sola Pool and Irwin Shulman,Newsmens Fantasies, Audiences, and Newswriting, Public Opiniori Qirarfcdy 23 summer 1959): 145-58.

2 See, generally, Dan Berkowitz, Social Meanings ofNieuw A Text-Reader Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage, 1997) and,mure specifically, Gaye Tuchman, Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected, American [oournalofSociology 79 July 1973): 110-31.3. E.g. Stephen R. Lacy, The Effects o Intracity Competition on Daily Newspaper Content, lournalismQuarterly 6 summer/autumn 1987): 281-90; Randal A Beam, Content Differences between Daily Newspaperswith Strong and Weak Market Orientations, [uurnal isn i b Mass Conrmunication Quarferl y 80 summer 2003): 368-90.

4 E.g DouglasB. Hindman, Community Newspapers, Community Structural Pluralism, and Local Conflictwith Nonlocal Groups, [oirrnalism Qiinrfrrly 73 autumn 1996): 708-21.5. Pamela J Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on ass MediaC or i fm t ,2d ed. White Plains, N Y Longman, 1996).6. Shoemaker and Reese, Me diu f i r r ~hr Mcssnge: Thcuries of Ii1f7iit~ricc~sn Mass Medin Cuntent, 251.7. Jane B. Singer, Ethnography , ournalism Mass Coinniunicnfiori Q u a r f t d y86 spr ing 2009): 191 98.8. Daniel Riffe, Editorial Comment: Minimum Standards , [ournalrsrri G ass Cornmiinicatiun Qunrterly 85wm me r 2008): 234-35.

journalism & mass communication quarterly 2011 riffe 240 1

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