Over the last couple of years many of the avid newspaper readers have begun to cancel their subscription due to the increased negativity of the stories. Many of the stories concerning deaths, thefts, and our damaged economy have taken over the front pages of papers as well as online sites. TV news is also involved in this as well showing a large amount of violence on their news programs. The media has the ability to make one story more important than others. The amount of time it gets on a broadcast, way it is written or spoken, and the position in which it is located within a newspaper or news cast. McCombs and Shaw state “In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position.” So why is it some stories that may seem pointless stay in the news for weeks? Who determines which stories are more important than other and why they are important? The media has the ability to “set the agenda” on the importance of issues. A good example would be to go back to a clip Professor Burns showed us in class that showed CNN’s broadcast of the presidential debate. The first question asked was to Newt Gingrich about his “open marriage” claim to his ex-wife. The question in which John King asked was “Would you like to take some time to respond to that?” Gingrich came back firing but right away the media set the tone for the entire debate starting with that question. So why was it CNN felt that this question was the most important to start off with? Personally, I have no idea and it frustrates me to see the media have this much power to shift every ones focus of the debate to a personal issue. Rogers and Dearing state “Many scholars now see omnipotent mass media systems as the mechanism linking the public with political policymakers. The media have usurped the linking function of political parties in the United States, creating what can now be thought of as a “media democracy” (Linsky, 1986).” As we see now a lot in the media negative news is the most “newsworthy” so to say. We can turn on the TV news channels at any time and will see a story about a death or some act of violence that has taken place. I have found through personal research and opinion that the more negative the story the longer it is going to stay in the news. Now not all news continues to have negative views. Since many media viewers are tired of the negativity, positive newspapers and news sites have emerged. They have taken the same concepts traditional media stations except they apply it to positive stories. They give more time and space to the bigger stories like traditional media but show nothing of negativity. For me I was unaware of these sites because the most “credible” news places like The New York Times, CNN, FOX, and more are the ones always shown. The agenda setting theory can be applied to this as well in that the major news station are considered more newsworthy because they have the ability to show their stories through multiple media outlets. Many of the positive news sites are still in blog type format. All in all our country sees too much negativity when it comes to getting our news and more should begin to find other new sources in which things are shown in a more positive light.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Agenda Setting in Mass Media
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Along with Mike, I too am frustrated with the media’s power to shift everyone’s focus at any given time. He related it to the political debate where the very first question was about Newt Gingrich’s personal life. We agreed in class that it was an inappropriate way to start the debate but CNN was doing what they thought would be the most interesting to viewers. Before that debate, all the news stations were talking about the controversy and it appeared that CNN wanted to chime in. In the McCombs and Shaw chapter “The agenda-setting function of mass media” they stated, “Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position.” (McCombs 153). Towards the end of the chapter they did go on to say, “Second, news media do have a point of view, sometimes extreme biases.” (McCombs 159). We all, for the most part, turn on the news to get information about events happening around us, so when it comes to something as important as presidential races we get bias analysis. It basically comes down to whatever channel or program you watch, you will likely vote for the presidential candidate that they “brainwash” you to vote for.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing can be seen on ESPN. Once they find a great story that people find interesting or controversial, they will beat it to death. Take Tim Tebow as an example, we talked about it class how ESPN said Tim Tebow’s name over 150 times in an hour. Talk about brainwashing. That is crazy to think how you can talk about someone so much during an hour. The same thing happened during the Tiger Woods controversy. The thing that bothered a lot of professional athletes about the Tim Tebow coverage is that there was rarely anything bad talked about him. He played three horrible quarters, most of the time, and then showed up and then led his teams to amazing comebacks. No one on ESPN talked about his flaws that much. Players talked about this on Twitter and it got to the point where once the Broncos season was over people started to say that they would finally not have to hear about Tebow until next season.
What makes the Tim Tebow scenario so interesting is that people either love him or hate him. Viewers loved to comment on Tim Tebow before and after every game. Rogers and Dearing asked, “Is it necessary for an issue to involve contention?” (Rogers 83). They went on to say, “Similarly, Cobb and Elder (1971) stated: ‘An issue is a conflict between two or more identifiable groups of procedural or substantive matters relating to the distribution of positions or resources.’” (Rogers 83). People have strong opinions when it comes to sports and politics. There are always multiple sides when it comes to those topics so it can lead to big debates. With Newt Gingrich’s debate questions, CNN decided to ask a controversial question where some people feel as if it should not even be a debate topic and where others think his personal life should be a big factor in being elected. As for ESPN, they knew that the Tim Tebow story was big in the sports world and they decided to keep running with it because it was a controversial story with many opinions towards him. We, the viewers, are influenced by what the mass media shows us, but we also influence what the mass media decides to show.
McCombs & Shaw make an excellent point at the end of their analysis of media effects: “Future studies of communication behavior…must consider both psychological and sociological variables…” (162). Given this assertion, of all the theories presented regarding the media’s agenda, the agenda-building concept seems the most plausible. Agenda-building is “a collective process in which media, government, and the citizenry reciprocally influence one another in areas of public policy” (Baran & Davis, 296). To say that the media is the sole decision maker of what is newsworthy disregards the impact that society has on such choices. The media is, after all, a business, and must listen to the needs of the masses in order to generate profit. As McCombs & Shaw discussed, “the media simply…match[es] its messages to audience interests” (160).
ReplyDeleteIt is also important to note that the owners of media conglomerates have some authority in deciding what is reported as well. I am reminded of an article I read in which a UNICEF representative commented on the media’s role in securing funding for its humanitarian efforts. He said that the media does not report on famine (or any suffering for that matter), only death. The loss of a media customer, so to speak, is much more newsworthy because it directly affects the interests of the media as a business. Nevertheless, what constitutes news is most certainly a collaborative effort.
The issue I take with the agenda-setting theory is that it assumes that readers and viewers are the ideal media consumer. These people are informed, conscious, and engaged in society or the concerns of the public. However, not every person watching the news is actively listening or offering his or her full attention to the program. This causes them to miss the details of a story, which deters the intended effect (telling viewers what to think about). Even though they are aware of an issue, they have no further knowledge and cannot formulate thoughts or opinions on a subject.
Your last point about blogging got me thinking: can social media truly be set with a media agenda like print and television news? A good example of agenda-setting that I can think of is Perez Hilton’s blog. While he reports on all things entertainment, he also clearly adds his own importance to topics such as gay rights and Madonna, two personal interests that he devotes a significant amount of posts to. So, although some social media have the power to determine what is newsworthy, the newest generation of interactive media consumer makes it difficult to see whether or not an agenda is apparent in all types of social media.
Coming from a critical media perspective, it’s pretty much impossible to disagree with your post, Mike. We have spent the past four years studying the media and the entirety of media manipulation, but many are not as fortunate as us, and don’t even recognize how the media uses the agenda-setting function to manipulate the public on discussing issues and events “of importance”. News outlets undoubtedly play a role in what issues are considered “issues” for the country, but as Bernard Cohen observed, “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” (Rogers and Dearing 80) This is true, the media gives the public the “important” issues, but it’s up to each individual to understand the bias of news stations, and the issues confronted by the media should lead the public to think about different issues based off of what is shown in the media. The media is an easy victim to blame for what our nation deems “important”, but we shouldn’t only focus on the issues in the media. We, as a society, should know that there are other issues of importance other than what we see through the media.
ReplyDeleteMike, you pose the (may be rhetorical) questions of “So why is it some stories that may seem pointless stay in the news for weeks? Who determines which stories are more important than others and why they are important” The media does have the ability to shape the agenda on importance of issues, but as McCombs and Shaw discuss in their study, the basic characteristics of newspapers, television, and newsmagazines differ. “Newspapers appear daily and have lots of space. Television is daily but has a severe time constraint. News magazines appear weekly; news therefore cannot be as “timely”.” (McCombs and Shaw 159) It’s important to make a distinction between the various news outlets, and find a correlation between which outlets are most popular among news-seeking individuals. Newspapers are falling to less of importance to read every day, while we get most of our news from television, magazines, and the internet, which have different characteristics. TV news outlets do a great job at focusing on minor issues that they believe is of importance, and can be reported under a time constraint. News magazines and the internet are not “timely”, so they don’t necessarily have to focus on “newsworthy” items, but rather issues and events that they can unravel through time to garner the most attention and audience. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a common notion for the journalism industry, and although many people understand their motives through that phrase, they don’t connect it with all the issues the media shows, and sometimes place too much trust into what they see in the media. The role of the media is to not dictate what Americans should be thinking, but should be used as a prompt to understand what we need to be “in the know” of, and it’s up to us to take what we learn from the media and conduct our own personal outside research so we have a better understanding of the issue at large.
Also, something we, as media analysts, are very well aware of, is that “news media do have a point of view, sometimes extreme bias.” (McCombs and Shaw 159) This, is where I find a real issue in the agenda-setting of media outlets. It’s not known to their audiences, but different news stations have different point of views and steers away from the objectiveness value of news reporting. We are supposed to trust the news, and all news outlets should be deemed “credible” if it is reporting news to a larger audience, but in the day and time, credibility and objectiveness are not two of the most valued merits of news anymore. We can find news from so many different outlets than the traditional media outlets, with the rise of blogs and social media on the internet, that people shouldn’t put so much trust in the news outlets, but really use their own time to filter out the issues and news stories that are important to their own lives.
Another McCombs and Shaw quote that contributes to the conversation is the following:
ReplyDelete“Perhaps this hypothesized agenda-setting function of the mass media is most succinctly stated by Cohen, who noted that the press ‘may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about’. While the mass media may have little influence on the direction or intensity of attitudes, it is hypothesized that the mass media set the agenda for each political campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward political issues,” (McCombs and Shaw, 154).
Although this study is based on political foundations, and points to media reporting on campaigns instead of political issues, it brings up various interesting points related to the agenda setting theory. It is not limited to politics, in terms of being force fed media topics. Although opinions vary within forums of debate, people are debating the same topics; whether its politics, sports, business, or entertainment.
Although this theory blames the media, one must wonder if mass media is just fulfilling the desires of the public. If people actually want news topics or various delivery methods different than what were accustomed to, then why aren’t there flourishing outlets that are easily accessible. Michael makes a great point in talking about “positive news sources” that have begun to emerge in the blogosphere, but they are not readily available to the casual media or news consumer. Is it perhaps our own fault? Have we dug our own grave in terms of how and what types of news are delivered to us?
Like anything else, media providers are business people, so they will provide the most profitable and/or demanded products. If we as a culture were more interested in critical issues viewpoints of political candidates, then wouldn’t this then be reflected in our media? I don’t know the answer, but it leaves me wondering if people really would rather know about Gingrich’s personal and marital life than how he plans to implement positive change into our society. Isn’t media just a reflection of ourselves and our society?
In assessing their findings, McCombs and Shaw go on to say:
“It might also be argued that high correlations indicate that the media simply were successful in matching their messages to audience interests. Yet since numerous studies indicate a sharp divergence between the news values of professional journalists and their audiences, it would be remarkable to find a near perfect fit in this one case,” (McCombs and Shaw, 160).
In essence, professional journalists aren’t always reporting on what they feel is individually important, rather they are giving the public what they desire. When an individual is faced with the pressure of providing a fickle public with an interesting and eye catching story, they are going to attempt to appeal to them, and provide something to gain readership and attention. I am not taking the side that the media does not set agendas, but presenting the case that is may also be possible we have made our own beds in terms of the stories presented to us by mass media.
Christian Haggerty