Beginner's Guide to Journalism & Mass Communication

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News, Views and You

Mass Communication

In today’s world, you are surrounded by ideas and information. They reach you in many ways and are intended to inform you, entertain you, or influence your thinking. Mass Communication is the name given to this process.

Word formation: Mass + Communication

Mass

The term ‘Mass’ simply implies great volume, range or number of people.

Communication

The communication process, however, implies numerous things. To begin with, any kind of communication, whether it be written or oral, or one that does not involve use of words, signs, signals, pictorials, body language, etc, must have a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver’. For a message to get through fully, there must also be a communicative spirit between the sender and the receiver in addition to the words or actions used to convey the message.

Thus, for Mass Communication to be achieved, the following parameters must exist:

Interest implies a definite interaction between the sender of the information/idea and the group of receivers. Without this very important aspect of mass communication, no message or information is relayed to the group of receivers and consequently mass communication is said to have failed. Generating and maintaining interest amongst the group of recipients - categorised differently as audiences, readers, surfers, etc. is one of the most important pursuits of a student of mass communication.

How do we communicate?

Before the invention of language, our forefathers communicated with each other using gestures and through the medium of different sounds (drums etc.). Later, language brought them together and they started communicating verbally. Authors and poets wrote prose and poems and singers composed songs. They experimented with different sounds emanating from different objects and invented music. With the advent of industrial age, humanity was thrust into an era of technology and it became possible to relay spoken words, sounds, visuals - static or moving - amongst others.

The communication process today, thus, could involve written words or texts, drawings including diagrams, charts, artistic pictures, photographs, spoken words and sounds (audio), moving pictures (video) and animation.

THE CATCH

Chances of Miscommunication

As mass communication implies ideas or information being transmitted to a group of recipients, there always remain chances of miscommunication. Miscommunication results when the message sent through a medium is received by a group of receivers in a distorted form. Miscommunication can also result from the incomplete relay of the message to the receiver. Further, the receiver himself or herself may interpret the message wrongly resulting in a miscommunication.

In the World Peace campaign logo given here, a simple spelling error has resulted in a critical miscommunication.

How to avoid Miscommunication

The sender of the message who could also effectively be a writer must use words, diagrams or photos that convey his idea/message accurately.

Similarly, while writing articles or news items, the same writer must recognise that he can be influenced by his own feelings, his attitude towards his topic, and his past experiences. The writer must also recognise that when he applies words, he is using symbols that carry different shades of meaning. Therefore, he must employ language that is pertinent and effective in transmitting the true meaning of his message.

But this also implies that the writer’s message cannot be communicated effectively unless the reader understands exactly what the writer is thinking and feeling. The reader, like the writer, is affected by his own attitudes and experiences, and he may therefore have a tendency to misunderstand or misinterpret the writer’s ideas. Further, the reader may be unaware of his own misinterpretation of a message, or even of the reasons for his distortion of the real meaning of the message. Therefore, the writer must recognise his responsibility to write as clearly as possible.

However, communication can still exist to some degree even if the message is not conveyed under ideal conditions. Often mass communication depends on the assumption that at least some part of the message will generally be received, even if the receiver is paying little attention to it. For example, an advertisement with repetitive slogans, jingles, or concepts is based on this understanding.

Mass Communication achieves several purposes: to entertain, to inform and to influence attitudes, feelings or actions.

Instruments of Mass Communication

The simplest way of spreading news is by word of mouth. One person tells another what he has seen or heard. This was also man’s primal mode of communicating news, and this method is still in vogue to carry information about families, friends, or neighbourhood activities. Newsgathering methods developed and evolved to better levels gradually as the outlook of nations and governments changed, business and economies flourished and a far greater number of people started travelling from one part of the globe to another. Modern inventions such as printing press, ships, rail, road, airplane, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, Internet and satellite improved the speed with which news can be gathered and finally distributed. These inventions helped in transforming the world into a global village.

Television is today one of the most popular instruments of Mass Communication in India

Popular instruments of mass communication are radio, movies, pictures, books, newspapers, magazines, music and Internet.

Mass Media is also a term applied to the different instruments of mass communication.

News

News is one of the most important and desired commodities furnished by mass media. People want to know what is going on around them. News connects them to the world and makes them aware of events that are taking place. News also makes people feel that they are a part of a bigger network of a people or in simple words a bigger community.

News, however, has a very short life. There is nothing more worthless and stale than yesterday’s news. Hence, timing is one of the most crucial factors in news. News, if not delivered at an appropriate time, is simply not news.

Many of the instruments of mass communication considered in the following paragraphs are well fitted to accomplish this.

1. Live Broadcasts of Actual News Events: Live coverage of events as they occur places the viewer as an eyewitness to sports events, important speeches, political meetings, and other newsworthy happenings. Generally, these broadcasts are planned in advance. Radio broadcasts of actual events have the same speed of transmission and lack only the picture on the screen.

Rob Riggle reporting live for CBS from Iraq

2. News Reports: Both Radio and Television feature frequent reports of current happenings all over the world. These are collected by the same news services that furnish information to newspapers, and the television channels frequently show ‘Film clips’ of the events taken at the time of their occurrence. Thus, those who may have missed the ‘live’ broadcast of an important happening can see it when a portion of the earlier broadcast is repeated as part of regular news programme.

‘News at 8’is a famous news programme of KNBK Network in the United States

3. Documentaries: Motion pictures of current events are often prepared for television showing. These may not present news immediately after it happens. However, they often present background information and ‘in-depth’ coverage, not otherwise available.

‘TOP GEAR’is one of the critically acknowledged documentaries featured on BBC

4. News Magazines: News magazines summarise, discuss, or interpret news events. Usually published weekly, fortnightly or monthly, they carefully organise and analyse the news and present it to their readers.

In general, magazines also appeal to groups of people having special interests. More than half the magazines printed in the world serve readers interested in a particular profession, occupation, or hobby. Successful magazines enjoy fantastic circulation. The Reader’s Digest has more than 25 million subscribers, while many other magazines distribute more than one million copies of each issue.

Time is one of the most respected and successful magazines in the world

5. Newspapers: Daily or weekly newspapers furnish a written account of events which have just happened or are about to happen. Freshness of news is important to newspapers. They report the facts about an event with as much detail as can be collected in a short time.

Although newspapers reach their readers more slowly than Radio or TV, they have not suffered adversely from the competition. Rather, a brief broadcast seems to generate the curiosity in listeners to read a more comprehensive report. Newspapers further have the advantage of being available whenever the reader wishes to pick them up. They also allow the reader to select the news stories that interest him and read them at will and devote time to them according to his leisure or preferences.

Consequently, newspapers remain the most important tool amongst the various news distributing media. Unlike other major instruments for spreading news, they combine speed and permanence.

News Broadcasts

Although a comparatively new entrant in the communication scene, television has reached an impressive position among the mass media. Newspapers, magazines, and books have changed character as a result, although in most cases they have not severely suffered from the competition.

Reading news for Television

News Broadcasts owe their standards to newspaper traditions established over many years¹.

To begin with, it is important to distinguish between newscasts, the ‘news pages’ of the air, commentaries and the ‘editorial pages’. National or international items for a newscast are provided either by their own reporting staff or by press agencies, while local news is covered and supplied by the reporting staff. Special editorial staff then prepare the news for broadcasting. News broadcasts have substantially the same privileges and practically the same limitations as newspapers. Hence, they should be listened to with this in mind.

A commentator expresses his personal opinions about news just as a newspaper columnist does. He is presumably an expert, familiar with his field. Ideally, his comments are designed to ignite your thinking and cognitive powers.

On the other hand, electronic media rarely editorialise themselves in the sense of giving the opinions of the stations (channels). The major reason behind this position is the fact that stations need to be licensed by the government to avoid conflicts in the use of the airwaves. While the government has tried to encourage stations to present editorial opinion, they have been reluctant to do so primarily because of government control of their other activities, such as the regulation of the proportion of advertising to a certain ratio of the total programme time, the ‘equal time’ requirements for political broadcasts, and review of licence renewal.

1 In fact, most of the news channels today in India and abroad are actually owned and managed by publishers who had earlier been or are still deeply rooted in Print Journalism. Aaj Tak owned by the India Today Group, MSNBC, Warner News, Sun Network, Star Groups owned by Rupert Murdoch and so on are a few examples. Even some TV channels, like the National Geographic run by the National Geographic Society is nothing but an electronic offshoot of the famous magazine with the same name i.e. National Geographic Magazine.

Different Kinds of Newspapers

In the previous chapter, I had deliberated upon the different instruments of mass communication. Newspapers are one of the most important and earliest instruments of mass communication. Newspapers have informed and entertained its readers since the times of Julius Caesar.

The main purpose of a newspaper is to inform its readers about current events, happenings of all kinds within the recent past or lend a peep into the events of the near future. Most newspapers also print advertisements in addition to diverse reading materials (comic strips, lifestyle, puzzles, human interest stories, etc.) that are not news but can be entertaining or informative.

There are many different kinds of newspapers, the most important of which are:

Daily Newspapers: They attempt to cover all kinds of news, i.e. news from different parts of the world as well as the important happenings in their own cities, communities, business, sports, society, and entertainment news. Generally, the front page of the daily is devoted to important events that have taken place during past 24 hours or that are to take place in the near future.

Almost every metropolis or large city in India publishes its own edition of daily newspapers. Dailies from major cities are widely distributed, often throughout states. They bring reports of every prominent happening as well as local news to their readers.

Weekly Newspapers: Covering local news is the main purpose of weekly newspapers published in small towns, suburbs, or community areas within cities. They specialise in the one news element that daily newspapers do not cover: detailed, personal news about people and events in their communities.

Special Newspapers: Organised groups such as engineers’ society (e.g. Aeronautical Society of India, Institute of Engineers, Computer Society of India, etc.), labour unions, and large industries publish these for their members.

Many of these papers are published regularly and contain the information that concerns a limited group or a special situation.

School Newspapers: Like weekly newspapers, school, college or university papers serve the interest of their local communities - the ‘community’ in this case being the school/college/university itself. They may be published monthly, every two or three weeks, weekly, or even daily. They include news of past and present school events, articles about students and teachers, and frequently carry advertisements of interest to their readers. However, the practice of publishing school newspapers is not very popular in India, and college and university newspapers are also published in small numbers.

How does a Newspaper serve the community?

The newspaper tries to keep its readers well informed about local, national and international affairs so that they may be ‘kept posted’ on current events, think intelligently, and form their own opinions about these matters. If we study newspapers from the point of view of what they are trying to do, we can discover