Language and The Media
Language and The Media
Language and The Media
Of course, news media implies a large audience. We have the idea of “mass” in the definition, basically
hinting at the involvement of many people in the context of mass media and, of course, when we talk
about mass media, there’s the implication that mass media should be trusted, so reliability is fundamental,
the producer or the offer of news should be reliable.
What is the difference in power symmetry? Before the advent of the Internet there was asymmetry
between producer and consumer, the media outlet were the only producer of news: Jucker described it as
a “one-way communication”. What this means is that in the context of news media production before the
Internet there was a situation where the media outlet, the distribution of information source, was
irradiating from top to bottom (the audience), and there was a sort of imbalance because the audience
wasn’t allowed to get back, to reply or to comment. There were some sporadic instances of reply like
letters to editors, but there was a very minimal response: feedback was not provided.
When we talk about Manufacture of consent, this means the creation of common public opinion.
Chomsky and Hermann discussed about different ways in which central governments or central media
outlets can create and establish a common public opinion. Why common public opinion is so important?
Because it is needed to keep, to establish a stable government (no social unrest, no revolution, no criticism,
no rejection).This is why power level of society try to keep people thinking all the same, sharing the same
opinions. There are 5 filters (or strategies) to keep power in place:
1. Media ownership: if a person owns the media, this person is very likely to influence people’s
opinion because this person in charge will be able to decide what should be published or what
should be kept secret, what kind of information should be given to the public and what should be
restrained from the public. A very clear example of this in Italy is Silvio Berlusconi, who was several
time accused of the so called “conflict of interest” because he used to be the Prime Minister and at
the same time the owner of an important national media outlet.
2. Advertising income: it is basically what advertisers want the media to say. Advertisers could be
groups of power who may influence what is been published, people giving money to support the
media outlet.
3. Where our news stories come from: the provenance of news stories may influence public opinion.
4. How groups and individuals react to stories, whether they complain , for example.
The scholar Ricci says: “the journalistic tendency/preference to balance stories with two opposing views
leads to a tendency to build stories around a confrontation between protagonists and antagonists”.
Confrontation is not the Italian “confronto”, but it is something negative, a conflict. The implication here is
that when journalists present a conflict between two people, groups or parties presenting opposing views
and ideas, they tend to describe one group as “the good” and the other one as “the bad”. This is not
something explicit or clearly said but it is suggested.
Going back to what Chomsky and Hermann said, there are several strategies of manipulation:
1. The strategy of Distraction, that is talking about futile topics instead of going to the heart
of the matter.
2. Problem-reaction-solution, create problems and then offer solutions.
3. The Gradual strategy, that is putting very gradually in the public opinion a sense of
problem, not telling it straightway right from the beginning.
4. The strategy of Deferring, similar to the gradual strategy. Not providing the information all
at once.
5. Talk to the public as a little child, that is treat the public as uneducated, not so much
intelligent, having a patronising and condescending approach.
6. Use the emotional side more than facts, reflection , it creates a short circuit on rational
analysis.
7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity , basically decreasing the level of education at
a national level is a way to manipulate people more easily.
8. To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity , so to agree with this low level.
9. Self-blame strengthen, to blame people in something is not working, assigning
responsibility to people and not to the central government.
10. Try to use a technique that says that media knows people better than they know
themselves (similar to number 5).
The scholar Van Dijk says that Semantic Unity is obtained by assigning a topic to the discourse or to a
fragment of the discourse, so a text need to be consistent and pertinent in its meaning: it has to tell the
same story without competing versions. This means that with semantic unity you give only one possible
interpretation of the story, this is also called as “Simplification” because usually news media outlets don’t
like to problematize news, to give different interpretations of a story.
Chomsky and Hermann are concerned with the macrolevel of news production and consumption, whereas
the scholar Bell focused more in detail on the production of news with regard to what journalists choose to
cover or, in other word, what they choose to publish. There’s a list (in order of importance) that Bell uses to
discuss and categorize criteria that are selected by journalists to decide which piece of news should be
published and which is less important:
Negativity: in Bell’s account, negative events are more likely to be newsworthy than positive ones.
Recency: the event should be recent.
Proximity: the event should be close by. It refers both to physical and metaphorical proximity.
Consonance: events which can be made to cohere with ideas and understandings that people already have
are likely to have high news value. It is about events that confirm our ideas, resonate with public opinion.
Unambiguity: the events should be clear; if there’s a dispute or a question there should be some resolution.
Unexpectedness: that which is not routine (something exceptional, that happens once in a while) is more
newsworthy than that which is ordinary.
Superlativeness: the worst or the best of something is more likely to be covered.
Relevance: (=reliability) the audience should be able to see some relevance to their own life in the event.
Personalisation: if something can be reported in a personal rather than an abstract way it will be more
newsworthy.
Eliteness: this relates to the actors in the news; a story about powerful people is more newsworthy than the
same kind of story about an “ordinary” person.
Attribution: whether the facts or the story can be attributed to someone important or trustworthy.
Facticity: figures, dates, locations and statistics are important for hard news.
An useful categorization of news values is between Hard news and Soft news. Hard news is the
most significant news, it reports of accidents, conflicts, crimes, announcements, discoveries
and “other events which have occurred or come to light since the previous issue of their paper
or programme”. However, this have been written in 1991: today with digital newspapers we
have continue updating so this is not relevant any longer, it is about something very current,
very updated and generally considered as most important news. Hard news stories might draw
on news values of recency, negativity, proximity, unexpectedness, relevance and facticity.
These are usually covered by major national media outlets. Soft news are those considered as
less important and might draw on the values of personalisation, eliteness, consonance,
superlativeness and attribution.
Another subdivision in the categorization of news values is between Fast news and Slow
news. Fast news refers to news that need to be reported quickly but will probably also be
out of date just as quickly. On the other hand, slow news is not so time sensitive, not so
much concerned with timing and refers to event that develop over a longer period of
time. They are not mutually exclusive.