The Effect of Shared Culture of Journalists on the Selection and Presentation of News

Newspapers and other forms of news are very vital communication methods in the world today. The goal of news is to sell us their ideas by being biased and talking about how their idea is best. News can give us biased information although, the viewer could do further research on the

Augie Fleras and John Lock Kunz further the argument, pointing out that what appears as mainstream and unbiased is, in actuality, socially constructed. Fleras and Kunz point out that news items (i.e. the events or issues that are covered) are chosen by personnel (such as editors) on the basis of personal, institutional, corporate, and commercial priorities. 7 In other words, the news media is market driven. The mainstream news media, therefore, are not merely

In today's society, agenda setting is prevalent too. An example could be our daily editions of The Straits Times. Whatever is on the front page of the broadsheet can already be seen as an act of agenda setting by the media. The front page of the newspaper is usually what people look at first as the most salient news are placed there. In turn, agendas are already set for the audience as the medium is telling them that whatever is on the front page is of importance, and because these issues are brought to the public's attention, they would automatically think and generate

To understand what state the modern media system is in, one must firmly understand what bias is. Media bias is present “when a political belief or commercial interest distorts the level of reporting” (“Media Bias” 1). If a political station provides positive or accurate information to only one side, then the station can be considered biased. Another form of bias is known as sensationalism. Sensationalism is the creation of panic or fear by over-reporting or over-inflating individual news stories, often blurring facts or reporting speculation as facts. A modern and familiar example of media

Agenda Setting is a theory that has the ability to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda. It is a very dangerous, but helpful tactic that many mainstream media use in order to powerfully influence the public. Media has the ability to shape and mold the most “important” news of the time, and this is highly evident in the OJ Simpson Case and the famous Movie Rocky IV.

The central claim of the Agenda Setting Theory explains why people with similar media exposure place importance on the same issues. Although different people may feel

Raise in media bias is a very common play throughout the whole world to evade people from seeing the truth or another side of an argument. In order to find the truth in journalism an individual must be willing to seek out different reports on television or newspaper. On an article called “Seeking Truth in Journalism” by John Mcmanus he states, “It’s now up to us to construct our own truth filters in the face of a communication revolution that has created profound paradoxes.” Mcmanus has phrased if a person wants to observe if a report is credible of its information it is recommended to be inquisitive and perform a “SMELL” test to check for the value of the given data. With With the help of the test many reports can be scrutinized and found to be unreliable and unhonest. The intelligence of reports can be obtained by another news collector or first hand by the reporter and can have distorted information and turn out to be a fraud. With many news sources worldwide it is easy to acquire different views of a situation and also for newscast to have groups of political view. Cable, mass media, Fox, and many more sources have goals with specific interest so caching details that reveal the opposing interest is very common to happen in the

Lomax Cook, Fay, et al. "Media and Agenda Setting: Effects on the Public, Interest Group Leaders, Policy Makers, and Policy." The Public Opinion Quartely, vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 1983, pp. 16-35. JSTOR.

According to Wikipedia website state a media circus is a news event where the media coverage is perceived to be out of proportion to even being to be covered. Examples of media circuses include the Sandy Hook School Shooting, Casey Anthony Trial, and Kitty Genovese Murder. However, one of the media circus that the media has been focusing on is Miley Cyrus. Miley Cyrus is seen as one of the outrageous celebrities who caused the media to symbolize her as a promiscuous in the media and is therefore seen as a norm violator.

The readings in this week is all about the agenda setting. The agenda setting model can guide the public opinion and mass communication about some social or political issues. Different with media effects model, the media effects more like to telling people how to think, however, the agenda setting model is successful in telling people what to think about. In a general way, agenda setting theory was constructed in the environment of traditional mass media, and the purpose is to study traditional mass media.

Agenda setting theory is the hypothesis done by Shaw and McCombs, stating that the mass media has the ability to transfer the importance of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda. This theory contrasted with the selective exposure hypothesis which held that people only attend to stories which confirm their world view. The theory had two attractive features, one it reaffirms the power of the press and second it maintains individual freedom. Also it is represented a back to the basics approach to mass communation research, with a focus on election campaigns.

These include tacit procedures, routines and conditions that can both expand and constrain the room for maneuver. Such rules and procedures become internalized and are perceived as more or less natural ways to go about doing things. If we then consider news media in this perspective, it becomes clear that regardless of the organization, there is a common understanding of certain basic genre rules that news reporting must observe and conventions regarding what is relevant and how it should be presented. This understanding is also reflected in both sources’ and the public’s expectations and requirements. News desks solve the problem by establishing certain routines for surveillance and news gathering in certain areas and through decisions concerning frameworks for the content ‘mix’, page or program editing, and design. Reporters are forced, as Gaye Tuchman (1973) so aptly put it, to “routinize the unexpected“. News stories are generally presented in familiar wrappings. Another characteristic of institutions is that they extend over space and endure over time. “Institutions by definition are the more enduring features of social life,“ as Anthony Giddens (1984:24) observes. News enterprises differ with respect to their size, geographical locality, orientation toward their audiences, technology and financing; they were

"Journalism”, says Artz, Mace, and Cloud, demonstrates how norms and practices meet the needs and values of social formation (…). The construction of 'objectivity' (...) conform(s) seemessly to the time and space requirements of the business cycle, advertising requirements, and corporate profits drives (…).This (…) is the efficient implementation of a shared interest in a social system for the production of life based on private profit from wage labor, by administering political decisions and cultural practices that will reproduce existing social relations and norms" (Artz, Macek, & Cloud, 2006: p. 38-39).

In 1922, Walter Lippmann suggested the very first idea of agenda-setting in his book “Public Opinion”, and Bernard Cohen (1963) said “The media may not tell us what to think, but they are stunning successful in telling us what to think about”. Those concepts assumed that with the limited ability and innate curiosity of human beings, most people rely on media institutions to gain information outside family, neighborhood and workplace. Thus the media organizations have the priority to choose which information is quality enough to be the most important, which is not, and the information emphasized by the media could salience transfer to the public.

This essay will demonstrate how both American and New Zealand media outlets shape and filter all their stories and decide what people see and think about, and how to think about certain stories; also known as ‘Agenda Setting’.