Ch 4: Journalism n Australia

Chapter 4: Hard Yakka?

Despite the different look the media has adopted in the 21st century it is still regarded as a business 'essentially a moneymaking scheme, dependant on one hand upon it popularity with the public, on the other hand the monkey maker' (Rodgers 1995)

Carey suggests that the communications cycle follows the pattern of business cycles in the capitalist economy.

Debates of the media being News medium of entertainment industry? where stories of which interest the public are replacing whats in the public interest.

Franklin cites three 'unprecedented and significant' signposts that show a new age of infotainment journalism.
1. the shifting balance in favour of entertainment in the news media
2. the disappearance of foreign and political news in some media.
3. the trend toward infotainment affecting broadsheets as much as tabloids and the public. as well as the private broadcasting sector. (1997)

FROM FOURTH ESTATE TO FORTRESS WAPPING.

'tax on knowledge' was imposed on news during French and American revolutions

'freedom of the press' is well documented

'mechanisation' began to affect journalists. News workers were increasingly borded and in turn valued by their technological place in the production process of gathering, writing and producing news. - Industrial Revolution.

Shultz has argues that the journalistic values of democratic liberalism fourth estate - are compromised by the need of the media industry to show a profit for those who invest in the news.

News agencies have always been active players in the introduction of new technologies to news gathering and dissemination.

CONTROLLING THE MARKET FOR NEWS:

The nature of journalists work changes in response to new technologies and mass media marketing strategies. (Shultz 1994)

The media production process has an unusual relationship with the market - this shows itself as on the one hand news is clearly a commodity as newspapers are sold, magazines have a cover prices etc but the real commodity that the media sells is its audiences and in turn they are sold to advertisers.

Social control - affects news agenda in a way that structures editorial policy so that it 'usually protects property and class interests, and thus the strata and groups holding these interests are better able to retain them' (Breed 1955)

The media as an industry has the same electronic development and structures as any other commodity-producing enterprise.

JOURNALISM AS WORK:

Class location and class consciousness are central to the proposition that journalists are workers rather than middle class professionals.

Class location denotes the objective location a member of the workforce occupies in the class structures of capitalism.

Class-consciousness is define as 'that state of social cohesion reflected in the understand and activities of a class of portion of a class'.

For journalists the ideology of professionalism plays a significant role in how news workers construct their social identity. It justifies a reporters solid perception that she or he is not a workers but rather a member of the white collar middle class.

THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ATTITUDES OF JOURNALISM:

Why is the Ideology of professionalism so important within journalism?
1. capitalism is a resilient social system
2. ideology can exert a string grip over the minds and actions of even the most rational human being.

The ideology of professionalism can help mask the raw economic relationships that bind journalists to the production process.

CONCLUSION:

The difference between journalists as labourers over middle class professionals is important because if journalists are conscious of themselves as workers it could have important implications for their own world view.

As conscious members of the working class journalists might decide that there is a news value of 'class interest' that should be taken into account in the writing process. This therefore has implications for example in the way politics might be reported.

A class based view of journalism might also have implications for the very way journalism and the public sphere are 'theorised'. It would undermine the 'fourth estate' view of journalism in favour of a more radical view of politics.

Which may lead to what has been coined 'organic' journalism - that is news reporting tat is intrinsically tied to the life experience of the working class audience.