Current media affairs

To understand spin, we must understand modern players, jargon and media source as well. Contemporary media are of course more than just newspapers. Apart from conventional means of news broadcasting like radio, newpapers and television, there is now the Internet that is rapidly making a huge impact on news reporting. Just how much of an impact that is exactly, and what future developments might have in store for us, time will tell and is well worth researching. Certain is that all the major newsoutlets are joining in the technological leaps forward, simply in order to stay in business.

When looking at news, or the media in general, we should always remember that all news agencies are first and foremost in business. News agencies are supposed to be non-attached to any government organisation. It’s preferred that they’re not attached to any other large corporations, in order for the news to be reliable and unbiased. However, this situation also means that revenues have to come from somewhere else; by selling newspapers, or by getting enough viewers on their websites, in order to secure investment using for instance commercial advertisements.

News also has to be presented to the public in an appealing way. Just telling people how things are, in a concise and understandable way, often just not does the trick. It’s the reporter’s job to write in a way that readers will accept whatever it is he is telling them, without losing their attention. Sometimes small news-items have to be blown out of proportion, and sometimes news has to be made out of nothing, just to keep readers buying your paper. Tabloids for instance thrive on sensational articles about scandals and personal issues, arguments and other kinds of sleaze. In the more serious news media, wars and international political and economical problems bring most flavour to its articles. Obviously it’s a vulnerable situation, and one we should be aware of.

With the development of the various media to spread news, speed has been the most important improvement in modern-day newsreporting. Speed, above everything else, has always been vital to journalists in getting their stories to their editors before the other correspondents did. To be the first to print a story, to literally break the news, was to have the ‘scoop’. And to have many scoops meant to rise in the ranks of correspondents worldwide. These days, scoops are still being made, and due to the Internet it takes minutes, instead of days, to get it through an editor and publish the story.

These days there is an enormous choice of news outlets to choose from. Internationally speaking, the most important and generally well-known ones, are without doubt the BBC and CNN. The British Broadcasting Corporation made its name primarily during the second World War, when it became a symbol for defiant and just newsreporting. BBC worldservice is broadcasting worldwide 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and anyone with a long wave radio can receive its broadcasts practically anywhere on the planet. CNN has become the mainstay of North American newsreporting. Mainly broadcasting on television, it has gained a reputation of being the fastest at locations that are hard to reach. In previous years however, there has been growing critisism to its use of the American military to get to certain places, where other news agencies didn’t have this possibility. It even got to the point where CNN knew about military attacks by the US military before the US military knew itself. We all remember for instance the images of US marines landing on the shores of Somalia, just finding camera lights waiting for them to arrive. CNN has even had the honour of having the ‘CNN effect’ named after them, which states in a nushell that media attention by itself has the potential to cause military intervention.(7) The Somalian conflict has been one example of the CNN effect. Its reliability has to a degree been tainted, since if CNN would have such close connections to the military, and therefore the government, its impartiality could be at risk.

Other news agencies include major newspapers, such as, among others, ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The Boston Globe’, and in Britain ‘The Times’ and ‘The Guardian’. Where these papers use their own correspondents in most places worldwide, other smaller newsagencies use articles from Reuters or Associated Press (AP); companies that don’t have their own outlet, but provide news for any editors who are interested. Aside from these daily sources, there are also other news periodicals, such as ‘Newsweek’, ‘Life’ and even ‘Playboy magazine’ that provide insight articles into current events.

As I mentioned before, these newsmedia are supposed to be independent, but they are still money-making enterprises. This means they all have their target audience, and with that, they also tend to get politically coloured. Some media have a reputation for not being biased, and not being on either the right- or the leftside of the political spectrum, but this is often undeserved. Even the BBC has had its share of doubtful articles, and individual reporters of both Reuters as well as AP have been involved in political scandals in Afrika and South America.(8)

There are many factors to consider here. When correspondents write their stories to the best of their ability, it is ultimately the editor that decides if it will be published or not. The editor is also the one that chooses which reporter goes to which place. Then there might be local censorship to deal with, or military censorship. Individual journalists also have a lot at stake. For them to write articles that would be too critical, would not be a smart thing to do. It could all be true, but too sensitive for the parties involved to print. Even if he would get it past the censor, and published, it would be like sticking his head up out of the cornfield waiting to get shot down, literally or figuratively speaking. In the end news reporting is all the work of people, all with their own agendas and all with their own shortcomings, whether they are conscious of it or not.

All these factors have made international correspondence prone to accusations of being unreliable. Statistics even show that only 20% of the Americans believe the media to tell the truth. Reasons for this are suspicion of governmental control, and sensationalist reporting affecting general credibility. As a response to this the latest development in news-reporting is making its mark as we speak. Increased availability to the general public, greatly due to the Internet, has made it possible to easily switch between various media sources, and see which one appeals most to you personally. It is now possible to easily check out sources, and find more information about the topics that are discussed.

Freelance reporters have got a greater impact in established and unknown media outlets, and some magazines or papers have been created entirely for the purpose of comparing various news-sources to each other. ‘The Week’ from Britain is such a magazine in which various sources are being quoted, from the right- and leftside of the media spectrum, and after which the paper makes its own brief conclusion of what is probably true, and what might happen in the future.

Possibly the most interesting result of this increased scepsis towards international correspondence, however, has probably been the emergence of ‘blogs’ as an alternative news source. The ‘Blogosphere’, as it has popularly been dubbed, provides the means for anybody with access to the Internet, to upload any information they want, for everybody to see. There are no editors, and there’s practically no censorship. The word ‘weblog’, and ‘blog’ for short, is one of the latest additions to Webster’s Dictionary. It is now quite common for anyone with a computer to have their own personal webspace as an extension of one’s self.

Blogs as a means for news reporting were first not taken seriously for obvious reasons. Personal bias, unverifiable sources, and the amount of nonsense did not promise much faith in its credibility. However, lately it has not as much become a source of original reporting, but more something of a counter-weight to the established media. It is much like a public checking service. People read articles by conventional newsoutlets, but then follow quoted sources to find out if they are credible. They provide additional information that could be vital in correctly interpreting original articles. And last but not least give opposing views on hot issues, often defended by well-researched arguments and sources. In short, they are very much taken seriously, even if it were only for the reason that they are being read by more and more people.