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Infotainment in national TV news: A comparative content analysis of Mexican, Canadian and U.S. news programs 1
José-Carlos Lozano 2 [email protected] Tecnológico de Monterrey, campus Monterrey http://cmportal.itesm.mx/wps/portal/wcmCampus? WCM_PORTLET=PC_7_0_12G_WCM&WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=http://cmpublish.itesm.mx/wps/wcm /connect/MTY/Campus+Monterrey/MTY+Homepage
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR/AIERI) 2004. Porto Alegre, Brasil, 25- 30, July 2004.
Abstract:
Political marketing on the one hand, and the search for profit and fierce competition for ratings among electronic media on the other, are some of the most important factors explaining the adoption and expansion of “infotainment” in television news. With the changes in the political system of Mexico in recent years, leading to the first triumph of an opposition candidate for the presidency in 71 years, Mexican television news programs have increasingly incorporated traits of infotainment. Based on a content analysis of one chronological week and one composite week of the leading national television news programs in Mexico (Noticiero Televisa and Noticiero Hechos), the paper presents empirical evidence about the degree in which news transmitted on these programs presents features of personalization, dramatization, fragmentation, and audiovisual effects. To put this analysis in perspective, the study compares the adoption of infotainment strategies in Mexican TV news with the use of similar strategies in the most prominent newscasts in Canada and the United States, partners of Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Findings suggest that the adoption of infotainment in Mexican TV news is still in progress, in some variables scoring higher and in other lower than their U.S. and Canadian counterparts. The paper ends with a discussion about the implications of this tendency in the political socialization of members of the public addressed more as consumers than as citizens by electronic media.
Keywords: Infotainment, TV news, tabloidization, Mexican TV news,
Newscasts in Mexican main networks have been characterized in the last decade by an increasing adoption of features coming from entertainment and fiction genres. Anchors and reporters editorialize and dramatize the narration of news; news stories focus on personalization,
1 dramatization and fragmentation in the coverage of politics, society, entertainment or sports.
Stories focus on the immediate and rarely provide background. News is frequently packaged with visual effects like eyewitness camera movements, dramatic music, short and fast editing, slow motion, sound effects, and design and edition resources. This process is clearly related to the increasing global tendency in most commercial electronic media towards infotainment 3 or
“tabloidization”4, the combination and fusion of news with entertainment and sensationalism
(Blumler, in Brants, 1998; Djupsund & Carlson, 1988; Lozano 2000; Radunski, 1999).
The specific term for this phenomenon still varies from country to country and from one theoretical approach to another. In Germany, scholars tend to use the term “boulevardisierung” in reference to the “boulevard” press, namely the popular press focusing on scandals, celebrities, gossip, and entertainment (Esser, 1999, p. 292). Some Anglo scholars use the term
“tabloidization”, referring to the adoption of values characteristic of popular newspapers by the elite press or by TV news programs (p. 292)5; others use the term “infotainment” (Brants, 1998;
Graber, 1994), and even others use the term “sensationalism 6” (Grabe, Zhou & Barnett, 2001) in a way that seems compatible with the general definition of the former terms. In Mexico and other Latin American countries, in contrast, scholars use the word “espectacularización 7” (from
“spectacle”), following the popular and influential term introduced by Italian political scientist
Giovanni Sartori (1998) in his famous book “Homo Videns”.
Mexican and Latin American scholars are very vocal about what they consider the negative effects of this process that appeared only recently in many of the media in the region(Abello, 2001; López de la Roche, 2001). They argue that Latin American newspapers and
TV stations have imported this model from American media in the last few years as a result of general trends in their countries towards the adoption of “neo-liberal” policies like privatization,
2 deregulation, and liberalization of media systems (Lozano, 2000; Rincón, 2003; Silva, 1996;
Trejo Delarbre, 2001). Most of the discussion in Mexico and Latin America, however, remains at an abstract level, with very few empirical studies exploring explicitly dimensions and variables related to “infotainment”, “tabloidization”, or “sensationalism”8.
With some differences in emphasis and operational definitions, most scholars doing research on this topic tend to agree that the main objective of infotainment is to attract audiences usually not interested or prone to watch TV news, and/or reinforce the interest of those already watching them. In the process, news may arguably become trivialized, presented as a spectacle, as dramatic, sensationalist or funny. Instead of addressing viewers as citizens, some scholars argue (Blumler, in Brants, 1998, p. 319), news programs seem to consider them as consumers and rating points.
This discussion is important if we take into account that in contemporary societies, consumption and appropriation of news messages is a necessary condition for political, economic, and cultural participation of individuals at all levels: local, national, and international
(Jensen, 1998, p. 16). As Jensen argues, information remains in the audience as part of its perception of the world, and can become a resource for action beyond the immediate context of exposure to the television screen (p. 58). If information, political or otherwise, is presented as infotainment, audience members may not be receiving the type of factual information useful for making decisions as citizens.
Sensationalism in TV news
According to Starks (1997 June), sensationalism 9, was incorporated in local TV news in the United States in the late 60´s and early 70´s. In contrast with national news programs, heirs
3 of the respected radio newscasts of former decades and more explicitly committed to provide responsible information to audiences regardless of ratings, local TV news programs originated with the explicit purpose of generating revenue for the station’s owners. According to Starks, facing the dilemma of how to attract wider audiences, local stations decided to emphasize sensational topics like crime. Later, consultants made direct recommendations to imitate the most successful elements of prime time fictional programs:
In fact, anyone watching prime-time television knew how the medium worked in the '70s,
and could have guessed the advice: Crime shows like Kojak attract the largest audience.
Viewers respond to likable characters. All sitcoms revolve around families. It was the
"genius" of these marketers to take the principles of prime-time fictional television and
bring them to every local newscast in the nation, where they still remain in force. (Starks,
1997, June)
Consequently, likeable anchors and reporters incorporated happy talk between them and another concept developed by consulting firms: “action news”, characterized by a high number of news stories per program, striking visuals, and exciting upbeat music (Starks, 1997, June).
Starks concludes that by the 80´s, local newscasts in the United States had become so strong and had taken away such a large chunk of the networks newscasts ratings that the latter started to imitate the same strategies of their local counterparts (p. 39).
Recent research
Today, academic research on infotainment in TV news has increased considerably, although it is still insufficient (cf. Grabe, Zhou, Lang & Bolls, 2000; Grabe, Zhou & Barnett,
2001; Gringas, 1998; Grossman, 1997 November-December; Keller, 1993; Lozano, 2000;
Lozano, García, López, Medina, Mendé, Smith & Solís, 2001; Radunski, 1999; Sartori, 1998;
4 Slattery & Hakanen, 1994; Thompson, 2000; Trejo Delarbre, 2001). Many of these studies, however, have focused on the analysis of a particular type of news (electoral news), or solely on the content of different news genres. Esser (1999), comparing tabloidization tendencies in the press of Britain, Germany and the US, concluded that “journalistic values, media cultures and economic and legal conditions are responsible for the degree of tabloidization in a given country”, attributing to these factors the expansion of tabloidization in Great Britain and the
United States and the slow progress of this model in Germany. After reviewing empirical studies related to each of Kurtz´ elements in his definition of tabloidization 10, Esser concluded that the adoption and success of this phenomenon in German newspapers is very limited. He mentions a study by Schoenbach, who found evidence that German papers that decided to go tabloid by using more infotainment and emotion could not increase their circulation at all (p. 297). In contrast, Esser mentions a study by Golding and others in Britain showing that the amount of entertainment and human-interest stories had increased in the British press and that the amount of political news stories and their average length had become more similar between quality and tabloid newspapers (309). Brants (1998), on the other hand, reviewed several empirical studies of tabloidization in Europe and found mixed evidence of the existence of sensationalism and soft news in news reporting:
In the overview of studies on television news in a number of Western European countries,
there is many an example of entertainment elements in the content and style of political
reporting. But on the whole, the picture is at best ambiguous and certainly does not point to
infotainment taking over and to an unequivocally bad influence of commercial television
(….) the news remains at the heart of their programming, and politics still forms a
substantial part of most news programmes. (p. 329)
5 In his own research about infotainment in different television genres in the Dutch election campaign of 1994, Brants also found mixed data. Although candidates tended to participate in traditional “serious” political programs (news and current affairs programs) much more than in other programs with high content of entertainment (talk shows, variety shows), the former contained some degree of entertainment (pp. 329-330). Brants concluded that the phenomenon of infotainment may be considered problematic only if three conditions are met: 1) if that is the dominant form in which politics is portrayed; 2) if it is done to hide something else; or 3) if it leads to a distorted image of politics (p. 329). In his opinion, none of these conditions seems to prevail in most European news media.
Djupsund & Carlson (1998), in their analysis of tabloidization tendencies in the front pages of Swedish and Finnish newspapers found that “soft news” and “crimes and accidents” stories were more prominent in all newspapers than “hard news”. Comparing a sample of 1982 and another of 1997, they were able to determine that the phenomenon of “trivialization” was already present in the first period in the Swedish press and only developed in the second period in the
Finnish newspapers (p. 104). They also concluded that the front page of the more recent period was highly “visualized”: nearly half of the front page contained pictures (p. 106). “The impression…is, from a normative perspective, slightly alarming: The values of trivialization and visualization are relatively high”, they argued in their final discussion (p. 110).
Holtz-Bacha (1999), a German researcher who has studied in particular the phenomenon of personalization in electoral campaigns, argues that people are better adapted to (visual) portrayal, “whereas political activities are abstract and hard to get across”. She adds that
“focusing on people is also a means of simplifying complex political processes” (p. 48). This may also be the reason why reporters prefer factual studies that lend themselves to simple
6 description and to concrete analysis (in Gulati, Just & Crigler, 2004, p. 240). Other German scholars, like Schulz & Reimar (2004, May), studying the electoral coverage of German television in the last 10 years, concluded that in that period the presence of the candidates had increased, but their issues had not come across:
The discourse provided by the news narrowed down to election and campaign as issues.
References to the candidates increasingly focus on topics like campaign actions, matters
of style, the competition among the candidates, and election polls. Substantial issues
became less important. (p. 17)
In the United States, Graber (1994) presented to a sample of television news directors hypothetical routine news events and asked them to construct news presentations and explain their framing rationales to determine to what extent are routine stories sensationalized and information content overshadow by entertainment features. She used categories related both to content (factual vs. feature style) and to formal features (dramatic elements). Her findings showed that television news producers were struggling between two conflicting styles: on the one hand, they were stressing the need to fulfill the professional criteria of news reporting, making sure that all questions were answered (who, what, when, where, how). On the other,
“they were keenly aware of the need and the opportunity to attract audiences through dramatically told stories” (p. 504).
Other studies have focused rather on sensationalism, a closely related term, but with a stronger emphasis in topics like crime. One piece that stands out for its approach to the study of this topic is the one by Grabe, Zhou & Barnett (2001). The authors provide a useful method for evaluating the presence of sensationalism in the audiovisual packaging of news. Comparing the
TV program “60 Minutes” with “Hard Copy”, they explained that identifying sensationalism
7 solely by news genre (crime, celebrities, and human interest) was too simplistic. They found differences in content between the two programs, with 60 Minutes focusing on socially significant news and Hard Copy focusing mostly on celebrities. However, some topics were similar in both programs, making them conclude that formal features, and not story topics, were more appropriate for the definition and analysis of sensationalism:
Clearly, a sensationalist topic like crime could be packaged in such a way as to omit the merest hint of sensationalism. Just as easily, news producers, by playing up the bells and whistles of sensational formal features, could transform a story that by all rights belongs in the non-sensational topic category into a titillating tabloid experience. By moving beyond story topic into the realm of formal features, this study adds conceptual rigor to the widely used term, sensational. (p. 652)
Empirical research in infotainment, tabloidization, sensationalism or “espectacularización” in Mexico and Latin American is still rare. Almost all the articles, chapters or books available consist in conceptual discussions about the phenomenon (Abello, 2001; López de la Roche,
2001; Rincón, 2003; Silva, 1996; Trejo Delarbre, 2001). Most of the scholars stress its negative implications and consequences. Rincón (2003), for example, argues that the strongest impact of infotainment is that it takes away meaning from the complexity of society:
This void of meaning is evident since TV news promotes the predominance of ´light´ and of the spectacle over reality and thought; it celebrates forgetfulness as an emblem of a society with short and ephemeral memory; It [TV news] expands social indifference as individual attitude, and compassion about pain as a strategy of public bond. (p. 50)
In the same vein, Abello (2001) denounces the tendency of television to transform the news into a show, considering information as another link in the flow of entertainment with which the media strives to hook and maintain their levels of audience and circulation (p. 413):
“In a global world our journalism entrepreneurs are only loyal imitators of the American way of news, a way that is progressively invading the news territory” (P. 414). López de la Roche
(2001) also agrees with his Latin American colleagues, asserting than in Colombia, newscasts
8 have turned into advertising, sports and show biz, with only a small number of brief news stories unable to help the viewer make sense of the complexity of what is happening in the country (p.
59).
One of the few empirical studies carried out in Mexico including variables related to infotainment was done by Lozano et al (2000), about the coverage of the 2000 presidential election in three leading national dailies and three national television news programs 11. They found evidence that the media sampled had adopted to a higher or lesser degree the model of infotainment or tabloidization present in other countries. Television news were significantly higher than newspapers in infotainment measures, but the dailies still scored high with only 31% of their total news stories showing no traces of infotainment in their content (p. 42). News stories devoted to the presentation or discussion of political platforms, candidate proposals for the economy, education, foreign policy, and so on were extremely rare, representing only between 5 and 10% of the total electoral coverage (p. 43). Mendé (2003) in a related study of the presidential elections of 1999 in Argentina, found the same percentage of news with no reference to the electoral platform or proposals of the presidential candidates in that country (p. 97). The degree of “dramatization” in Argentinean newspapers, however, was much higher than in their
Mexican counterparts: less than 5% of total space in the electoral coverage of newspapers had no features characteristic of infotainment (p. 98). These findings suggest that Mexican and
Argentinean news media seem to be adopting for its electoral coverage the long historical tradition of the U.S. electoral coverage: a focus on “strategies, tactics, poll results, and candidates´ prospects for winning rather than on the substantive issues of the campaign” (Gulati,
Just & Crigler, 2004, p. 238). As these three scholars argue, the framing of the electoral process in terms of a sports event seem to be related to reporting norms about politics: “…reporters find
9 it safer and easier to write a story about process and strategy than to report on issues. Issue coverage involves more time for research and technical explanations”.
The objective of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the transformation of
Mexican TV news in the context of globalization and the adoption of U.S. models on the one hand, and the fracturing of the Mexican political system that had been characterized by a tight control of electronic media, on the other. To put this analysis in perspective, the study compares the adoption of infotainment strategies in Mexican TV news with the use of similar strategies in the most prominent newscasts in Canada and the United States, Mexico’s partners in the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with higher degrees of economic and technological development, and with contrasting developments of their electronic media. Inclusion of the U.S. network news program with the highest rating (NBC Evening News) allows for comparing the degree of adoption of the American model in Mexican main national newscasts. Inclusion of the
Canadian public news program The National (produced by the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation), allows for comparing infotainment between similarly successful public and private news programs in two developed countries and one developing country.
Method
This paper reports the findings of a content analysis based on one chronological week
(May 12 to 16, 2003) and one composite week (May 19 and 27, June 4, 12, 20, 2003) of the leading national television news programs in Mexico (Noticiero Televisa and Noticiero Hechos),
Canada (CBC The National), and the United States (NBC Evening News).
The unit of analysis was the news story. All stories included in each edition, national or international were included. Gringas´ (1998) concepts of “personalization,” “fragmentation,” and
10 “normalization” were used to define the category of “infotainment” in the content.
Personalization was defined as an accent in the individual, a struggle of public personalities, an emphasis on celebrities and personal traits. It includes emphasis on opinion polls, treatment of politics as entertainment or as sport competitions, appeal to emotions and not to reason. It assumes that sometimes the personalization comes from the news sources, whether from the political, the economic, or the entertainment arenas, when they stage “media events” or “pseudo events” to attract reporters, the relevance of the events being secondary.
Fragmentation was defined as the presentation of facts and affairs in “sound bytes” according to the fast tempo of audiovisual media, with no information about the complexity of the different existing positions on each topic, ignoring or minimizing facts which TV viewers, as citizens, “should know to be able to fulfill their democratic duties.”
The category “tendency of the news story” explored whether the news story was presented in an “objective”, “neutral” manner, without comments, qualifications, opinions or the use of adjectives by anchors or reporters, or whether the latter tended to editorialize frequently or used dramatic phrases in describing the events.
“Contextualization” was defined as the degree in which the news story provided background information, contrasting points of view, implications about the future, information useful for the viewer to make sense and put in perspective the event being described.
The audiovisual packaging of TV news in the last decade has changed radically, and it could be argued that it is in this formal packaging, and not in the content, where traits of infotainment can be found more clearly. However, studies about these formal aspects are scarce, perhaps because here it is more difficult to measure the presence of infotainment. For the analysis of the formal features of Mexican TV news, this study used categories developed by
11 Maria Elizabeth Grabe, Shuhua Zhou & Brooke Barnett (2001), for the analysis of sensationalism in American news programs. Based on an encompassing literature review of previous research on sensationalism, they identified formal features like graphic design or editing techniques that contribute to create a particular atmosphere perceived by viewers like
“sensational journalism.” These formal features were divided in two groups: video maneuvers and decorative effects:
Video maneuvers are primarily form-- giving features that involve camera
operations. They fundamentally influence or alter the video recording of
a news event. By contrast, decorative effects are added in post production
and can be described as attention-getting devices which are not fundamentally responsible
for capturing a news event on video. (Grabe et al., 2001)
Though infotainment and sensationalism do not mean exactly the same, it is the argument of this paper that the sensationalistic effect provoked by the formal features of news stories can be considered part of the widest phenomenon of infotainment in the news.
Findings
Table 1 shows the findings of the analysis related to the categories of infotainment in the content of TV news programs. The data clearly suggest that all news programs resort to personalization. A little more than half of the news stories focused on the individual, on the struggle among public personalities. They made reference to public opinion polls or treated political events as shows or sport contests. The Canadian public news program The National, proportionately, showed lower degrees of personalization, while NBC Evening News, as expected, had the higher levels of this kind of content with almost 80% of its total time. Mexican
12 news programs were also very high in personalization, even higher than NBC Evening News if we notice that these two elements, when present, occupied 50% or more of the total duration of the news stories. As Holtz-Bacha (2003) argues, political candidates, and politicians in general are extremely interested in news coverage that emphasizes their personal traits. According to the
German scholar, research evidences show that audiences tend to equate “fame” with competence and ability to govern: “when a politician is perceived as a celebrity, as a star, he or she is also perceived as someone with the necessary skill to solve problems” (p. 152).
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
Table 2 shows the degree in which the news programs were characterized by
“fragmentation 12” of the information, and the presentation of facts and events in sound bytes according to the fast tempo of television news. In this particular case, the American news program was again the highest in the category: 71% of total time referred to fragmented news stories in contrast with only 20% of the Canadian program. The Mexican news programs were somewhat in the middle, Noticiero Televisa being the one with most fragmentation in its news flow. While this study did not measure the time devoted to “sound bytes” in particular, this variable is closely related to that concept. By providing the viewers only with short and fast facts and opinions about each particular issue, TV news may not be fulfilling their role of presenting in-depth, inclusive, and relevant information for the citizens to be able to make rational decisions. Future studies in Mexican TV news programs may check if what recent research in the
U.S. has found about the length of “sound bytes” in TV news is also valid for the Mexican case.
Gulati, Just & Crigler (2004), for example, report different studies in the U.S. that have
13 documented the decrease of the length of candidate “sound bytes” in TV from an average of 45 seconds in 1968 to 7 seconds in 2000 (p. 242). The same has been found in Germany, according to Schulz & Reimar (2004, May).
TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
Another indicator that may be related to infotainment can be found in the tendency of anchors and reporters to editorialize and to use dramatic phrases and adjectives when presenting the news. Table 3 shows clearly this was the case in all of the programs analyzed. Instead of presenting the information in a neutral way, anchors and reporters made comments, expressed opinions, evaluated the facts, and advanced explanations and judgments. It is interesting, however, to see that Mexican anchors and reporters, newer in the adoption of this model, were less likely to editorialize than their Canadian and American counterparts. The academic debate over objectivity and neutrality in the communication field tends to question the possibility of achieving them, when taking into account the multiple and complex influences and bias present in any news coverage. In fact, some scholars argue that it is better to adopt a particular standpoint about issues and events, as long as the public is aware of the ideological, political, or social stand of the news medium or its anchors or reporters. That is arguably the case, for example, in Western Europe, where newspapers are more likely to make explicit a particular ideological position. In the case of the anchors and reporters of The National and NBC Evening
News, the editorializing seems to be based more on rational opinions than on dramatic descriptions, showing the need to make finer distinctions in future studies when looking at this variable.
14 TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE
Table 4 shows that the four news programs tended to include background information, interpretation, and discussion about the implications of the event being reported. The Mexican news programs, however, used contextual elements less frequently than the American and
Canadian news programs, which despite scoring higher in other dimensions of these infotainment features were very careful in providing context for their stories. These findings suggest that the presence of infotainment in TV news may not necessarily mean fragmentation and lack of context. News programs, especially national or international may be interested in lively news, but also in providing background information according to their own professional values. As Graber (1994) argues, whenever contextual information promises to be exciting, the
TV news directors are eager to include it (p. 493). More sophisticated measures of background information, however, may be needed. In her presentation to a sample of television news directors of hypothetical routine news events, Graber asked them to construct news presentations and to explain their framing rationales. She found that all of them did and excellent job in attending the informational aspects of the who, what, when and where of the stories: “(…) all directors attended to these essentials in every story. However, they always did it with an eye to selecting frames that could serve informational and dramatic needs simultaneously” (p. 489). In contrast, she reports that the least satisfactory part of factual/feature coverage was in relation to the why and how and context questions: Only about one-third of the story proposals covered why and how issues, while two-thirds covered story context. According to the American scholar, when the directors mentioned context coverage, they usually voiced the condition “if I had time
15 to do it”. Also, they tended to reject context information if it was visually boring, reflecting a tendency of assuming themselves as good story-tellers and not as conveyors of important information (p. 493).
TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE
Measuring infotainment or sensationalism in the formal features of news has been infrequent in this line of research. Table 5 presents the findings of categories developed originally by Graber, Zhou & Barnett (2001) in one of the relatively few studies taking into consideration the analysis of formal features and sensationalism in television news. The use of features like Extreme Close Ups, eyewitness camera perspective, sound and music effects, obtrusive voice by anchors and reporters, and slow motion videos can be related to the process of infotaiment, regardless of the topic or genre of the story. The findings in this study show that the only formal feature of infotainment systematically used by all news programs was the obtrusive voice of anchors and reporters. Next, but significantly lower, was the use of extreme close ups, sound and music effects, eyewitness camera movements and slow motion camera perspectives.
These features were present in all of the news programs, but in different degrees and emphasis, with no clear tendency in any of the specific programs, and never exceeding more than 46% of total time, except for sound effects in the single case of TV Azteca. In fact, NBC Evening News, although scoring the higher points in other features of tabloidization in the content, was the less likely of the four news programs to resort to formal features to make the presentation of its stories more attractive.
16 TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE
Table 6 shows that the average time for each news story was approximately one minute in both the American and the Mexican news programs. In addition, the editing pace was very fast: the duration of each shot was between four and five seconds in the three news programs. In contrast, the average time of each story in the Canadian news program was almost two minutes, the double, and the editing pace was slower, each shot taking about seven seconds, three more than the average for Televisa´s program. If duration of the shots and of the news stories has anything to do with the deepness of the content, or with the degree in which the news story allows for rational analysis, then The National was the news program providing the viewer with longer, less rushed news stories. The fact that this news program was also the one with less fragmentation in its content makes it plausible to consider it the most serious and profound of the four news programs included in this study. If we take into account that The National is the only news program in the sample produced by a public network, it would be interesting to look in future studies whether news programs show different degrees of tabloidization according to whether they are produced by public or private networks.
TABLE 6 ABOUT HERE
Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine whether the findings reported in this comparative study show an increase or a decrease of infotainment features in comparison with previous years for each of the news programs. The lack of similar studies in former years, and the cross-sectional nature of this study, makes it difficult to discern if infotainment is growing in
17 Mexican TV news or if the findings refers to an already stabilized process, more likely for the case of the American and the Canadian programs. Theoretically I could argue that the Mexican case reflects a tendency of its news programs to use more frequently content and formal features of infotainment. One possible reason for this may be the retreat of governmental control of electronic media and the significant decrease of self-censorship in Mexican private TV stations due to the radical transformation of the political system in the last decade. Future studies like this one will benefit from these findings and will be able to determine the degree in which these two
Mexican news programs have increased their use of tabloid features.
Discussion
The objective of this paper was to contribute to the understanding of the transformation of
Mexican TV news in the context of globalization and the adoption of U.S. models on the one hand, and the fracturing of the Mexican political system that had been characterized by a tight control of electronic media on the other. The study compared the adoption of infotainment features in Mexican TV news with the use of similar strategies in the most prominent newscasts in Canada and the United States, Mexico’s partners in the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), with higher degrees of economic and technological development, and with a much longer historical presence of infotainment features in their news media.
The findings of this study document the systematic use of infotainment features in
Mexican news programs, with no clear patterns in the overall picture. Mexican newscasts resort more frequently than their American and Canadian counterparts to features like dramatization and personalization, Extreme Close Up camera movements, faster editing pace, score lower in the degree of contextualization in their news stories, and resort to more formal features of
18 infotainment than the American newscast but about the same of the Canadian program. On the other hand, Mexican television news presents less fragmentation than the news stories of the
American NBC Evening News program, and Mexican anchors and reporters are significantly less likely to editorialize than the U.S. and the Canadian anchors and reporters. All four newscasts, however, seem to have adopted, to a higher or lesser degree, most of the content and formal features characteristic of infotainment, although with significant variation within and between them. Mexican news programs, despite resorting to these kinds of features for the first time very recently, seem to have moved very quickly in this area, to being not far away of their
North American counterparts.
The consequences of this proliferation of infotainment in Mexican television news were not the subject of this study, but it seems plausible to discuss some of the conceptual implications of this on-going process. First, it is important to analyze whether the use of these features is resulting in the loss of accurate, inclusive, and in-depth information needed for the formation of public opinion and the citizens´ decision-making processes. Are viewers getting news focused on events, not processes? Are they getting fragmented visions of the political, economic, and social spheres? Are they receiving unbalanced and biased accounts of what is going on in their cities, countries, and the whole world? Many scholars think that infotainment in the news hinders rational thinking and critical and serene analysis of relevant events. Sartori
(1998), one of the most vocal of these critics, after describing the expansion of the tabloidization mode of television and the consequences of the transformation of viewers from “homo sapiens” into “homo videns”, asserts that the TV viewers have become citizens who does not know anything and who are only interested in trivial things (p. 86).
19 It is unlikely that before infotainment the news media were playing a better role in providing viewers with sound information. Critical political economists of communication, media sociologists, and cultural studies scholars have all described and denounced the negative impact of ideological, economic, political, organizational, professional, and individual influences in the content of news much earlier than the expansion and consolidation of infotainment in the quality press and in contemporary national television newscasts. Commercial, ideological, or political imperatives have limited the social role of most news media, before and after infotainment. The new tendency to incorporate features of infotainment in content and form creates new situations and have different implications, but it is clear that the solution is not the return to a previous paradisiacal state (there was never one), but perhaps the search for creative ways to use all these infotainment features to attract viewers to a more relevant an in-depth type of information. In face of the growing disinterest of television audiences on politics and government news and their focus on entertainment and fiction, perhaps its is useful the inclusion of these features in the presentation of news in such a way as to rise the percentage of the audience interested in them. In a way, the Canadian news program The National is a good example of how to adopt creatively some of the features characteristic of this phenomenon without losing depth and relevance in the news stories. The fact that this news program produced by a public network, has the highest rating in Canada, provides an interesting example of a possible path Mexican news programs could follow if they want to maximize their audience ratings through the adoption of content and formal features originated in entertainment and fiction, without losing sight of their role as providers of serious information to viewers addressed as citizens and not as consumers. As Brants (1998) argues, “the fear of losing the citizen and trading him or her for the consumer is based on a distinction which seems to miss the point in the
20 television age”. For him, the affect of the viewer described as consumer should be taken as seriously as the cognitive of the assumed citizen (p. 332). He adds that personalization, in this context, may be a relevant strategy allowing the viewers to understand political information and place social issues in a personal perspective (p. 332).
According to Jensen (1998, p. 16), consumption and appropriation of news in contemporary societies is a necessary condition for the political, economic, and cultural participation of individuals at all levels. If this is the case, then the evaluation of these tendencies towards infotainment is much more relevant today. Cultural studies scholars have argued convincingly that audiences have the ability to negotiate the preferred meanings of media messages, and in particular that they are capable of questioning the objectivity and impartiality of news programs (Jensen 1998; Kavoori 1999; Lozano 2001). However, the lack of more thoughtful and deeper elements in the dynamic flow of news could well have negative consequences in the level of understanding of reality acquired by viewers, making more difficult their role as citizens able to make informed decisions as members of society. Scholars are divided on this point. And even some of those who see infotainment as a negative process, qualify their assertions and are careful not to adopt simplistic arguments. Bird (2000), explains that while she still believes that tabloidization is “dumbing down” journalism and discouraging rational discourse in the US and some European countries, she has realized that in some countries like Mexico and the former Eastern Bloc this process may be acting as a positive force for social change and democratic participation (p. 29). Holtz-Bacha also argues that infotainment in news programs and other television genres may attract viewers who are not interested in politics but who are an important part of fluctuating votes in electoral processes. This is a segment of the electorate who does not look actively for news about elections or political
21 processes: “broadcasting political information packed as entertainment may be the right strategy to reach these groups” (p. 152).
The Mexican case is indeed a good example for this debate. After decades of governmental control or influence on TV news, Mexican news programmes have become more independent and, responding to commercial imperatives, are embracing infotainment as means of improving ratings, providing viewers with conflictive images of politicians, political parties and government officials. By doing this, they may be helping viewers to question the political elite and become aware of many issues they were unable to see in the news before, gaining a wider audience who may never had watched news broadcasts before. This is also a point made by
Graber (1994). She argues that dramatic framings can be criticized as deceptive when they call attention to relatively unimportant aspects of stories at the expense of important factual data and when they transform minor incidents into major dramas. However, she acknowledges that dramatic framings may help in keeping the public informed, attracting viewers who might otherwise ignore newscasts, increasing their emotional involvement at the same time (p. 505).
The findings of this study show that in one way or another infotainment is a key characteristic of contemporary news programs in the North American audiovisual space. The inconsistent tendencies of each news program in each of the features, however, could mean that the adoption of the infotainment model may still be in progress, especially in the Mexican newscasts. Future studies should focus more attention on the processes of consumption and appropriation of news characterized by infotainment in content and form. These studies will be able to determine the degree in which infotainment influence, hinders or shapes the perception of political and social life of the different groups and segments of the audience.
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27 Notas:
1. This paper is based on research findings of the ITESM Research Chair in Audiovisual Media and Globalization at the Tecnologico de Monterrey at Monterrey, Mexico. The author acknowledges the important help he received in the coding and data entry of Ana Fernanda
Hierro, Guillermo Yrizar, Edith Mendoza, Martha Gómez y Marco Tulio Mendez.
2. José-Carlos Lozano is Director of the Center for Communication and Information Research at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Monterrey, México.
3. The Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies defines infotainment as the “term used to describe the trend towards enhancing the entertainment value of factual programmes in order to increase their popularity with audiences” (Watson & Hill, 2003, p. 140).
4. Although the term “tabloidization” sometimes is used only in relation to the tendency of the elite press to follow the model of the popular press, many scholars use it now also for any medium that is driven by audience preferences and commercial requirements: “a change in the range of topics being covered (more entertainment, less information), in the form of presentation
(fewer longer stories, more shorter ones with pictures and illustrations) and a change in the mode of address (more street talk when addressing readers)” (Esser, 1999, p. 293).
5. Kurtz (in Esser, 1999, p. 293) describes tabloidization as “1) an overall decrease in journalistic standards; 2) a decrease in hard news such as politics and economics and an increase in soft news such as sleaze, scandal, sensation and entertainment; 3) a general change (or broadening) of the media´s definition of what they think the voters need to know to evaluate a person´s fitness for public office”.
6. Grabe et al. (2001) mention that “the most common but vague classification of the concept is
28 by content: stories about crime, accidents, disaster, and scandal. A few scholars acknowledge that formal features may play a role in what we have come to call sensational, but precisely how the packaging of stories contributes to sensationalism remains virtually unexplored, especially in terms of television news”. They also quote the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary:
“something designed to arouse a strong reaction by exaggeration and lurid detail” (p. 637).
7. According to Sartori, “spectacularization” can be defined as….
8. One exception in México was the study done by Lozano et al. (2001) about the degree of
“spectacularization” present in the coverage of the presidential election in 2000 by three leading national newspapers and three leading national TV news programs.
9. In this paper I will use “infotainment” as the general term describing the phenomenon discussed above. While this term may not be a synonym of “tabloidization” and “sensationalism” in TV news, I will use it as a closely related term. While some may find significant differences between the terms, they both refer to the use of formal and content resources to elicit emotions and sensations instead of analytical thinking.
10. See footnote number 4.
11. The newspapers were: Reforma, Excelsior, and La Jornada. The TV news programs were the nightly editions of: Noticiero Televisa, Noticiero hechos (TV Azteca), and CNI Canal 40. The period of analysis was from March 1 thru June 26, 2000, analyzing the electoral news printed or transmitted every other day. The newspapers were: Reforma, Excelsior, and La Jornada. The TV news programs were the nightly editions of: Noticiero Televisa, Noticiero hechos (TV Azteca), and CNI Canal 40. The period of analysis was from March 1 thru June 26, 2000, analyzing the electoral news printed or transmitted every other day.
29 12. Fragmentation was defined as the presentation of facts and events in sound bytes according to the fast tempo of television news. It refers to stories that do not offer information about the complex positions about issues, ignoring or minimizing facts that viewers, as citizens, should known to be able to exert their democratic rights.
Table 1
Dramatization and personalization in the content of TV news programs (percentage of total time in seconds)
Dramatization & Noticiero Hechos TV NBC CBC The personalization Televisa Azteca Evening National News No 18 33 12 40 Yes, in 50% or more of the 56 58 34 26 story Yes, in less than 50% 26 9 54 34 Total number of news 100% 100% 100% 100% stories (N=17,428) (N=18,138) (N=11,771) (N=19,811)
Table 2 Fragmentation in the content of TV news programs (percentage of total time in seconds)
Fragmentation Noticiero Hechos NBC CBC The Televisa TV Azteca Evening National News No 36 49 19 80 Yes, in 50% or more of the 39 16 16 1 story Yes, in less than 50% 25 35 65 19 Total number of news stories 100% 100% 100% 100% (N=17,428) (N=18,138) (N=11,771) (N=19,811)
Table 3 Tendency in the content of TV news programs (percentage of total time in seconds)
Tendency Noticiero Hechos NBC Evening CBC The
30 Televisa TV Azteca News National Objective, neutral 44 44 17 17 Editorialized 56 56 83 83 Total 100% 100% 100% 100% (N=17,428) (N=18,138) (N=11,771) (N=19,811)
Table 4 Contextualization of the content of TV news (percentage of total time in seconds)
Contextualization Noticiero Hechos NBC Evening CBC The Televisa TV Azteca News National Yes 68 57 82 88 No 32 43 18 12 Total 100% 100% 100% 100% (N=17,428) (N=18,138) (N=11,771) (N=19,811)
Table 5 Percentage of news stories presenting traits of tabloidization in its formal features1
Trait Noticiero Hechos NBC Evening CBC The Televisa TV Azteca News National Obtrusive voice 57 69 58 79 Extreme close up 46 46 14 39 Sound effects 15 61 14 17 Musical effects 27 26 9 30 Eyewitness camera 16 10 6 17 Slow motion camera 20 37 13 23
1 Percentage refers to the duration of the total number of news stories that did present traits of infotainment.
Table 6 Average time in seconds and number of effects by story
Effect Noticiero Hechos NBC Evening CBC The Televisa TV Azteca News National Number of shots 4335 4342 2205 2827 Average number of 14 16 13 17 shots by story Average time of the 56 68 69 117 news story (in seconds) Average time by shot 4.0 4.25 5.3 6.9 (in seconds) Number of other 1063 1300 540 745
31 effects Average number of 3.4 4.9 3.2 4.4 effects by story Total number of stories 310 267 171 169
32