UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE Arja Haikonen “HAVE YOUR SAY” INTERACTIVITY AS A PROFESSIONAL VALUE IN THE BBC RADIO PROGRAMMING Department of Mass Communication and Journalism Master’s Thesis in Social Sciences July 2008 ii University of Tampere Department of Mass Communication and Journalism Master’s Thesis, 99 p, 1 p. appendix Haikonen, Arja: “Have Your Say” Interactivity as a Professional Value in the BBC Radio Programming July 2008 __________________________________________________________________________ Abstract The study examines the value of interactivity in BBC radio programmes, as seen by programme makers, and more widely the changes and challenges it brings to news journalism. In the current competitive media climate news organisations have to provide new facilities and platforms for the audience because the way people consume news is changing. This research looks at how and why BBC news programmes, with the help of interactivity, have responded to these challenges, and to what degree news journalists think the audience should shape the news agenda. The research method is a qualitative analysis of the interviews with programme makers. The issue of audience participation has its roots in the debate on the media’s role in strengthening democracy. Shortcomings of mainstream media have been expressed, among others, by those advocating public journalism and more recently, participatory journalism. The main message seems to be that traditional journalism has failed in its task to encourage dialogue between the people and their political representatives. Citizens are portrayed as passive observers of the world, and although they are sometimes allowed to appear in the news, the news agenda is set by politicians and elites. This has increased calls for rethinking of basic top-down journalism and the creation of more imaginative and inclusive forms of journalism. The aim of the study is to find out whether interactivity, as described by the interviewees, could help to meet those calls, and to determine how much the journalists feel threatened by a more active audience; and the extent to which journalistic practices are changing with interactivity. Ideas of public journalism and more recently participatory journalism form the basis for the theoretical framework of the paper. The research finds no fundamental changes in the gatekeepers’ roles; citizens are seen as useful sources and they have a new, important role in enriching the news agenda, but editorial control remains with journalists. Traditional journalistic practises appear still to be relevant in the era of audience participation. The interviewees wanted to be responsive to the views and vision of the public but warned against promoting interactivity as a virtue in its own right. For the BBC interactivity may serve as a survival strategy for the future. In response to changing audience needs it has introduced a range of interactive services and seems to have found a powerful tool in feedback opportunities that, it may hope, will help to continue to legitimise public service broadcasting. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1 2. CHALLENGES FACING JOURNALISM IN THE 21 ST CENTURY……............... 2 2.1 Public journalism………………………………………………………………4 2.1.1 Criticism and taking the ideas further……………………………...5 2.1.2 Democratic deficit…………………………………………………....7 2.2 Towards participatory journalism…………………………………………...11 2.2.1 Changing media landscape………………………………………....12 2.2.2 Citizen journalists…………………………………………………...13 2.2.3 Are they journalists or does it matter?..…………………………..15 2.2.4 Are reporters doomed?..………………………………………….....17 2.3 Fetishisation of the “new”…………………………………………………….18 2.4 More democratic news………………………………………………………..19 3. INTERACTIVITY........................................................................................…………...21 3.1 Interactivity: messages and participants..…………………….......................22 3.2 Minimum and maximum journalism………………………………………...24 3.3 Access, Dialogue, Deliberation………………………………………………..26 3.4 Sources…………………………………………………………………………27 4. BBC NEWS AND INTERACTIVITY………………………………………………...29 4.1 BBC news and “the missing link”…..………………………………………..30 4.1.1 Phone-ins…………………………………………………………….30 4.2 Public service broadcasting in crisis…………………………………………31 4.3 BBC radio ……………………………………………………………………..33 4.3.1 Did the iPod kill the radio star?..………………………………......35 4.4 Changing news environment…………………………………………………36 4.4.1 Websites as news source……………………………………………38 4.4.2 BBC on the Internet………………………………………………. .39 4.5 Scepticism……………………………………………………………………...41 5. METHODOLOGY …………………………………..………………………………..45 5.1 Qualitative and quantitative research methods…………………………….45 5.2 Why qualitative?..………………………………………………………….....46 5.3 Qualitative case study methods……………………………………………...47 5.4 Focused interviews……………………………………………………………48 6. FRAMING INTERACTIVITY……………………………………………………….50 6.1 Background: approaches to the audience in three stations...……………...51 6.2 News frames…………………………………………………………………..55 6.3 Why interactivity: bridging social distance and elitism in the BBC……....57 iv 6.4 Keeping the distance: routines of the professional gatekeeping……............62 6.5 Empowering the audience…………………………………………………….68 6.6 Problems and threats………………………………………………………....70 6.7 Redefining the public service duty…………………………………………...73 6.8 Transparency and legitimacy………………………………………………...79 6.9 Future…………………………………………………………………………..82 7. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………...87 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………………...93 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………..100 1 1. INTRODUCTION “We do not own the news any more”. (Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC Global New Division.) The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of the value of interactivity in news journalism, as seen by the journalists themselves. My own interest stems from experience with the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC and its World Service Radio News and Current Affairs department, where I work as a broadcast journalist. I have therefore focused on the BBC’s radio news programmes and on their relationship with the audience. After I had decided on starting point I spent a lot of time, in fact hours, talking to BBC journalists in various roles, to find out what more they would want to learn about interactivity. It became clear that most people didn’t quite understand what value, if any, interacting with the audience could add, or at least they could not put it into words. Many said they didn’t even know what interactivity really meant but all the same, felt threatened by it. It was really those concerns and questions expressed about interactivity that were to define my research question. The reasons the media organisations are rethinking their relationship with the audience is related to the technological developments, such as the Internet, mobile phones and digital technology that have changed the ways news is offered and listened to. My aim is to find out how and why the BBC news programmes have responded to the changing habits and demands of the listeners, as well as challenges set by competition in the forever expanding media world. According to some recent research people want the BBC news to tell them more about the issues and events that matter in their lives in a tone of voice they can relate to. Another recognized trend is that the young and lower classes connect less to BBC news than older, up market audiences do. This has led to the question; how should the audience shape the news agenda? There is no question that this is already happening, and interactivity is the driving force; the BBC has introduced a range of interactive services in response to changing audience needs. Although this study puts the BBC, a public service broadcaster, under scrutiny, it doesn’t focus particularly on public broadcasting. The developments and challenges described above 2 and presented in this paper apply to all mainstream media organisations; commercial or public. They all have to re-examine their values and routines as well as launch new policies to engage better with audiences and to appeal to the young. As new media offers alternatives that challenge traditional journalism, newspapers, television and radio are all in the spotlight to redefine their policies in order to secure their existence in the future. So although this research, because of my personal interest, focuses on radio, the issues presented here are not related to any particular medium either. Faced by new challenges, changes take place across the mainstream media and I have examined these general conceptions in the context of radio programmes. This paper examines interactivity as a professional value. Although values are abstract and complex to explain, I have approached them as a concept that is related to the norms of a culture (in this case journalism and its environment) but refers more deeply to the judgments on what is perceived as good or bad. Definitions that are most useful in the context of this study describe values “as estimate or opinion of, liking for, a person or a thing” or refer to “to the quality of a thing considered in respect of its power and validity for a specified purpose or effect”. (Oxford English Dictionary) The focus of this study is the journalists’ own perceptions on how they define professionalism or what constitutes good radio based on their personal value judgments. These values are shaped through the culture they live in consisting of beliefs, practices, attitudes and interaction