NEWS What are the conflicting interests at work behind choosing what gets covered in the news, and how? Addressing these issues with examples across a range of media including print, radio, television and the internet, Jackie Harrison explains the different theoretical approaches that have been used to study news, as well as providing an accessible introduction to how news is produced and regulated, what counts as news and how it is selected and presented. Written in a clear and lively style, News is the ideal introductory book for students of media, communication and journalism. Topics covered include: • introduction to the concept of news • growth and development of news • technology, concentration and competition • balancing freedom and responsibility • regulatory control of the news • making the news. Jackie Harrison is Professor of Public Communication in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield. She has written widely on television violence, European audio-visual policy, the culture of news production and the changing digital television environment. ROUTLEDGE INTRODUCTIONS TO MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Edited by Paul Cobley London Metropolitan University This new series provides concise introductions to key areas in contemporary communications. Each book in the series addresses a genre or a form of communication, analysing the nature of the genre or the form as well as reviewing its production and consumption, outlining the main theories and approaches that have been used to study it, and discussing contemporary textual examples of the form. The series offers both an outline of how each genre or form has developed historically, and how it is changing and adapting to the contemporary media landscape, exploring issues such as convergence and globalization. Videogames James Newman Brands Marcel Danesi Advertising Ian MacRury Magazines Anna Gough-Yates Youth Media Bill Osgerby News Jackie Harrison Cyberspace Mike Ledgerwood NEWS Jackie Harrison LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc. 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2006 Jackie Harrison All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Harrison, Jackie, 1961– News/by Jackie Harrison. p. cm.—(Routledge introductions to media and communications) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Journalism. 2. Broadcast journalism. I. Title. II. Series. PN4731.H335 2005 070.4–dc22 2005020196 ISBN 0-203-62553-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-31949-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-31950-1 (pbk) In loving memory of my cousin Frances Heaton CONTENTS Series editor’s preface vii Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Views about news: common sense, practitioner and academic 13 3 From ballads to broadcasting: the historical growth and 32 development of news 4 The modern news ecology: technology, regulation, concentration 54 and competition 5 News and society 77 6 News practice 99 7 News: character and audience 121 8 Possibilities and problems: trends in the future of news 144 163 Appendix 1 Key events relating to the Mutton Inquiry and Report Appendix2 A map of the multi-channel TV landscape 170 Appendix3 Concentration of the ITV sector 171 Appendix4 Concentration of the national press 173 Appendix5 Timeline of the Communications Act 2003 175 Appendix6 TV news programmes 176 Notes 178 Bibliography 196 Index 213 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE There can be no doubt that communications pervade contemporary social life. The audio- visual media, print and other communication technologies play major parts in modern human existence, mediating diverse interactions between people. Moreover, they are numerous, heterogeneous and multi-faceted. Equally, there can be no doubt that communications are dynamic and ever-changing, constantly reacting to economic and popular forces. Communicative genres and modes that we take for granted because they are seemingly omnipresent—news, advertising, film, radio, television, fashion, the book—have undergone alarming sea changes in recent years. They have also been supplemented and reinvigorated by new media, new textualities, new relations of production and new audiences. The study of communications, then, cannot afford to stand still. Although communication study as a discipline is relatively recent in its origin, it has continued to develop in recognizable ways, embracing new perspectives, transforming old ones and responding to—and sometimes influencing—changes in the media landscape. This series of books is designed to present developments in contemporary media. It focuses on the analysis of textualities, offering an up-to-date assessment of current communications practice. The emphasis of the books is on the kind of communications which constitute the modern media and the theoretical tools which are needed to understand them. Such tools may include semiotics (including social semiotics and semiology), discourse theory, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, queer theory, gender analysis, political economy, liberal pluralism, positivism (including quantitative approaches), qualitative methodologies (including the ‘new ethnography’), reception theory and ideological analysis. The breadth of current communications media, then, is reflected in the array of methodological resources needed to investigate them. Yet the task of analysis is not carried out as an hermetic experiment. Each volume in the series places its topic within a contextual matrix of production and consumption. Each allows readers to garner an understanding of what that communication is like without tempting them to forget who produced it, for what purpose, and with what result. The books seek to present research on the mechanisms of textuality but also attempt to reveal the precise situation in which such mechanisms exist. Readers coming to these books will therefore gain a valuable insight into the present standing of specific communications media. Just as importantly, though, they will become acquainted with analytic methods which address, explore and interrogate the very bases of that standing. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my colleagues: Jonathan Foster, John Richardson, Lorna Woods; and Sadie Clifford—thank you for your advice and time. To my editor Paul Cobley, it was more than time and advice I received. I am deeply grateful for your constant encouragement, and wise (and pointed) comments on the various chapters you had to deal with. Thank you. To particularly helpful others: Richard Deverell; Martin Hamer; Gavin Hewitt; Karen Sanders; John Steele; Rodrigo Uribe; Bridgette Wessels and Stephen Whittle, my gratitude. My love as always to my parents, Joan and Ron Mason, who continue to contribute that intangible and unnameable element which allows me to carry on when I feel like doing something else. Finally to Neil, where nothing needs to be said. 1 INTRODUCTION News is more easily pursued than defined, a characteristic it shares with such other enthralling abstractions as love and truth. (Roshco [1975] 1999:32) THE CONCEPT OF NEWS: ASSUMPTIONS AND ANALYSIS This book is an attempt to write the ‘story’ of news: what I believe to be its constituent features, its various manifestations and, of course, its significance. If I were writing the philosophy of news, the points I make in this Introduction, which is the matrix through which I conduct my interrogation of news, would be the book itself. However, given that I begin with what I believe news is, the rest of the book is hopefully a coherent account which follows that definition faithfully and, more importantly, reveals the story of news as it is today: in short its character, nature, history, purpose and value. To begin with, the familiar word ‘news’ belies its highly contested meaning. For generations writers and theorists have questioned what makes news, what is news and what function news does or should play in society. We all need and rely upon news; we have to invest trust in those who tell it to us. News reflects our need to know about contemporary events as they occur. We return from holiday and immediately check what has happened while we have been away. There may be a sense of relief if the events that have occurred and which directly affect us, are trivial, or merely constitute exciting gossip. Events which do not directly affect us may be of interest or seem important because they are significant in their own right (water is found on Mars), or we may empathize and perhaps send aid to those involved in the story (major natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones or tsunamis). Some stories can have a different type of impact upon us, becoming part of our collective memory (the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001; the death of Princess Diana on 31 August 1997). Some stories may merely entertain us for a short time (the dash for freedom made by two pigs on their way to the slaughterhouse; the rescue of a duck trapped in ice, or a ghost seen at Hampton Court). While this book recognizes that news can be selected and expressed in a variety of ways by a range of different news tellers, the focus of this analysis of news is concerned, first, with the constituent features of news itself and, second, with their impact on practice, namely what those reporting the news actually do and why. This book explores the nature of news by analysing its deep characteristics or intellectual and practical architecture (outlined in Table 1).