DOCUMENT RESUME ED 447 546 CS 510 463 TITLE Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (83rd, Phoenix, Arizona, August 9-12, 2000). Radio-Television Journalism Division. INSTITUTION Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. PUB DATE 2000-08-00 NOTE 168p.; For other sections of this proceedings, see CS 510 451-470. PUB TYPE Collected Works Proceedings (021) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC07 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Content Analysis; Economic Factors; Editing; Empowerment; Higher Education; Journalism; *Journalism Education; News Media; *News Reporting; Ownership; Race; Radio; Social Class; *Television; Videotape Recordings IDENTIFIERS Deregulation; Local Television Stations; Writing Style ABSTRACT The Radio-Television Journalism Division section of the proceedings contains the following six papers: "Local Television News and Viewer Empowerment: Why the Public's Main Source of News Falls Short" (Denise Barkis Richter); "For the Ear to Hear: Conversational Writing on the Network Television News Magazines"(C. A. Tuggle, Suzanne Huffman and Dana Rosengard); "Synergy Bias: Conglomerates and Promotion in the News" (Dmitri Williams); "Constructing Class & Race in Local TV News" (Don. Heider and Koji Fuse); "Going Digital: An Exploratory Study of Nonlinear Editing Technology in Southeastern Television Newsrooms" (Seok Kang, George L. Daniels, Tanya Auguston and Alyson Belatti); and "Deregulation and Commercial Radio Network News: A Qualitative Analysis" (Richard Landesberg).(RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ;t- Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (83rd, Phoenix, Arizona, August 9-12, 2000). Radio-Television Journalism Division. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS CENTER (ERIC) BEEN GRANTED BY This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. ivie6J1 Minor changes have been made to \C) improve reproduction quality. (Z) TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Points of view or opinions stated in this rj INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) document do not necessarily represent 1 C/) official OERI position or policy. ter BEST COPYAVAILABLE Local Television News and Viewer Empowerment: Why the Public's Main Source of News Falls Short Denise Barkis Richter, Ph.D. Department of Communications Palo Alto College 1400 W. Villaret San Antonio, Texas 78224 (210) 921-5442 [email protected] Submitted to the Radio-Television Journalism Division for consideration for AEJMC's 2000 Convention 3 Local Television News and Viewer Empowerment ABSTRACT A content analysis of local television news revealed that only one out of four storiescontained empowering information. Through participant observation at a local television newsstation and in-depth interviews with local television newsworkers, three principal reasons emergedwhy empowering information was excluded: 1) the absence of the station's commitment to provideempowering information; 2) newsworkers' lack of enterprise; and 3) the newsworkers' perception of viewersand what their viewers want. Local Television News and Viewer Empowerment I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion. Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 September 28,1820, letter to William Charles Jarvis (Kaplan, 1882, rpt. 1992) True democracy requires an empowered citizenry capable of making decisions and accepting responsibility. To become empowered, citizens must have access to useful and relevant information.Since local television news is the main source of local information for most Americans, itcould be anideal arena for empowering information; however,there is a paucity of empowering information featured on local television news. In this study, I examine the extent to which empowering information isfound in local television newscasts. I also explore the reasons local television news is depicted as it isby analyzing the news values, routines, and organizational structures of local television news that appear tohinder the inclusion of empowering information. Finally, I develop suggestions for conditions that would ensure that empowering information is included in local television newscasts. I believe that citizensespecially citizens whose main source of news is local televisionaren't able to respond collectively to problems or to get involved because they have not been empowered todo so. Empowering information is user-friendly informationthat offers an opportunity for citizen action. This study is not concerned with what viewers do with empowering information oncethey have it. Rather, this study is interested in learning whether or not the information is present. And if it is not,why not? Empowering information can be seen as a minimum threshold or a pre-requisite of participation.If viewers are presented empowering information, they are able to decide whether or not to takeaction. If they are not presented empowering information, then they have not been given the opportunity todecide whether or not to take action. Casual observation of local television news suggested there was little empowering information presented to viewers. Through a content analysis, I explored just how much empoweringinformation was included in local television news stories. I also reviewed the typesof stories that were more likely to include empowering information. To answer the why and how questions of this research, I spent amonth as a participant observer in a local television newsroom, andI conducted in-depth interviews with key newsworkers to investigate what news values, routines, and organizational structures impede or facilitate empowering information's inclusion. Since Americans say that local television news is theirmain source of news, it is my hope that journalism professionals, journalism educators, and American citizenswill benefit from this work. 2 sv Local Television News and Viewer Empowerment Literature Review This study's rationale rests on three main premises. First, that true democracy requires an empowered citizenry capable of making decisions and accepting responsibility. Second, that citizens must have access to useful and relevant information to become empowered. And third, local television news could be an ideal arena for empowering information since it is the main source of newsfor most Americans; however, local television's current news values, routines, and organizational structures seem to inhibit the inclusion of empowering information. The influencethat local television news has on its viewers, both in transmissiongiving informationand ritualproducing, maintaining, repairing and transforming realityterms, as defined by James Carey in his book, Communication as Culture, is also taken as a given in this study (1989; rpt. 1992). Carey believes that journalists fail to recognize their ritual role. "The press, by seeing its role as that of informing the public, abandons its role as an agency for carrying on the conversation of our culture," he wrote (Carey, p. 82). I believe that journalists' failure to recognize their ritual role is at the root of why empowering information is left out of the news. The following review of the literature will explore the above premises by reviewing definitions of empowerment as well as studies in information, local television news, media sociology, and public journalism. Definitions of Empowerment The concept that Jefferson had in mind when he wrote of informing people's discretion was empowerment, although he didn't call it that. To empower is "to give faculties or abilities: enable"(Cove, 1971, p. 744). Also, "to give power to; to authorize" (Guralnik, 1982, p. 152). Elizabeth Thoman, Executive Director of the Center for Media & Values, said, "When people are not empowered, they can be victimized. When you look at TV passively, you're obviously not engaged by it. To be empowered, you've got to get over your passivity" (Du Brow, 1993, p. F15). According to Sandra Arbetter, M.S.W., empowerment "means no longer feeling helpless. It means believing you can change things" (Arbetter, 1992, p. 18). Myles Horton, a pioneer of education for social change, defined empowerment as "helping people develop the capacity to make decisions and to take responsibility" (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 125). He believed in letting people use expert information, provided that the experts did not tell people what to do. Like Jefferson, Horton believed that people should be given information along with the freedom to decide what to do with it (p. 130). Rappaport defined empowerment as "a process, a mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities gain mastery over their affairs" (Rappaport, 1987, p. 122). Empowerment is a multilevel construct that deals with an individual's psychological sense of personal influence as well as their actual social, political and legal influence, and Rappaport believes it is best studied over time in both people and settings (p. 121 and p. 138). Zimmerman wrote that empowerment "embodies an interaction between individuals and environments that is culturally and contextually defined" (Zimmerman, 1990, p. 170). He named three contexts,
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