LO1: Report

Unit 7 LO1: Understand the News Industry - Report

The news market covers a variety of mediums, with conglomerates often owning many subsidiaries in a variety of areas, as well as independent sources such as citizen journalism which operate in a variety of mediums as well.

The TV platform is host to many news broadcasters, which distribute a variety of information, with varying degrees of bias. For example, the BBC is an olitical news broadcaster as it doesn't show any political bias to anyone, and covers any worthwhile news regardless of subject. However, it focusses on worldwide news rather than the more sensational celebrity news often found on other stations. For example, Fox News, owned by News Corporation. This broadcaster focusses on celebrity news such, especially posts on social media by celebrities, and has an overtly right wing political bias.

The BBC also appears on a web platform to distribute news via articles and videos on their website and on social media. They focus on the same subjects on this platform as well, and also lack bias. Although many print distributors also have an online presence, such as the Telegraph or Guardian, websites such as the Huffington Post appear solely on the web. This service is largely impartial as well, but has articles on celebrity gossip etc. as it appears to a mass audience, which is more likely to happen on the web. This is due to technological convergence, as now everyone can access the internet and news at all times due to the interactive features of Web 2.0, web content often caters to a mass audience as many people will see it, so sensational stories are often used. The Huffington Post can be seen as evidence of this, as it's a company (owned by AOL) that acts as a news aggregate more than a newspaper, and uses citizen journalists, from blogs etc., to write articles. And also because, independent sources are also more common online, as it is very easy to distribute news and amass a large audience via social media (such as Facebook or Twitter, which is often used to amass a large following of people, as they are very popular) or blogging. This in an advantage that web has - stories can reach an audience, even if they don't usually read the publication, so they can reach a larger audience compared to print and TV platforms.

Using the web as a method for distributing media is effective in a number of ways. For example, as the internet is available to a large audience any news story is more likely to be spread, via social media, to others as a lot of people are likely to see it initially, which is more effective than print to spread information and reach a large audience. The ability to spread information easily, while often not going into detail or citing sources, can easily lead to Adorno and Horkheimer's Hyperdermic Syringe theory. This is because web media can easily create folk devils, which spread quickly through interactive web such as social media, so people are more likely to listen to the information as it will come from friends and 'trustworthy' sources, which is a negative effect of web media compared to other mediums.

Print is also a large platform in the news distribution market, with many newspapers delivering a variety of news. For example, the Times is a broadsheet newspaper which covers world news and political stories to attract a mainly ABC1 readership, as this demographic is most likely to be interested in this content. And it also has a right wing political bias, which these demographics are more likely to be a part of. This newspaper is part of News Corporation, and is used, along with its sister companies such as the Sunday Times, to offer a variety of information to appeal to a mass audience.

The Sun is a tabloid owned by News Corporation which also works in this way. It appeals to the C2DE audience as it primarily features celebrity gossip and uses sensational titles and text which appeals to this audience.

Although print rarely distributes to as large an audience as web stories, print has the advantage that stories can be much more detailed. This is because the audience that uses web content is more likely to want short, to the point stories without expansion, which the print does the opposite of. So print has the advantage of being able to go in depth with their stories, while web doesn't.

But these companies rarely gather news on their own. Companies such as Reuters gather information from their reporters etc., which they then sell to large conglomerates for them to use for news stories. This is because news aggregates such as Reuters rarely has a news distributor of their own, so they sell the news they find to people who will be willing to pay. Editors, who act as Gatekeepers for their companies, decide what news stories should be purchased and published, putting them in control of the news the public is exposed to.

This process does not happen for citizen journalism, however, as the stories sold are expensive and so can't be afforded by small or independent companies, which is a disadvantage of smaller companies as they can’t access the same content as larger companies. As a result, citizen journalists have to report on events locally, so they very rarely contribute to global news stories.

News Corporation, a media conglomerate, owns many media companies across a range of mediums (for example The Sun – print, Fox News – TV etc.). Because of this massive range, they effectively control the news intake of a very large population, as a variety of ages, classes and genders will have different exposure to different mediums (for example, older readers will prefer print products a lot of the time) and so he’s able to control what a variety of people see. Although it’s efficient, bias from the organisation and the head (Rupert Murdoch) can limit what news is covered and prevent people from being completely informed of a subject, seeing both sides of an argument etc.

In conclusion, news in distributed in a variety of mediums to appeal to a variety of audiences, which conglomerates use to appear to as a large an audience as possible to make the maximum profit, but due to money constraints independent sources cannot do this to the extent as larger companies.