The Power of the Media
The media have incredible powers and influence. They are the ones that disseminate information and bring it to the masses. The media have the ultimate say in what is concerning news and in what way that information is told. They also have the power to be agenda setters. Agenda setting is defined as what the media outlets decide to cover and report on. Though another term used within the media called gate keeping often goes hand in hand with agenda setting. Gate keeping refers to what gets filtered out by reporters, editors, and other influences before finally making it to the people.
Because the media have such great power in deciding what the audience should know about and eventually talk about with peers, sometimes they tend to see how far they can push the limit. In the newspapers the editors can veto reporters’ Work From Home based on what they think is important or not.
When Saddam Hussein was hanged, the Buffalo News had a massive picture on the top right half of the front page. The Democrat and Chronicle, the Rochester paper, didn’t deem it that important of a story and “buried” it on the front page with a small picture in the bottom corner. Maybe Buffalo had nothing better to report on that day. Maybe Buffalo’s editors thought that that was huge and immensely important news more so than their counterparts in Rochester. The editors in Buffalo though created a stir within the people, making sure that whoever looked at the paper was informed of what had happened that day to Hussein. The Buffalo News captured the audience’s attention by sprawling that on the front cover making the readers discuss that specific event with people they came in contact with. Rochester citizen surely must have talked about the hanging, but since it wasn’t the biggest piece of information on the cover, other topics were more important and closest to home and were probably the topic for discussions.
In order for news to be considered important enough for people to talk about, it must be a part of some the topics listed below. The story being in close proximity to the area in which the news will be discussed is a major factor. Say a tractor trailer drove off the road going 80 miles per hour and struck a car, flipping it off a bridge and killing two passengers happened in Seattle, viewers in Buffalo, New York, are not going to hear about it since accidents happen everywhere and no one from the area of Buffalo was affected. Timeliness of a news story is extremely important. Technology allows reporters to be on location as something is happening, breaking or live. Say a whole bunch of cows were standing on the I-90 at noon and then disappeared 15 minutes later. A reporter would be there live for the noon newscast. At 6 p.m. a small little report might be done but it won’t be as big as it was during the noon cast since it was happening right then and there.
Impact is another deciding factor of a news story. An example is if someone’s purse was robbed at a convenient store and it just happened to that one woman. That story isn’t newsworthy since it only affected one person in the grand scheme of things. Prominence of a person is another thing that makes stories newsworthy. If a celebrity or public figure were to die in a plane crash in Venezuela, that bit of information would be reported on in local news because people in the spotlight are constantly viewed as important figures. Since everyone knows about them their death will be discussed, probably for several newscasts after the initial one.
Conflict often makes good videos. Just this past week a teenage girl was beat up by six other teenage girls after being lured into a house. The attackers taped what was going on while punches and kicks were being administered. The Today Show saw this as a time to talk about violence with children. Will the tape shown lead to other threatening things like that? Only time will tell. To balance out the bad human interest stories, unusual stories are often brought to the attention of the viewers. An example is the story of the water skiing squirrel. Who has ever seen a squirrel water ski before? Since this was such an abnormal occurrence, networks all over the country showed this bit of information.
Stories that are simple will only be told by those in the television studios. If the story is too complex and can’t be told in under a minute it won’t get told and will be saved for the newspapers to cover that specific piece of information.
News is listed as a shared social phenomenon (Tuchman 134). News and information brings people together. Strangers can see a headline and begin to discuss what it means to them or how it might affect their lives. It is so influential. If a news story seems, hot but when the person is interviewed there is no zest and appeal, that story would be tossed to the sidelines.
How the news is displayed and what it is about puts into proportions and perspectives how influential it could be. News shapes people’s lives and catastrophic events often bring people together to share their stories, views and opinions. Bonds and relationships can be formed from the events discussed and brought to light. What events are being talked about though is based on by the decision making executives. Everyone could be missing an essential story, but that story was tossed out of the newsroom because it was not necessary.
Works Cited
Tuchman, Gaye. Making News: A Study IN the Construction of Reality. The Free Press:
New York, 1978.
