The Sociology of News Production Revisited

2. The Sociology of News
Production Revisited
1- Nusrat Azeema

3. Sociology
•According to American Sociological Association
•Sociology is the scientific study of society,
including patterns of social relationships, social
interaction, and culture.

4. News
•Newly received or remarkable information,
especially about recent events.

5. What is journalism?
Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing,
creating, and presenting news and information. It
is also the product of these activities.

6. Sociology of News
• A sociological understanding of journalism should comprehend
the blend of chance and intention, normality and catastrophe,
instrument and accident, expectation and surprise, narrative
and interjection that makes up the news.

7. Journalism
Businessor practice or producing or disseminating
information about the contemporary affairs of general
public interest and importance
The function of journalism is broad:
communication.

8. Journalists make the News
•Journalist wrote the words that turn up in the
papers or on the screen as stories.
• Max weber coined sociology of the production
in (1921; 1946), “He write the social standing of
the journalist as a political person”

9. •Robert Park wrote about the US immigrant press
and news itself as a form of knowledge
(1922;1923)
•Helen MacGill Hughes wrotes an early study of
human interest stories. But the formal study of
How news organizations produce news products?
(1940).
•Social psychologist Kurt Lewin coined the term
“Gatekeeper”

10. •As a gatekeeper, Mr gates wrote down a reason for
rejection or every story he turned down.
•1- not enough space
•2- dull writing
•3- drags too much
•4- propaganda
•5- Gatekeeper’s own experiences, attitude and
expectations
• The typical editor was concerned with goals of production,
bureaucratic routine and interpersonal relations within the
newsroom.

11. •Gatekeeper provides a handy metaphor for the
relation of news organizations to news products; but
it leaves “information” sociologically untouched
•If gatekeeper model is insufficient
•1- View of political economy
•2- Social organization of News-work
•3- Cultural approach

12. MediaBias
News is not amirror of reality
It is representation of the world and all
representation is selective
Biasin newsreports meansthat the reporter, editor or news
institution owner knowswhat the real event looks like, but
will color it to advanceapolitical, economic or ideological
aim

13. MediaBias
Framesin the media are principles of selection, emphasis
and presentation composed of little- implied theories about
what exists, what happens and what matters.
Atheoretical assumption on framing of bias revealsthat
the decision inherent in the manufacture of newshave
more to do with the marketplace, the nature of
organizations and the assumptions of newsprofessionals
than with individual bias.

14. Political Economy of News
•It relates the outcomes of the news process to the
structure of the state and the economy and to the
economic foundation of the news organization.
(Murdock. 1982)
•News ‘coincides (agree) with’ and ‘reinforces’ the
‘definition of the political situation evolved by
political elite’ (Murdock. 1982; 172).

15. Political Economy of News

16. Political Economy of News
•Fewer and fewer corporations control more and more
of the American news media (Bagdikian, 1983).
•Major media conglomerates control more and more
of the world’s media. Where media are not controlled
by corporations, they are generally voices of the
state.

17. RecentChangesin Journalism
Towards infotainment
Increasing cynicism/doubts
Moving from thematic coverageto episodic
coverageof newsevents.

18. The Social Organization of News work
•This perspective tries to understand How journalists’
efforts on the job are constrained/controlled by
organizational and occupational routines.
•Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester (1974) define 3
types of news
•1- Routine News
•2- Scandal
•3- Accidental News

19. Routine NEWS Scandal NEWS Accident NEWS
If an event is
planned and then
promoted as news by
its planners, this is a
routine news item.
If the event is
planned but
promoted by
someone different
from the agent of the
occurrence, it is a
Scandal.
If the event is
unplanned and then
promoted as a news
by someone other
than its hapless
instigators, it is an
Accidental news.

20. The Social Organization of News work
•Newspapers reflect not a world ‘out there’ but ‘the
practices of those who have the power to
determine/control the experience of others, Molotch
and Lester (1974; 54).
•The center of news generation is the link between
reporter or representative of the news bureaucracies
and officials or government bureaucracies.

22. Cultural Approaches
•This approach emphasizes the constraining force of
board cultural traditions and symbolic systems,
regardless of the structure of economic organization
or the character of occupational routines.
•Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1985; 153) has
written in a different context that ‘an event is not just
a happening in the world; it is a relation between a
certain happening and a given symbolic system’.

23. Cultural Approaches
•A cultural account of news helps explain generalized
images and stereotypes in news media.
•Richard Hoggart writes that the most important filter
through which news is constructed is “the cultural air
we breath, the whole ideological atmosphere of our
society, which tells us that some things can be said
and that others had best not be said” (Bennett, 1982: 303)

24. Cultural Approaches
•That ‘Cultural air’ is one that in part ruling groups
and institutions create.
•Hallin and Mancini (1984) recognize that ‘news is a
form of literature and that one key resource
journalists work with is the cultural tradition of story
telling and picture making and sentence structure
they inherit, with a number of vital assumptions
about the world built in.

25. Cultural Approaches
• Cultural form may also refer to language itself.
• CNN was by 1993 available in 140 countries
• Euronews, a 5-language satellite transmitted news channel
begun in 1994.

26. Conclusion
• News is responsible for creating the cultural product.
• News media should serve society by informing the
general population in ways that arm them for vigilant
citizenship.
• Studies of sociology of news tend to view news
making as a reality constructing activity governed by
the elites.
• 1oo yearsagopoliticians madelittle effort to court public
opinion but today these samepoliticians seek to pressurize
their party or government through public opinion.
• Today, wehavepoliticians goingpublic

27. Conclusion
• Historians believe that there has been a shift in the patterns
of reading because of the availability of different kinds of
media.
• Journalists often write as much to impress their colleagues
as to influence a broader audience.
• Reporters who are too eager to please their audience are
called the ‘quacks’
• The media operate within the culture and are obliged to use
cultural symbols.

28. Conclusion
• News and newsinstitutions exist evenwheredemocracydoes not.
• Press is important to democracy but in itself it is not democracy and
does not create democracy.
• News becomes a part of the daily rethinking and reconstructing of a
common social world.