Journalism
Mythologies (Paladin, 1973), myth ‘abolishes the
complexity of human acts’.
By a process of elimination and emphasis,
the journalist frames meaning (see framing).
In the study of media we are as interested in
what does not appear in the frame as what does;
what is absent. Th e frame can also be seen as a
set of boundaries which journalism defi nes and
patrols. Cultural, social or political deviance
is defi ned and labelled by the journalist. Th ere
are those – people, movements, ideas – that
are demonized, defined as dangerous to the
security of the community (see loony left-
ism). It might even be suggested that the media
have a policing role in society and that journal-
ists, at least some of them, carry out the part of
‘copper’s nark’.
The relationship between the role of the
journalist and the exercise of power and control
has been a keen focus of study. In Visualizing
Deviance: A Study of News Organizations (Open
University, 1987), Richard Ericson, Patricia
Baranak and Janet Chan speak of news journal-
ists as a ‘deviance-defi ning elite’ who ‘provide
on-going articulation of the proper bounds
to behaviour in all organized spheres of life’.
American media analyst David Barsamian refers
to journalists as ‘stenographers of power’ in
Stenographers of Power: Media and Propaganda
(Common Courage, 1992), meaning basically
that journalists are largely servants of the state,
taking down verbatim their script from the
power elite. Th is could be described as the
‘Poodle to the Powerful’ model.
While not being so dismissive, Alan Bell in
Th e Language of News Media (Blackwell, 1991)
acknowledges that ‘news is what an authorita-
tive source tells a journalist ... Th e more elite
the source, the more newsworthy the story’. In
contrast, believes Bell, ‘alternative sources tend
to be ignored: individuals, opposition parties,
unions, minorities, fringe groups, the disad-
vantaged’. In certain situations, particularly of
national crisis such as wartime, the editors of
Media, Crisis and Democracy: Mass Communi-
cation and the Disruption of Social Order (Sage,
1992), Marc Raboy and Bernard Dagenais, argue
that the media become an ‘extension of the state’.
Th ey quote Anthony Lewis of the New York
Times describing the press during the fi rst Gulf
War (1991) as ‘a claque applauding the American
generals and politicians in charge’; while televi-
sion behaved as the ‘most egregious official
lapdog during the war’ – an accusation that
proved equally as relevant during the second
Allied invasion of Iraq in 2003.breeds its own short-cut language and clichés,
rarely without some catchy word-rhythm: ‘Tory,
Tory, Hallelujah’ proclaimed the UK Daily
Express in 1982; in 1900, the paper’s headlines
were equally ringing: ‘The Boers’ Last Grip
Loosened’. Th e aim is to squeeze out the most
dramatic expression with the minimum use of
words. Th e higher the pressure on space, the
more pronounced the journalese. See tabloi-
dese.
Journalism While many professions feature in
the public eye, journalism can be said to be the
public eye. Journalism reports to the public,
conveying to it information, analysis, comment
and entertainment while equally purporting to
represent the public; to speak for it in the public
arena.
At the same time journalism is in the busi-
ness of representing to the public ‘the reality
out there’. It is only at fi rst sight a curiosity that
journalists refer to the reports they write, edit
or present as ‘stories’, yet many commentators
have drawn close comparisons between jour-
nalism and fiction. In an article entitled ‘The
nature of aesthetic experience’ published in the
International Journal of Ethics 36 (1926), George
Herbert Mead defi ned two models of journal-
ism, the information model and the story model,
stating that ‘the reporter is generally sent out to
get a story not the facts’. Of course journalists are
not always happy to be described as storytellers;
after all, the job of the serious journalist is to
provide information and analysis and not to turn
news into entertainment.
Yet subsequent commentators have confi rmed
Mead’s defi nition. John Langer in ‘Truly awful
news on television’ published in Journalism and
Popular Culture (Sage, 1992), edited by Peter
Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, argues that ‘seri-
ous news is also based around the story model’.
However, ‘it pretends that it is not – it declares
that it is concerned with imparting the impor-
tant information of the day’. Langer is of the view
that ‘the world of fact and the world of fi ction are
bound more closely together than broadcasters
are prepared to have us believe’.
Th e implication here is that journalism has a
storytelling function that has much to do with
values, telling stories about who we are, how we
have become what we are and what we should
become. Th e journalist to a degree is a maker,
or at least an upholder, of myth in the sense that
the French philosopher Roland Barthes has used
the word: mythologizing is essentially a mode
of explaining things – a giver of meaning, albeit
simplifi ed and clarifi ed. As Barthes puts it in