News: fl at earth news
Gurevitch et al identify what they call the
‘domestication of the foreign’: stories from
abroad are ‘told in ways which render them
more familiar, more comprehensive and more
compatible for consumption by different
national audiences’. TV news, then, anchored as
it generally tends to be ‘in narrative frameworks
that are already familiar to and recognizable by
news men as well as by audiences situated in
particular cultures ... simultaneously maintains
both global and culturally specifi c orientations’.
The domestication of the foreign serves as a
‘countervailing force to the pull of globalization’.
See audience: active audience; commoditi-
zation of information; conglomerates;
consumerization; globalization (and the
media); mediapolis; news corp.
▶Daya Kishan Th ussu, International Communica-
tion: Continuity and Change (Hodder Arnold,
2006); Th ussu, ed., Media on the Move: Global Flow
and Contra-Flow (Routledge, 2007); Robert M.
McChesney, Th e Political Economy of Media: Endur-
ing Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review
Press, 2008).
News-literate Term used by John Hartley
in Understanding News (Methuen, 1982) to
describe the ability of a reader, listener or viewer
to comprehend the norms, codes and conven-
tions of news programmes; to intelligently scan
the news, ‘recognize its familiar cast of charac-
ters and events’ and to be able to spontaneously
‘interpret the world at large in terms of the codes
we have learnt from the news’.
News management Refers to the tactics
employed by those – usually in government or
important positions in society – who wish to
shape the news to their own advantage, or to
control events in such a way as to win favour-
able publicity. In recent years the operative
word to describe news management is spin. Th e
so-termed ‘spin doctors’, drawn almost invari-
ably from the ranks of professional journalism,
are essentially in the business of propaganda,
that is talking up the good news and concealing
as far as possible the bad news.
Where the communication of bad news is
unavoidable, a favourite ploy of the spin doctors
is to issue that bad news when other events
are attracting media and public attention. Th e
danger that accompanies the use of spin is risk of
public exposure and consequently cynicism, and
eventually disillusion with those who manage
the news. See next entry.
News management in times of war One of the
most famous quotations about the management
of information in times of war is encapsulated inworld of globalized corporate power, full-scale
detailed investigation is essential to provide the
public with the truth about what is going on’. See
deregulation; news, globalization of;
journalism: investigatory journalism.
News: fl at earth news See churnalism.
News frameworks Consist of a shared set of
assumptions by reporters and editors about
what is newsworthy. Th ese assumptions infl u-
ence the selection of items for investigation and
reporting, and to some extent how they will be
presented. Th is set of assumptions also enables
journalists and editors to relate news items to an
image of society in order to give them meaning.
Th us the framework can provide a ‘ready reck-
oner’ for constructing as well as selecting news
that allows deadlines to be met. See framing:
media; news values.
News, globalization of Satellite technology
coupled with trends in transnational media
ownership and control have created global
patterns of information transmission character-
ized by both convergence and diversity. TV
news services worldwide show marked simi-
larities of content and narrative approach when
stories of international dimensions are being
reported. In contrast, diversity is maintained
when national and local stories are dealt with.
In ‘Th e global newsroom: convergences and
diversities in the globalization of television news’
in Communication and Citizenship: Journalism
and the Public Sphere (Routledge, 1991), edited
by Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, Michael
Gurevitch, Mark R. Levy and Itzhak Roeh
write that convergence is in part predicated
by the availability, worldwide, of pictures, and
reinforces what the authors term a measure of
‘shared professional culture’, a certain ‘common-
ality in news values and news judgments, across
all services’.
However, diversity asserts itself in ‘lesser
items’, suggesting ‘that this sharing of news
values is not complete and that national social
and political diff erences, as well as journalistic
norms between nations, also play a part in
shaping patterns of news coverage’. Examples
are cited of how globally available fi lm footage is
actually harnessed to national meanings – same
pictures, diff erent reading. Th is in the opinion of
the authors is a practice off ering ‘an important
antidote to “naive universalism” – that is, to the
assumption that events reported in the news
carry their own meanings, and that the mean-
ings embedded in news stories produced in one
country can therefore be generalized to news
stories told in other societies’.