‘Television is a show business medium. The evening news is a series of minidramas. But real life is not played out in such minidramas … more often than not, what is emotionally appealing — and therefore dramatically captivating — is intellectually vacuous and substantively wrong. What makes good television often makes bad policy.’
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
CroftsStephanBoehringerKatheBellPhilip, ‘Television News and the 1980 Federal Election’, Media Information Australia, 21 (August, 1981) 3–12.
2.
‘Ideology’ in this paper is defined as a set of beliefs which are assumed and taken for granted in a culture, shared by both message senders and receivers. This is contrasted to ‘propaganda’ which is a set of beliefs which the senders are deliberately trying to inculcate in the receivers' culture.
3.
See EdgarPatricia, fed), The News in Focus: The Journalism of Exception, South Melbourne, Macmillan, 1980.
4.
HardingAnne, ‘How the TV Stations Rate Overseas News’, The National Times, April 7, 1979, 12.
5.
The Courier Mail, January 31, 1979, 6.
6.
United Nations, International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, Final Report, UNESCO, Paris, 1979.
7.
ShayonRobert Lewis, ‘Television International’, in GerbnerGeorge (ed), Mass Media Policies in Changing Cultures, John Wiley, New York, 1977, 41–55.
8.
RobinsonMichael J, ‘Future Television News Research; Beyond Edward J Epstein’, in AdamsWilliamSchreibmanFay (eds) Television Network News, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 1978, 198–200; EpsteinEdward J, News From Nowhere: Television and the News, Random House, New York, 1973.
9.
GansHerbert J, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, Pantheon, New York, 1979.
10.
TuchmanGaye, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality, The Free Press, New York, 1978.
11.
AltheideDavid L, Creating Reality, Sage, Beverly Hills, Ca., 1976, 24.
12.
BreedWarren, ‘Social Control in (he Newsroom’, Social Forces, 33, May, 1955, 326–335.
13.
AltheideDavid LSnowRobert P, Media Logic, Sage, Beverly Hills, Ca., 1979, 101.
14.
BuckalewJames K, ‘News Elements and Selection by Television News Editors’, Journal of Broadcasting, 14, Winter, 1969, 47–53; Bernard Roscho, Newsmaking, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1975.
15.
Robinson, ‘Future Television News Research’, in Adams, 199.
16.
CronkiteWaller, ‘What It's Like To Broadcast News’, Saturday Review53, December 12, 1970, 53–55.
17.
‘What's Happening to Television’, At Issue — a NET television documentary, 1966.
18.
RobinsonMichael JMcPhersonKaren A, ‘Television News Coverage Before the 1976 New Hampshire Primary: The Focus of Network Journalism’, Journal of Broadcasting, 21, Spring, 1977, 177–186.
19.
EfronEdith, The News Twisters, Nash, Los Angeles, 1971; CirinoPeter, Don't Blame The People, Vintage, New York, 1971.
20.
Robinson, 200.
21.
DiamondEdwin, The Tin Kazoo, Television, Politics and the News. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1975.
22.
Gans, Deciding What's News, 23–28.
23.
PetersonSophia, ‘Foreign News Gatekeepers and Criteria of Newsworthiness’, Journalism Quarterly, 56 (1), Spring, 1979, 125.
24.
Tuchman, Making News, 12.
25.
Tuchman, 183.
26.
GoffmanErving, Frame Analysis, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1974; CuzzortRay PKingEdith W, ‘Humanity as the Big Con: The Human Views of Erving Goffman’, 20th Century Social Thought, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1980, 287–305.
27.
Tuchman, 179; SmithDorothy E, ‘Theorizing as Ideology’, in TurnerRoy (ed), Ethuomethodology, Penguin Books, Baltimore, Md., 1974.
28.
Tuchman, 197.
29.
DeFleurMelvin LBall-RokeachSandra, Theories of Mass Communication, Longman, New York, 1975, 161–181.
30.
BluemA William, Documentary in American Television, Hastings House, New York, 1965, 267–277.
31.
For example, Kris Hofacker, who has her PhD from the University of Michigan, consults with Australian clients for the Magid organization.
32.
LotmanJurij, ‘The Illusion of Reality’, in MastGeraldCohenMarshall (eds), Film Theory and CriticismOxford University Press, New York, 1979, 57.
33.
Altheide, Creating Reality, 61–95.
34.
Correspondents Report, CBS, December 23, 1971.
35.
McLuhanMarshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McGraw Hill, New York, 1965, 227.
36.
LippmannWalter, Public Opinion, The Free Press, New York, 1966, 216.
37.
KlappOrrin E, Currents of Unrest: An Introduction to Collective Behaviour, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1972, 91.
38.
KlappOrrin E, Heroes, Villains and Fools, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1962, 6.
MullinsNicholas C, Theory and Theory Groups in Contemporary American Sociology, Harper & Row, New York, 1973, 81.
41.
DuncanHugh Dalziel, Communication and Social Order, Oxford University Press. New York, 1968, 113.
42.
BarthesRoland, Mythologies, Hill & Wang, New York, 1972.
43.
RubinBarry, International News and the American Media, Beverly Hills, Ca., 1977.
44.
See HowkinsJohn, ‘Review of International News and the American Media’, Intermedia6 (3), June, 1978, 28.
45.
LewisAnthony Marc, ‘The Blind Spot of US Foreign Intelligence’, Journal of Communication26 (1), Winter, 1976, 44–55.
46.
DeFleur, 276.
47.
KatzEGurevitchMHassE, ‘On the Uses of Mass Media for Important Things’, American Sociological Review, 38, 164–81.
48.
GerbnerGSignorelliNancy, ‘The World of Television News’, in AdamsWilliamSchreibmanFay (eds), Television Network News, George Washington University, Washington DC, 1978, 189.
49.
Fiske, 73.
50.
McLuhanMarshall, Sharing The News — Friendly Teamness: Teeming Friendness, McLuhan Associates and ABC, New York, 1971.
51.
PowersRon, The Newscasters, St Martin's, New York, 1977, 11.
52.
Powers, 13.
53.
Powers, 19.
54.
Time, February 25, 1980, 65.
55.
Time, March 17, 1980, 5.
56.
BedellSally, ‘The House of Murrow Under Seige’, TV Guide, January 24, 1981, 4–10.
57.
HickeyNeil, ‘Have Hair Spray, Will Travel’, TV Guide, February 14, 1981, 4–10.
58.
Bluem, 73–89.
59.
McLuhan, Understanding Media, 307.
60.
LisannMaury, Broadcasting to the Soviet Union, Praeger, New York, 1975, 51.
61.
MasmoudiMustapha, The New World Information Order, UNESCO International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, Paris, 1978. See also the symposium, Third World News and Views', Journal of Communication 29 (2), Spring, 1979, 134 198.
62.
MurphyRobert D, Mass Communication and Human Interaction, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1977, 211.
63.
‘A Story Made for Television’. Time April 13, 1981, 107–108.
64.
MurrowEdward R, ‘Address to the Radio and Television News Directors' Association Convention’, in SkorniaHarry J, Television and Society, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1965, 231.
65.
FriendlyFred W, Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control, Random House, New York, 1967.
66.
FriedrichOtto, ‘There are 00 Trees in Russia: The Function of Facts in Newsmagazines’, Harper's212, October, 1964, 61.
67.
NewmanRobert P, ‘The Weekly Fiction Magazines’, Central States Speech Journal May, 1966, 118–124; FedlerFredMeeskeMikeHallJoe, ‘Time Magazine Revisited: Presidential Stereotypes Persist’, Journalism Quarterly56 (2) Summer, 1979, 359.
68.
RighterRosemary, Whose News? Politics, the Press and the Third World, Burnett, London1978, 18.
69.
WilsonH H, Pressure Group: The Campaign for Commercial Television in England, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1961.
70.
BunceRichard, Television in the Corporate Interest, Praeger, New York, 1976, 83.
71.
OrganizationRoper, Changing Public Attitudes Towards Television and Other Mass Media, 1959–1980, Television Information Office, New York, 1981, 4.
