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Age and Disability portrayals

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Disabled people and the over-50s are the two most under-represented minority groups in the broadcasting industry, according to a report.

Disabled people make up just 6.5% of on-screen staff and 5.5% of off-screen staff in television, even though 18% of the national population have a disability. Over-50s - who are 36% of the population - make up 24.2% of on-screen and 20.4% of off-screen workers.

The findings are in a provisional report by Diamond, a project set up in 2015 by the major broadcasters, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, to monitor diversity in the industry.

The project has generated significant controversy in the broadcasting industry because it does not break down the diversity of each organisation. Bectu, the trade union, and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain threatened to boycott the report over the refusal to publish details about the broadcasters.

Just 24% of the individuals working in television who were asked to submit information to the survey did so. This is equivalent to almost 6,000 people. However, the quality of the data has been approved in an independent review by the National Centre for Social Research.

The report states that 21.5% of on-screen workers have a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background but this slumps to 10.1% for off-screen. This compares with 13% of the UK population with a BAME background.

The findings are likely to increase calls for Ofcom to set targets for the number of BBC off-screen workers with a BAME background. Themedia regulator is under growing pressure to take action over the issue.

Diamond shows that women take up 48.1% of on-screen roles and 54.6% of off-screen roles, when they make up 51% of the population. LGB people take up 13.2% of on-screen roles and 11.7% of off-screen, and are 6.4% of the UK population, while 0.8% of on-screen roles are fulfilled by transgender people, the same proportion they form of the population as a whole. No transgender off-screen workers were recorded.

Deborah Williams, chief executive of the organisation behind Diamond, the Creative Diversity Network, said: "Diamond has been, and still is a hugely complex project to deliver. We now have an operational and systematic approach to collecting meaningful data across the UK industry. Diamond was built to provide long term monitoring, and with less than a year's worth of data, it would be premature to draw conclusions from it or set definitive benchmarks.

"However, Diamond represents a committed decision by leading UK broadcasters to deliver a change. Now we need every individual within the industry to support the project by entering their data when asked and we will have a real opportunity to take Diamond to the next level and bring about the ambitious change we all want."
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Disabled people and over-50s most under-represented in broadcasting

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Disabled people and the over-50s are the two most under-represented minority groups in the broadcasting industry, according to a report. Disabled people make up just 6.5% of on-screen staff and 5.5% of off-screen staff in television, even though 18% of the national population have a disability.

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Ethnicity & Media: All white magazine  covers

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Glossies so white: the data that reveals the problem with British magazine covers

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An investigation by the Guardian shows there's still a long way to go before black and ethnic minority people are properly represented on the covers of many glossy monthlies

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In a sign of the times - or perhaps, impending apocalypse - EastEnders has cast its first transgender character in the BBC show's 30-year history. Even better, depending on how you feel about Armageddon, Kyle will be played by Riley Carter Millington, a young trans man in his first major acting gig. Well, I say good for him. And good for EastEnders too. Good for all of us, frankly, and by all of us I mean society, not just trans people. You want to live in a more equal world? That includes equality for trans people: legal rights, access to medical care and varied but authentic media representation.

As far as I'm concerned, Kyle's entrance into EastEnders is a cultural landmark on a par with the show's first gay character in the 80s or Brookside's groundbreaking lesbian kiss in the 90s. Pop culture and progress go hand in hand. As a long-time fan of the show, I didn't think that executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins could top bringing Kathy back from the grave, but he's managed it.

Back when I was a student in Brighton and dealing, like many trans people still do, with family rejection, street harassment and mental health issues, the only time you ever saw a trans person on television was if they were being ridiculed in comedies or pointed at and pitied in those awful late-night shock docs. You didn't see trans people on the news. You didn't see trans people in drama. You didn't see trans people doing anything, really, that suggested we were anything other than objects of ridicule. Most people turn on the TV as a form of escapism, a welcome distraction from the troubles and tedium of everyday life, but trans people didn't even have that privilege until very recently. If you were depressed and too anxious to leave the house for weeks on end due to discrimination, would you want to watch people like you mocked for entertainment?

Thank the telly gods that times have changed. Last night, BBC2 aired the series finale of Boy Meets Girl, the first sitcom in the world, as far as I'm aware, to feature a trans character in the lead role. Star of the show Rebecca Root is trans herself and has earned warm praise across the media, with fans at the Radio Times and this newspaper to name but a few. A second series seems likely.

I can also tell you - here, for the first time - that Hollyoaks is set to introduce its first continuing transgender character later this month, a teacher, played by Annie Wallace. Wallace, too, is trans, although Hollyoaks - which quietly had Rebecca Root on the show in a non-trans role earlier this year - isn't making a song and dance about it. Wallace has been acting on British television for the past five years in what we call "stealth" - keeping your mouth shut about your transition. She felt she had to. In 2015 she's changed her mind.

Also, this week, a series of films about trans people aired on Channel 4 that were made by trans filmmakers Fox Fisher and Lewis Hancox. Their production company, Lucky Tooth, is the first of its kind. Five years ago trans people didn't create media on any level. Now we are making television, starring in it and writing about it in the paper the next day. Five years ago, the narrative of what it meant to be trans was completely controlled by people who were not themselves trans. Back then journalists could attack the trans community with impunity, knowing there weren't any trans people with a voice to challenge them. If you can think of a better definition of bullying, let me know in the comments.

So what changed?

Five years ago, almost to the day, Sonia Burgess, one of Britain's leading human rights lawyers, was pushed under a train at London's King's Cross station. Known professionally as David Burgess, she specialised in immigration law and her warmth, kindness and brilliant legal mind earned her the respect of not only her peers in the legal world but also the vulnerable people whose lives she saved. You'd have learned very little of Sonia's worth, however, reading reports of her death at the time. Headlines such as " Transvestite pushed under train " dehumanised someone who had spent her entire working life celebrating the humanity of others. The journalist Nathalie McDermott witnessed Sonia's death up close and, after tweeting about the tragedy, was inundated with phone calls from hacks eager to know what Sonia looked like and if she "could tell it was a man wearing a wig".

Disgusted and shocked with the way the media handled Sonia's death, McDermott decided she wanted to help the trans community: "It's a really intimate thing to be there at someone's death, especially someone you don't know. After her death I learned she'd changed the face of immigration law in the UK and I realised I'd never really given that much thought to the issue of transgender people before. I felt really protective of her and how she was being portrayed in the press, so I wanted to find a way to honour her."

I was steeped in traditional activism back then - the sort where you shout at people and tell them what they're doing wrong. That sort of advocacy has its place, of course, but when you're part of a tiny minority, as trans people are, boycotts and anger are of limited use. McDermott offered to share her skills working with marginalised social groups, so we set up All About Trans, a project to connect media professionals with young trans people in informal settings. We don't preach, we don't accuse and we don't even really do trans 101. We just let you look into the whites of our eyes.

It may sound corny but so what? It works. Although we never go in with an agenda for creative outcomes, if you put people with stories in the same room as writers, filmmakers and journalists, it's inevitable. Over the past few years All About Trans and our team of volunteers have met with the makers of Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, EastEnders and the BBC's comedy department, to name a few. The explosion in the representation of trans people on your screens this autumn is no coincidence but, rather, the results of a determined campaign to see better media portrayals of trans people in the British media. Things are improving all around us regardless - you only have to look at the US and Laverne Cox, for example - but if Sonia Burgess hadn't been killed five years ago, I doubt the pace of change would be as impressive in the UK as we see today.

I'll be celebrating when Riley or, rather, Kyle arrives at Walford East tube station later this month, but my joy will be tempered with the memory of Sonia's tragic departure at King's Cross - and the unlikely legacy she left the trans community.
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A trans actor joining EastEnders is a triumph - but one born from tragedy | Paris Lees

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In a sign of the times - or perhaps, impending apocalypse - EastEnders has cast its first transgender character in the BBC show's 30-year history. Even better, depending on how you feel about Armageddon, Kyle will be played by Riley Carter Millington, a young trans man in his first major acting gig.

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Children and teenagers who are exposed to sex through the media are more likely to engage in sexual activity than those who are not, according to new research.

A study by an American team has found a direct relationship between the amount of sexual content children see and their level of sexual activity or their intentions to have sex in the future.

The survey, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health and online, claims that film, television, music and magazines may act as a kind of "sexual super peer" for teenagers seeking information about sex. It also suggests that the media have at least as great an influence on sexual behaviour as religion or a child's relationship with their parents and peers.

More than 1,000 American children between the ages of 12 and 15 were asked to list the kinds of media they were exposed to regularly. They also answered questions about their health and levels of sexual activity, including whether they went on dates, kissed, had oral sex or full sex.

Researchers then examined the sexual content of 264 items on the list, which included teen magazines, teen movies and TV programmes. They looked for examples of romantic relationships, nudity, sexual innuendo, touching, kissing, puberty and sexual intercourse.

The study found that films, TV programmes, music and magazines usually portrayed sex as "risk-free". Sex was usually between unmarried couples and examples of using condoms or other contraception were "extremely rare".

The study concluded: "The strong relationship between media and adolescents' sexual expression may be due to the media's role as an important source of sexual socialisation for teenagers.

"Adolescence is a developmental period that is characterised by intense information-seeking, especially about adult roles and, given the lack of information about sexuality readily available to teens, adolescents may turn to the media for information about sexual norms."

The average age of the children was 13.7 years, with about a third thought to come from poorer backgrounds.
Topics

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Children and teenagers who are exposed to sex through the media are more likely to engage in sexual activity than those who are not, according to new research. A study by an American team has found a direct relationship between the amount of sexual content children see and their level of sexual activity or their intentions to have sex in the future.

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Women on television are affected by a "combination of ageism and sexism" that does not apply to men, new figures show.

Released by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, the figures suggest women disappear from TV screens as they get older.

As part of the work of the Older Women's Commission, Ms Harman, said that once women on television turn 50, their days on-screen are "numbered".

Ms Harman, shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, wrote to the six main UK broadcasters asking them how many older women they employ on screen and behind the camera.

The findings were that while the majority of over 50s in the UK are women (53.1%), the overwhelming majority of TV presenters who are over 50 are men (82%).

While TV presenters are broadly reflective of age in the general population - 30% of TV presenters are over 50 compared with 34% of the UK population - they are unrepresentative in terms of gender.

It was discovered that only 7% of the total TV workforce (on and off-screen) are women over the age of 50.

Ms Harman said: "The figures provided by broadcasters show clearly that once female presenters hit 50, their days on-screen are numbered.

"There is a combination of ageism and sexism that hits women on TV that doesn't apply to men in the same way.

"It is an encouraging first step that broadcasters have been open in providing these statistics. Their response shows that they all recognise that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed.

"I will be publishing these figures annually so we are able to monitor progress."

Miriam O'Reilly, who won an employment tribunal against the BBC on the grounds of ageism, said: "These figures raise the obvious questions of where have all the older women gone and why did they go? Was it their choice to leave their jobs or was it a decision forced upon them?

"The broadcasters say they are committed to the fair representation of older women, but the figures don't bear that out. I'd like to know the reasons why so many talented women have disappeared, while their male counterparts have grown older and still have their jobs."

Ms Harman will be holding a roundtable with broadcasters in the House of Commons today to challenge them to take action.

There will be representatives from the BBC, ITN, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky News.

Ms Harman said for men "grey hair denotes wisdom, experience, authority", but there was a sense that viewers "need to be protected" from older women.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I don't think that's acceptable and I don't think women in the country think that just when they are past 50 they have to be airbrushed off our screens."

She added: "There has been a very big change in the generation of older women that there are now. They are in much better health than their mothers, they are more likely to have taken their work much more seriously, have higher educational qualifications.

"Yet the assumption is that they have to be pushed out of the door if they are not looking young, looking in their reproductive years. No they are not young, they are 50 and 60, but that doesn't mean they should be pushed out the door and they don't have a major and growing contribution to work and to broadcasting."

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Older women are disappearing from TV due to combination of ageism and

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Women on television are affected by a "combination of ageism and sexism" that does not apply to men, new figures show. Released by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, the figures suggest women disappear from TV screens as they get older.

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The actress Emma Thompson has said that women in the film industry face greater sexism now than when she began her career.

The Oscar-winner told Radio Times that actresses are still judged by their age and appearance. "I think it's still completely s***, actually," she said. "I don't think there's any appreciable improvement and I think that, for women, the question of how they are supposed to look is worse than it was even when I was young. So, no, I am not impressed, at all."

Ms Thompson, who plays a 77-year-old prostitute in her latest film The Legend Of Barney Thomson, said: "When I was younger I really did think we were on our way to a better world and when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women and I find that very disturbing and sad.

"So I get behind as many young female performers as I can and actually a lot of the conversations I have with them are about exactly the fact that we are facing and writing about the same things and nothing has changed, and that some forms of sexism and unpleasantness to women have become more entrenched and indeed more prevalent."

The actress 56, admitted that she was putting a 77 year-old actress out of a job with her latest role but she said was one she found wildly comic and irresistible.

Ms Thompson will take her 15-year-old daughter Gaia to this summer's Edinburgh festival for the first time, to watch her friends, rising stars Lily Bevan and Jessica Butcher, perform one-woman shows.

"It means a lot to me because that is what I did and I want my daughter to have a look at that and say, 'Oh, that's one way of expressing what you need to express.'

"I think she looks around at the prevailing culture and thinks, 'None of that really applies to me and I don't get it' - the magazines, the 'figure' culture and the handbags, it's just absolutely meaningless. So I can't wait for her to see these women writer/performers."

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Emma Thompson: Sexism faced by actresses is 'still completely s***'

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The actress Emma Thompson has said that women in the film industry face greater sexism now than when she began her career. The Oscar-winner told Radio Times that actresses are still judged by their age and appearance. "I think it's still completely s***, actually," she said.

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New research from Break Media, a male-focused digital entertainment company, reveals that when it comes to the way we see ourselves portrayed in the media, women don't have the market cornered on being woefully misrepresented.

Turns that in the hundreds of TV shows, movies and commercials targeting men on the airwaves, male viewers are seeing too many "skirt-chasers," "metro-sexuals" and "macho-men" and not enough characters depicting the kind of guys they really are.

Just what kind of guy is that?

Good-hearted, hard-working and self-sacrificing men who are just trying to take care of their friends and families.

"Men don't feel like they are currently being portrayed correctly [by the media]," says Keith Richman, Break Media CEO, who set out to capture "the state of being a man in 2012" in the recent Acumen report, which queried 2,000 males between the ages of 18 and 49. "The media industry has tended to characterize men as macho guys, skirt chasers and inept at parenting and relationships. While this may have historically been true, what our results showed is that these characterizations aren't reflecting the behavior and aspirations of today's men."

All this has created what Break Media defines as the "Normal Gap," or the chasm that exists between the personas embodied by celebrities and in movies or television and the "today's men" who are a much more altruistic bunch. According to Richman, "today's men" cite their top three qualities as "good-hearted," "a good friend" and "well-rounded," trumping "stylish" and "good in bed" on a list of 12 characteristics. Is it shocking news that men see themselves as good people? I don't think so-I'd absolutely hope every guy I'm friends with cares more about being good-hearted than lasting for hours in the sack.

While not surprising, Richman and Break Media do see it in a shift in priorities for men everywhere, and one that could easily be attributed to the changing economy and workforce. "When we began the research we speculated that the things that men identified as might have changed in recent years," Richman says. "Men aspire to be different kinds of people than they did even a decade ago, and a lot of that has to do with a lot of men not being able to get jobs, spending more time at home and reevaluating their priorities."

In other words, as men begin to see the "softer side" of domestic life (even if at the hands of the recession), they're seeing there's really something to all of that family togetherness and child-rearing that their wives have been asking them to take an interest in for generations. Whether they're spending more time at home or using technology to stay tethered, today's man is becoming increasingly involved in the former "women's world" of home and family.

A byproduct of that involvement and shift in attitudes is that fewer men bear the burden of bringing home the bacon. "Men have redefined their priorities," Richman says. "And with that, the modern definition of success is no longer predicated on shouldering the bulk of the family's financial responsibility."

Unfortunately, while men say they feel more comfortable than ever before with playing second-paycheck fiddle to their wives, the reality is much more complex. "The change in men's attitudes has not been accompanied by a similar change in how people look at men who are not the primary income earner." In other words, guys don't feel internal pressure to earn the big bucks, but society still tells them they should.

There's something interesting and oh-so-familiar in this truth, friends and readers. As gender roles begin to blur, young couples are becoming increasingly comfortable sharing responsibilities-earning the money, cooking, raising kids, doing yardwork-but societal expectations have yet to catch up. Women, even if they're the top earner, are judged if they're not home by storytime. Men, even if they're the lunch-packing, PTA-card-carrying, domestic god of the pair, are judged for not supporting their family's financial needs.

And where do societal norms get hammered into our heads? In truth, from a lot of places, but largely from the media, which actually gives more weight to Richman's research than I initially ascribed.

Let's look, briefly at gender roles on a few current hit family shows: On ABC's Modern Family we get one couple where dad's a doofus and mom's in charge, another where dad's a curmudgeonly doofus and mom's a well-meaning bimbo and even given a couple with two dads they're both caricatures. On Tim Allen 's Last Man Standing we get Allen as a bewildered fish out of water in a household with three daughters. His wife? Great comedic timing and, of course, the kind of woman who holds her family together despite her husband's unpredictable antics. (Societal mores hammered home: mom rules the roost, dad makes money and messes things up).

I asked Richman for a few examples where television seems to be headed in the right direction-both in terms of representing the menfolk well and potentially setting a new tone for the expectations we place on both men and women when it comes to parenting, work and relationships-and he was quick to offer examples. Parenthood, he says, showcases a variety of relationships and male characters who strive to walk the right path. "The character played by Dax Shepard was a bit of a playboy but finds out that he's a father and we watch him struggle to do the right thing every episode," he says.

In comedies, the NBC sitcom Guys With Kids, which features three pals--one of them a stay at home dad-and their kids carefully makes fun of the issues surrounding men and full-time fatherhood. There are slip-ups, moms to the rescue and, of course, diaper humor, but while Richman says it's not a quantum leap forward for men, it's absolutely a baby step. "It may be farcical in the ways they represent fatherhood," he says, "But the very fact that those characters and storylines made it on the air are definitely significant."

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Are Men The Latest Victims Of Media Misrepresentation?

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New research from Break Media, a male-focused digital entertainment company, reveals that when it comes to the way we see ourselves portrayed in the media, women don't have the market cornered on being woefully misrepresented.

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SY2 Media Representations of Social Class

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Fake news

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Facebook has broadened its campaign to raise awareness about fake news, by publishing adverts in the UK press.

The ads, in papers including The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph, carry a list of 10 things to look out for when deciding if a story is genuine.

They include checking the article date and website address, as well as making sure it isn't intended as satire.

Facebook is under fresh political pressure to tackle fake news in the run up to the UK general election.

Meanwhile, a BBC Panorama investigation to be broadcast later on Monday has found the social network played a decisive role in both the US election and Britain's EU referendum last year.

'Danger'

The platform said it had already removed "tens of thousands" of fake Facebook accounts and that systems were now monitoring the repeated posting of the same content or a sharp increase in messaging. Accounts displaying this activity are then flagged, it added.

Facebook is also decreasing the ranking of stories that people tend to read but not share.

Last month Conservative MP Damian Collins asked Facebook to tackle fake news in the run up to the UK general election on 8 June.

"The danger is, if for many people the main source of news is Facebook and if the news they get on Facebook is mostly fake news, they could be voting based on lies," he told the Guardian.

Fake accounts

In a report released last month, Facebook admitted it had seen political propaganda deliberately spread on its site.

"We have observed many actions by fake account operators that could only be performed by people with language skills and a basic knowledge of the political situation in the target countries, suggesting a higher level of coordination and forethought," it said in the document.

It added that "several" cases during the 2016 US Presidential election had required action.

"People want to see accurate information on Facebook and so do we," said Simon Milner, Facebook's UK director of policy

"To help people spot false news we are showing tips to everyone on Facebook on how to identify if something they see is false."

He added that the firm was "supporting" two third-party fact checkers - Full Fact and First Draft - in the run up to the election but Facebook declined to say whether this is a financial arrangement.
Facebook's ten steps for spotting fake news

Be sceptical of headlines

Look closely at the URL [web address]

Investigate the source

Watch for unusual formatting

Consider the photos

Check the date

Check the evidence

Look at other reports

Is the story a joke?

Some stories are intentionally false [satirical]

When word-of-mouth plays into the hands of scammers: Analysis by Zoe Kleinman, BBC Technology Reporter
The spread of fake news across social media was accused by some of influencing the US presidential election in 2016.

Facebook has not gone so far as to accept that but its latest report acknowledges that there was some activity which "required action".

With the UK election just a month away today there is added pressure to crack down on it in Britain.

The creators of fake news make money because of the clicks on the ads they carry. Google and Facebook say they are committed to blocking them from using ad services but they are still popping up.

It's interesting and perhaps a sign of Facebook's older membership that it has chosen traditional print media to help spread its message in the UK.

The ten tips are sound advice and will be well-known to journalists already as standard checks. The difficulty is that if the link pops up in your Facebook news feed because it's been shared by one of your friends or relatives, you're likely to be more inclined to accept it at face value.

The power of word-of-mouth as a marketing tool is well known to both marketing professionals and scammers alike.

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Facebook has broadened its campaign to raise awareness about fake news, by publishing adverts in the UK press. The ads, in papers including The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph, carry a list of 10 things to look out for when deciding if a story is genuine.

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News Values A2 Media Port f olio Mikhael Ellis

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"We do not believe this is currently being achieved in the context of the BBC's EU coverage."

It comes after MPs held a series of evidence sessions which included appearances from Lord Hall, BBC Director-General and James Harding, BBC Director of News and Current Affairs.

"We still remain deeply concerned about the manner in which the BBC treats EU issues," the report out today concludes.

It says BBC bosses who gave evidence "seemed to be more intent on defending and asserting their own opinions, mindset and interpretation" of impartiality obligations rather than saying whether they had actually delivered them.

The MPs noted that 58 per cent of voters look to the BBC for news they trust and called on the Corporation to "improve substantially the manner in which it treats EU issues".

Sir William said the committee members "deplore" the fact they had to make repeated calls for Lord Hall and the previous BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten to appear before MPs.

"Given the possibility of a referendum on the UK's EU membership before the end of the decade ... the issue of how the media in general and the BBC in particular covers the EU is of paramount importance," the MPs said.

They called on their criticisms of the way EU concerns are covered to form "a key factor" in next year's review of the BBC Charter.

The comments mark the latest in a series of recent clashes between MPs and the BBC over its coverage of politically sensitive topics.

David Cameron and George Osborne claimed the Corporation's coverage of cuts announced at the Autumn Statement last year had been "hyperbolic".

Mr Osborne said of a reporter's description of the scale of future cuts: "I would have thought the BBC would have learnt from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened."

A BBC spokesman said: "As Lord Hall told the committee, we are and will be impartial in all matters concerning our coverage. The BBC provides extensive coverage of both European and Parliamentary issues and while we respect the committee's role, it would obviously be a breach of our independence if a committee of MPs were to instruct us how to cover an individual issue or story."

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BBC coverage of European Union 'is biased and letting down viewers', MPs find

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"We do not believe this is currently being achieved in the context of the BBC's EU coverage." It comes after MPs held a series of evidence sessions which included appearances from Lord Hall, BBC Director-General and James Harding, BBC Director of News and Current Affairs.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable has been relieved of some of his powers after being recorded telling undercover reporters he has "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch.

He said he used his powers to block News International's bid to take over full control of BSkyB. But what are the issues surrounding media ownership in the UK?

Media ownership has long been an area of political controversy - particularly when it involves Rupert Murdoch.

The idea of one man or company controlling a large proportion of the nation's newspaper and broadcasting interests is an issue of public concern - particularly when that person takes a close interest in the political agenda of his newspapers and one of them claims to influence general elections.

The famous headline "It's The Sun Wot Won It" appeared on the front page of The Sun on 11 April 1992 after it supported the Conservatives in the lead-up to their election victory.

It is generally accepted that freedom of speech is enhanced by having a diversity or plurality of editorial voices. There are legal restrictions on media ownership (at a local level, as well as national), and major takeovers are subject to scrutiny by regulators - provided the politicians give the go-ahead.

'Unprecedented merger'

Almost 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher's government allowed Mr Murdoch's company to take over The Times and Sunday Times without referring it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC), even though he already owned the Sun and the News of the World.

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Minutes of John Biffen and Rupert Murdoch's 1981 meeting [1.42MB]

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The former editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans, wrote: "A newspaper merger unprecedented in history went through in three days."

The decision was taken by the then Secretary of State for Trade, John Biffen, on the grounds the two papers were not going concerns and could close if the takeover were delayed by an MMC investigation.

The ruling was hotly criticised in Parliament and the press. Now, from confidential documents of the time (revealed after Freedom of Information requests), the BBC has learned more.

A minute of a meeting between the minister and Mr Murdoch on 2 February 1981 shows at that stage Mr Biffen wanted to refer the bid to the MMC as the best way to defuse criticism.

He later changed his mind.

Ten years later, in 1990, Mr Murdoch pre-empted formal scrutiny by the government and regulators by merging his heavily loss-making Sky TV with the equally loss-making British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB).

BSB had a licence from the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and should not have been taken over without a formal investigation.

Because both satellite companies were losing millions of pounds and could otherwise have closed, the merger was in effect a fait accompli and BSkyB was born - with Rupert Murdoch as its chairman.

Dominant position

Ever since, the Murdoch group in the UK has owned at least four national newspapers (briefly five, after he bought the ailing Today, which he later closed) as well as 39% of BSkyB. That has widely been seen by government and regulators as a "controlling" stake.

When BSkyB - under the chairmanship of Rupert Murdoch's son James - bought a 17.9% stake in ITV, the Department of Trade and Industry ordered a full competition inquiry, on advice from the Office of Fair Trading.

After a lengthy legal process, the Competition Commission ordered BSkyB to reduce its stake. There have also been investigations recently into BSkyB's dominant position in the pay TV market, following complaints by Virgin and BT that it was harming their businesses.

These controversies have come to a head over the bid by Murdoch's News Corporation to buy the 61% of BSkyB shares it does not already own.

To many observers, the row has come as a surprise. When the deal was first proposed, most media commentators thought it would go through without much difficulty, subject only to agreement on price. They said owning all the shares would make little difference, given that James Murdoch was BSkyB's chairman and the 39% stake was widely seen as giving it control already.

But others argue this is a step too far. Since September, an unofficial campaign has escalated in the press and Parliament, arguing that the Murdoch empire would have significantly more power if it owned all the BSkyB shares.

'Financial clout'

Figures from Enders Analysis show that pay TV is growing in size and importance, and BSkyB has a huge share of that market. It now has 10 million subscribers in the UK and Ireland and revenues of £5.9bn, well ahead of the BBC's £3.6bn and ITV's £1.9bn.

The Enders report, sent to Mr Cable when he was responsible for deciding on the outcome of the bid, said BSkyB was already dominant in sport and films and could now extend this to other forms of programming.

It said: "BSkyB's huge financial clout means that it can buy up popular TV programmes from the US, placing them behind a paywall in the UK."

Once again, the future of a major Murdoch takeover is in the hands of a government minister
Torin Douglas

It said that if News Corporation owned all the shares, its UK group would be even larger and more powerful - and its news operations, including Sky News, could work more closely together.

Fears have also been expressed that Sky News could be turned into a right-wing, opinionated service like Fox News in the US - though Sky's own executives oppose this, believing that impartiality in news is a strength.

Rival media owners, including leaders of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail groups, the BBC, BT and Channel 4, wrote to Mr Cable urging him to refer the deal to regulators, on the grounds that the "proposed takeover could have serious and far-reaching consequences for media plurality".

Now the decision has been taken out of Mr Cable's hands and given to Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt who is more favourably disposed to Rupert Murdoch and his company.

On his website, the minister reproduces an interview in which he said Mr Murdoch had "probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person, because of his huge investment in setting up Sky TV which, at one point, was losing several million pounds a day".

Mr Hunt has also said many people believe the Murdoch empire already controls BSkyB, and question whether a full takeover would make much difference. Some say this means he is almost certain to approve the bid - but he was careful to add he was not prejudging the issue, on which he will be advised by Ofcom.

Once again, the future of a major Murdoch takeover is in the hands of a government minister. We will know the outcome in the new year.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable has been relieved of some of his powers after being recorded telling undercover reporters he has "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch. He said he used his powers to block News International's bid to take over full control of BSkyB. But what are the issues surrounding media ownership in the UK?

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A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

The Guardian was given exclusive access to churnalism.com prior to launch. It revealed how all media organisations are at times simply republishing, verbatim, material sent to them by marketing companies and campaign groups.

Meanwhile, an independent film-maker, Chris Atkins, has revealed how he duped the BBC into running an entirely fictitious story about Downing Street's new cat to coincide with the site's launch.

The director created a Facebook page in the name of a fictitious character, "Tim Sutcliffe", who claimed the cat - which came from Battersea Cats Home - had belonged to his aunt Margaret. The story appeared in the Daily Mail and Metro, before receiving a prominent slot on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Atkins, who was not involved in creating churnalism.com, uses spoof stories to highlight the failure of journalists to corroborate stories. He was behind an infamous prank last year that led to the BBC running a news package on a hoax Youtube video purporting to show urban foxhunters.

The creation of churnalism.com is likely to unnerve overworked journalists and the press officers who feed them. "People don't realise how much churn they're being fed every day," said Martin Moore, director of the trust, which seeks to improve standards in news. "Hopefully this will be an eye-opener."

Moore said he accepted journalists often have a valid reason for using press releases, and will often need to copy and paste significant chunks, such as official statements and quotes. But he said that on many occasions reporters appear to be lifting press release text verbatim and adding little or no additional material.

In a typical example, the Express, Mirror and Sun all lifted of chunks of text from a press release last month on behalf of the Benenden Healthcare Society, which quoted a poll showing "British women spend more money on their looks than their health". The Daily Mail copied 98% of the text directly from the press release. Similarly, the Mirror, Mail and Express all reproduced chunks from a press release by campaign group Migration Watch, criticising immigration rates under the previous Labour government. However, the Times made the greatest use of it, running an article that was 53% cut-and-pasted press release.

Other broadsheets, including the Guardian, Independent and Telegraph, are also shown to be "churning" press releases to varying degrees.

Interestingly, all media outlets appear particularly susceptible to PR material disseminated by supermarkets: the Mail appears to have a particular appetite for publicity from Asda and Tesco, while the Guardian favours Waitrose releases.

Moore said one unexpected discovery has been that the BBC news website appears particularly prone to churning publicity material.

"Part of the reason is presumably because they feel a duty to put out so many government pronouncements," Moore said. "But the BBC also has a lot to produce in regions that the newspapers don't cover."

It was after a discussion with Moore that Atkins decided to spend last week seeding fictitious stories through the media. Atkins, who was the film-maker behind Starsuckers (a documentary that duped the tabloid press in 2009 with hoax stories), has planted a range of bizarre press releases across the media.

One involved the marketing of the "penazzle", supposedly the male answer to the female beauty trend in crystal designs known as "vajazzles", which appeared in the Sun and in a column by Guardian writer Suzanne Moore.

Another fake story about a "chastity garter", which contains a text message-sending microchip to alert a woman's partner if she is being unfaithful, became the "most read" story on the Daily Mail's website. It was then reproduced by media outlets across the world, including morning TV news in the United States.

But it was Atkins's bogus Facebook campaign calling for the return of the prime minister's new cat, Larry, that has been most successful. Within 24 hours of the site having been created, the Mail ran the story under the heading: "But that's my auntie's cat: Man's claim on 'stray' No 10 ratcatcher (... and there's a Facebook campaign to get him back)." It also appeared in the Metro, under the heading: "Dear David Cameron: You've stolen my aunt's cat, please return him."

But the entirely made up story received most attention on Gaby Logan's BBC 5 Live show, in a light-hearted slot before the 1 o'clock news.. Discussing the story with chief political correspondent John Pienaar, Logan joked that the dispute over ownership of Larry the Downing Street cat was likely to "run and run".
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Churnalism or news? How PRs have taken over the media

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A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases. A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

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How politically important is Rupert Murdoch? After more than half a century of his manoeuvrings, carefully and tellingly itemised in this book, it may seem naive even to ask the question. Only last month, to the alarm and perhaps hidden satisfaction of Murdoch-watchers, the supposedly infinitely manipulative magnate held dinners on successive nights at his London home in Mayfair, attended by Boris Johnson, George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove - the full set of pretenders, declared and otherwise, to David Cameron's unstable Tory throne.

Yet recent events have undermined the conventional wisdom that Murdoch is omnipotent. Last year there was his cheerleading for Mitt Romney - "looking better and better while Obama seems devoid of anything new", Murdoch tweeted 11 days before Obama comfortably won re-election. In 2011 there was Murdoch's unprecedented televised calling to account over the phone-hacking scandal by a committee of mere MPs. This autumn, there are the scheduled phone-hacking trials - probably the first of many - of Murdoch's once-vital British lieutenants and political liaisons, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. And then there is the ongoing, less sensational but more significant, unravelling of faith in the free market - a faith fiercely held by Murdoch and relentlessly spread from his media citadels for 40 years - since the financial crisis began in 2007.

Murdoch turns 82 next month. His mother, Elisabeth, died last December at the age of 103. "So far there is no sign of Rupert Murdoch genuinely stepping aside" from his intertwined political and business activities, McKnight writes. But this book, despite its subtitle, is more about Murdoch's past than his present. It wants to be a polemic but sometimes reads more like an obituary.

The main arc of the story begins in Australia in the 1950s. McKnight has already sketched Murdoch's early biography: a wealthy, influential father with anglophile tastes; an ambitious, frustrated stint at Oxford university, where Murdoch "stood for the secretaryship of the Oxford Labour Club but was ruled ineligible because he openly campaigned for votes". But the book is less interested in his life story and business ascent than most Murdoch volumes, and clearer and more pacy as a result. Its subject is political leverage: how Murdoch got it, exercised it, got more of it.

McKnight, who is a professor of journalism at the University of New South Wales, and was a leftwing newspaper and TV reporter for decades before that, shows that Murdoch was surprisingly clumsy and erratic in his early politicking. In Australia and then in Britain, he hastily fell for and then rejected party leaders, changed his mind on policy questions, and swung from left to right and back again, or sometimes even in both directions at once. During the 1972 British miners' strike, Murdoch's Sun, as he later put it, "pushed public opinion very hard behind the miners"; almost simultaneously, in Australia, he was allegedly complaining to one of his editors about "long haired stuff in the paper ... bleeding heart stuff ... Aboriginal stuff ... Aboriginals don't read our papers."

The usual interpretation of Murdoch's fickleness is as a skilful hedging of bets. During the 1980 US presidential election, Murdoch's New York Post, one of his loudest political megaphones, endorsed Jimmy Carter as the Democratic candidate in the New York primary, days after the two men had had lunch. "When asked by a friend how the Carter lunch had gone," McKnight writes, "Murdoch is said to have replied: 'Very good, but he is going to get a hell of a shock when I support Reagan [for president].'"

Murdoch has a weakness for self-styled national saviours, whether of the right like Reagan or the left like Gough Whitlam, Australia's iconoclastic Labour prime minister in the mid 70s. In 1967, Murdoch hired Whitlam's private secretary, John Menadue. In 1999, long after leaving the tycoon's service, Menadue wrote of Murdoch: "He was, and still is, a frustrated politician." On Australia Day in 1972, Murdoch made a speech identifying "the rebirth of a vigorous Australian nationalism, something that has lain dormant for most of this century - to the heavy detriment of Australia's progress and enlightenment." The social generalisations certainly suggest a would-be politician; the ponderous, slightly old-fashioned language possibly suggests why he never became one. The impatience and contempt with which Murdoch sometimes treats politicians may be rooted in frustration. He has never done a Berlusconi.

McKnight extracts most of his Murdoch quotes and facts from easily available sources: other Murdoch books, pieces in Murdoch newspapers, memoirs by former Murdoch underlings. Yet the portrait he builds feels fresh and strong, free of the usual biographers' ruminations on the Murdoch mystique and their love/hate feelings towards him. Sometimes the book is a little stark and skeletal as a result, a 260-page charge sheet, calmly but relentlessly laid out. Only occasionally does McKnight allow himself some descriptive colour, such as a Bond villain image of Murdoch in 2003 watching the invasion of Iraq, for which his papers had lobbied for almost a decade, "on the panel of seven television screens mounted in the wall of his Los Angeles office".

Murdoch moved decisively rightwards from the mid 70s, as the free-market revolution began to achieve critical mass across the west. He turned against Whitlam and Carter, and Labour and the unions in Britain. Significantly for British readers, and perhaps deflatingly for some British rightwingers, McKnight shows that radical American Republicanism had more influence on Murdoch than radical British Conservatism. From Richard Nixon's angry, embattled presidency, he took the notion that a "liberal elite" - rather than a rightwing business elite made up of people like Murdoch - dominated western democracies. From Reagan's much more successful political formula, Murdoch borrowed shrill anti-communism, a sometimes glib optimism about capitalism and a belief in America's right to world supremacy. In 1985 he became an American citizen.

His admiration for Margaret Thatcher was less total. According to McKnight, "Thatcher and Murdoch had a deep mutual regard, more sincere on her part than his." When she deviated from what he saw as the true path of modern conservatism, he could quickly turn critical or disloyal - despite her crucial support for his commercial expansions, such as his controversial takeover of the Times in 1981. In 1983, her lack of enthusiasm for the American invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada, a tiny Commonwealth territory claimed by the Reagan administration to be a major, Soviet-aligned security threat, caused Murdoch to fume that she had "run out of puff", "gone out of her mind", and was not "listening to her friends". Even after Thatcher crushingly won her third general election in 1987, Murdoch flirted with other rightwingers: he gave what McKnight describes as "secret financial support" to David Hart, the late, well-connected British political adventurer, who used a column in the Times from 1983 to 1989 to call for such neoliberal dreams as the privatisation of all state education.

The book lays out well how Murdoch transmits his political desires, both within his conglomerate, News Corporation, and far beyond. The eerily consistent ideology of his newspapers and TV commentators is maintained in a lovely, menacing phrase quoted here from a former Murdoch editor, Eric Beecher, "by phone and by clone". Executives are chosen for their ability and willingness to anticipate Murdoch's thinking. On the rare occasions that more direct guidance is needed, "I give instructions to my editors all around the world," as Murdoch put it in 1982.

Meanwhile, a slightly more subtle political pressure is exerted on the outside world through cooperation between Murdoch media and rightwing think tanks, and through support for chosen candidates, which sometimes goes well beyond the journalistic. In 1980, McKnight writes, Murdoch backed Reagan's presidential bid by "meeting his aides to discuss maximising the Republican vote in traditionally Democratic New York. An important part of this was Murdoch's alliance with New York Democrat mayor Ed Koch ... "

Frustratingly but probably wisely, McKnight offers no firm conclusion about the precise electoral impact of the Murdoch machine, such as the Sun's notorious assault on Neil Kinnock and Labour in 1992. But he points out that the machine's mere existence can drag policy debates to the right: even anti-Murdoch voters and politicians, and non-Murdoch journalists, are forced to take his positions and mindset into account.

Yet when his thinking grows too extreme or eccentric - the curse of many a little-challenged media magnate - his influence diminishes. In the late 80s Murdoch's dogmatic anti-communism made him totally misjudge the reformist Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev: "a worthy heir to Stalin", with "nothing new going on" in his policies, concluded a New York Post editorial in 1987. Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev regardless. For a time, post-cold war American politics seemed to baffle Murdoch, too. In the 1988 presidential election, he vainly favoured the erratic TV evangelist Pat Robertson as the Republican candidate. In the 1992 contest, he abandoned the Republicans for the independent Ross Perot, who came third. Even in Britain, in the 90s there were hints that the Murdoch era might be drawing to a close. Thatcher's successor, John Major, was increasingly appalled by Murdoch's commercial and political power and wanted to diminish it: "If I had a majority of 150," he said privately in 1995, "I would crush Rupert Murdoch and make sure he had no newspapers at all."

But Murdoch's vulnerable phase did not last long. In 1996 he launched Fox News, with its fiery round-the-clock readings of the conservative gospel, and his influence on American politics was reborn. In 1997 Tony Blair was elected, his government considerably less hostile to Murdoch than Major's, and Murdoch lent it strong, if conditional, support. In 2010, shortly after Murdoch had switched his allegiance back to the Tories, Blair became godfather to one of Murdoch's children.

For all the outward, often blatant signs of Murdoch's influence, there remains an opaqueness to his political role. Partly this is a sign of his status, and of the congruence between his thinking and that of so many western politicians during the long free market ascendancy from the 70s to the 00s. McKnight quotes the former Australian prime minister Paul Keating: "You can do deals with [Murdoch] without ever saying a deal is done."

But there is a deeper mystery about him. What sort of political animal is Murdoch really? A crafty player of the game for its own sake; a self-interested businessman simply seeking more corporate freedom; a restless seeker after heroes and ideological certainties; a chippy anglophobe; a rebel against an establishment father; or just a powerful, opinionated man surrounded by unquestioning courtiers, a little like Prince Charles? Murdoch is probably a bit of all these, and McKnight doesn't ever quite establish the respective proportions. But as an anatomy and record of the reign of Murdoch this book is brave and valuable. And one day, when Murdoch is gone, it will help explain why so many obeyed him.
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Murdoch's Politics: How One Man's Thirst for Wealth and Power Shapes Our World by David McKnight - review

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How politically important is Rupert Murdoch? After more than half a century of his manoeuvrings, carefully and tellingly itemised in this book, it may seem naive even to ask the question.

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podology :: sociology podcasts and articles. podology is a new website designed as a resource for those that are either teaching or studying sociology. the site holds a bank of resources in the form of podcasts

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videos and articles that cover a range of s

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Podology :: Sociology Podcasts and Articles. Podology is a new website designed as a resource for those that are either teaching or studying Sociology. The site holds a bank of resources in the form of podcasts, videos and articles that cover a range of s

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand:

how news is perceived

the selection and presentation of news

sociological theories about news production

News is presented in many different forms in the twenty-first century. However, as recently as in 2005, 72% of people indicated that television was their primary source of news coverage. Only 10% relied upon newspapers to obtain their news, a further 9% relied upon radio and 67% regarded television news as the most trusted news medium and saw it as a 'window on the world' offering the audience fair and unbiased 'evidence' of events as they happened. In contrast, despite sales of about 10 million daily, only 7%, saw newspapers in the same way.
Selection and presentation of news
McQuail (1992) argues that 'news' is not objective or impartial. Events happen, but this does not guarantee that they become news - not all events can be reported because of the sheer number of them. McQuail argues that news is a socially manufactured product because it is the end result of a selective process. Gatekeepers, such as editors and journalists, and sometimes proprietors, make choices and judgements about what events are important enough to cover and how to cover them.

Sociologists point out that the process of news selection is biased because it is dependent upon broad influences which include organisational routines and news values.

Organisational or bureaucratic routines
News coverage is shaped by the way television news companies and newspapers are organised. This can be illustrated in a number of ways.

Financial constraints - e.g., sending personnel overseas and booking satellite connections can be very expensive and may result in 'news' reports even if very little is actually happening, in order to justify such heavy costs. There has been a decline in expensive forms of news coverage such as investigative reporting or foreign affairs coverage because news organisations are cutting costs.

The amount of time available for a news bulletin or the column space in a newspaper, e.g. events are much more likely to be reported, especially on television, if they can be accompanied by live sound bites of speech and film footage from an actual location.

Deadlines - newspapers by their very nature are dated. All news included usually happened the day before. Television news is more immediate as it is often broadcast as it happens, i.e. rolling news.

Audiences - the content and style of news programmes is often dependent on the type of audience thought to be watching. Newspaper content too is geared to the social characteristics of a newspaper's readers, e.g. The Sun is aimed at a working class young readership and so uses simplistic language because it believes that this is what its readership wants.

News values KEY POINT - Spencer-Thomas (2008) notes that editors and journalists use the concept of news values to determine the newsworthiness of a particular story and to judge whether it will attract a significant readership or audience.
What is regarded as newsworthy varies according to the type of news outlet, i.e. it differs between newspapers, as well as television channels, depending upon the type of person who is thought to be reading or watching. These news values were catalogued by Galtung and Ruge (1965) and include:

Extraordinariness - unexpected, rare, unpredictable and surprising events have more newsworthiness than routine events because they are out of the ordinary, e.g. the tsunami that hit south-east Asia in 2004 or the unexpected death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.

Threshold - the bigger the size of the event, e.g. war or natural disaster, the more likely it will be reported nationally.

Unambiguity - events that are easy to grasp are more likely to be reported than those which are complex.

Reference to elite persons - the activities of the powerful and more recently, celebrities such as footballers, television personalities and pop stars are perceived as more newsworthy than the exploits of ordinary people.

Reference to elite nations - stories about people who speak English as their first language, look the same and have similar cultures as the audience receive more coverage than those involving people who do not, e.g. the USA is more newsworthy than most other countries. Even disasters are subject to this news value as symbolised by McLurg's Law named after a British news editor, who once claimed that 1 dead Briton was worth 5 dead Frenchmen, 20 dead Egyptians, 500 dead Indians and 1000 dead Chinese in terms of news coverage.

Personalisation - complex events and policies are often reduced to conflict between personalities. This is because journalists and editors believe that their audiences will identify with a story if social events are seen as the actions of individuals, e.g. British politics is often presented as a personal showdown between the two party leaders.

Frequency - news events that occur over a short period of time fit in with news schedules better than long-term structural events such as inflation.

Narrative - journalists prefer to present news in the form of a story with heroes and villains, and a beginning, middle and end.

Negativity - bad news is regarded by journalists as more exciting and dramatic than good news and is seen as potentially attracting a bigger audience. Stories about death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or extreme weather conditions are therefore always rated above positive stories.

Interesting news stories will, therefore, contain some of these news values, but they are unlikely to contain them all. Research conducted in the USA by Buckley gave 12 television editors 64 news stories, which they were asked to classify for newsworthiness. All classified them in a similar manner and those items most likely to be reported were those with the greatest number of news values.
Sociological theories about news production
Neo-pluralism
Pluralists argue that journalists are professionals who are disinterested, impartial and objective pursuers of truth. Neo-pluralists suggest that, in the modern world of journalism, these goals are increasingly difficult to attain. Davies (2008) argues that modern day British journalism is characterised by what he calls churnalism - the uncritical over-reliance by journalists on 'facts' churned out by government spin doctors and public relations experts. He found that 80% of news stories in two national newspapers were sourced in this way over a two week period in 1997. Only 12% of stories were generated by journalists.
The power elite
Bagdikian (2004), in his critique of the American news media, suggests that almost all media owners in the USA are part of a wider power elite made up of a powerful industrial, financial and political establishment. Consequently, media owners ensure that the content of news is politically conservative and that their news outlets promote corporate values. Bagdikian notes how such values permeate news, e.g. most newspapers have sections dedicated to business news, but contain little on poverty or the growing gap between the rich and poor in the USA.
The propaganda model of the media
Herman and Chomsky (1988) argue that the media participate in propaganda campaigns helpful to elite interests. They suggest that media performance is largely shaped by market forces and that built into the capitalist system is a range of filters that work ceaselessly to shape media output, e.g. advertisers want their advertising to appear in a supportive selling environment whilst government can pressure the media with threats of withdrawal of TV licences and therefore control the flow of information.

Edwards and Cromwell (2006) argue that particular subjects, e.g. US/British government responsibility for genocide, vast corporate criminality and threats to the very existence of human life, are distorted, suppressed, marginalised and ignored by the British mass media. Leaders of developing countries of whom the West disapprove are uncritically demonised, whilst the USA is presented as the champion of democracy.

Marxist perspectives
The Marxist Hall agrees that news is supportive of capitalist interests because those in powerful positions have better access to media institutions than the less powerful. Hall argues that this is a result of the news values employed by most journalists. In particular, most journalists rank the views of politicians, police officers, civil servants and business leaders (Hall calls these groups primary definers) as more important (or credible) than those of pressure groups, trade unionists or ordinary people. Hall calls this the hierarchy of credibility.

However, Schlesinger (1990) is critical of theories that focus on the power of elites or owners because the media do not always act in the interests of the powerful. Contemporary politicians are very careful about what they say to the media because they are very aware that the media can shape public perceptions of their policies and practices and perhaps influence voting behaviour, as well as putting them under considerable pressure to resign.

Media owners too are engaged in competition with each other, as illustrated by newspaper price wars and the fact that some media owners have engaged in some very public conflicts with each other over matters of media ownership. Schlesinger argues that this does not suggest a unified media.

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The social construction of the news | a2-level-level-revision, sociology, mass-media-0, social-construction-news | Revision World

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand: how news is perceived the selection and presentation of news sociological theories about news production News is presented in many different forms in the twenty-first century. However, as recently as in 2005, 72% of people indicated that television was their primary source of news coverage.

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand:

trends and patterns in ownership and control of a range of mass media

the theoretical perspectives on the relationship between ownership and control of the media

Trends in ownership and control KEY POINT - Recent trends in media ownership and control suggest that the number of companies controlling global mass media has significantly shrunk in recent years. Bagdikian (2004) notes that in 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the USA, but by 2004 media ownership was concentrated in seven corporations.
Curran (2003) notes that ownership of British newspapers has always been concentrated in the hands of a few powerful 'press barons', e.g. in 1937 four men owned nearly one in every two national and local daily newspapers sold in Britain. Today, seven powerful individuals dominate the ownership of British national daily and Sunday newspapers.

The content of commercial terrestrial television is mainly controlled by one company, ITV plc, whilst access to satellite, cable and digital television in Britain is generally controlled by two companies - News Corp, (owned by Rupert Murdoch) which owns BSkyB, and Virgin Media (owned by Richard Branson).
Global conglomeration KEY POINT - The major difference in media ownership and control compared with forty years ago is the movement of media corporations into the global marketplace. The major media companies are now global conglomerations - transnational corporations (TNCs) with a presence in many countries.
Horizontal and vertical integration
Ownership and control of the mass media is a complex business as the following examples illustrate. Some media companies are characterised by horizontal integration or cross media ownership - this refers to the fact that global media corporations often cross media boundaries and invest in a wide range of media products. NewsCorp, for example, owns newspapers, magazines, book publishers, terrestrial and satellite television channels and film studios in several countries.

Some media companies have focused on increasing economic control over all aspects of the production process in order to maximise profits, e.g. film corporations not only make movies, but distribute them to their own cinema chains. This is referred to as vertical integration.

Diversification, synergy and technological convergence
Some media corporations are not content to focus on media products, but have diversified into other fields. The best example of this is Virgin which began as a music label and record shop chain, but has expanded into a wide range of products and services including cola, vodka, banking, insurance, transport, digital television, cinema and wedding dresses.

Media companies often use their very diverse interests to package or synergise their products in several different ways, e.g. a film is often accompanied by a soundtrack album, computer game, ring tone or toy action figures. A company may use its global interests to market one of its own films through its television channels, magazines and newspapers in dozens of countries at the same time.

Technological convergence is a recent trend which involves putting several technologies into one media product. Companies that normally work in quite separate media technology fields are joining up or converging in order to give customers access to a greater range of media services across technologies such as interactive television, lap-tops, MP3 players and mobile phones.
Theories of media ownership and control KEY POINT - Doyle (2002) suggests that examination of ownership and control patterns is important for two reasons.

All points of view need to be heard if society is to be truly democratic.

Abuses of power and influence by elites need to be monitored by a free media.

Doyle argues that too much concentration of media ownership is dangerous and unhealthy because the media have the power to make or break political careers and have a considerable influence over public opinion.

The pluralist theory of media ownership
Pluralists argue that media owners are generally responsible in the way that they manage information because media content is mainly shaped by consumer demand in the marketplace. They therefore only give the buying public what they want. Moreover, editors, journalists and broadcasters have a strong sense of professional ethics which act as a system of checks and controls on potential owner abuse of the media.

Pluralists suggest that the mass media are an essential part of the democratic process because the electorate today glean most of their knowledge of the political process from newspapers and television. Pluralists argue that owners, editors and journalists are trustworthy managers and protectors of this process.

Furthermore, pluralists argue that media audiences are the real power holders because they can exercise the right to buy or not to buy. If they did not like the choices that media owners are making available to them, or if they suspected that the media product was biased, such audiences would respond by not buying the product. The media, therefore, supply what the audience wants rather than what the owner decides. If some viewpoints have a greater range of media representing them, this is not necessarily biased. It merely reflects what the audience wants or views as important.

Pluralists also argue that concentration of ownership is a product of economic rationality rather than political or sinister motives. It is driven by the need to keep costs low and to maximise profits. Globalisation too results from the need to find new audiences rather than from cultural imperialism.

Pluralists argue that it is practically impossible for owners to interfere with the content of newspapers and television programmes because their businesses are economically far too complex for them to regularly interfere in the day-to-day running or the content.

Public service broadcasting
Pluralists point out that a significant share of the media market in Britain is taken up by public service broadcasters (PSB), i.e. media outlets controlled by the state such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC has a legal obligation to inform, to educate and to ensure that all programming is pluralistic and diverse, i.e. that all sections of society are catered for. Pluralists argue that PSB is impartial and objective, and balances out any potential bias in the private sector.

Pluralists note that the power of media owners is also restricted by state, or government, controls, e.g. in some societies, owners are not allowed to own too much media or different types of media. Many countries also have crossownership rules preventing people from owning more than one type of media. Furthermore, newspapers, television and radio in Britain are subject to legal controls and rules imposed on them by The Press Council and the Office for Communications (Ofcom).

Media professionalism
Pluralists stress that the professionalism of journalists and editors also constrains the power of owners. They argue that journalists are fierce in their pursuit of the truth and consequently they have too much integrity to be biased regularly in favour of one particular perspective. Investigative journalism also has a good reputation in uncovering abuses of power and corruption among the ruling elite.

The Marxist critique of media ownership and control
Marxists argue that the economic system of Britain, i.e. capitalism, is characterised by great inequalities in wealth and income which have been brought about by the exploitation of the labour power of the working classes. Marxists believe that in order to legitimate and reproduce this system of inequality, the capitalist class uses its cultural power to dominate institutions like education and the mass media and transmit ruling class ideology. The function of these agencies is to socialise the working class into accepting the legitimacy of the capitalist system and capitalist ideas. Consequently, Marxists argue working class people experience false class-consciousness - they come to accept that capitalism is a just system that benefits all social groups equally. They fail to see the reality of their situation that they are being exploited by a system that only benefits a powerful minority.

The media and ideology
Marxists believe that media owners (who are members of the capitalist elite) use their media outlets to transmit ruling class ideology. Miliband (1973) argued that the role of the media is to shape how we think about the world we live in and suggested that audiences are rarely informed about important issues such as inequalities in wealth or why poverty persists. The capitalist system is rarely criticised or challenged. Instead, Marxists suggest that owners shape media content so that only 'approved' and conformist views are heard.

Tunstall and Palmer (1991) suggest that governments are no longer interested in controlling the activities of media owners because they need their support to either gain power or hang onto it.

Evidence for the ideological nature of ownership and control
Marxists are suggesting that media owners, wealth holders and the political elite are united in some sort of ideological conspiracy to brainwash the general population. However, it is almost impossible to scientifically gather empirical evidence that supports this hypothesis. Sociologists generally only have anecdotal evidence to confirm their suspicions that concentration of media ownership is damaging democracy.

However, Curran's (2003) detailed systematic examination of the social history of the British press does suggest that the evidence for owner interference in and manipulation of British newspaper content is strong. Curran notes that in the period 1920-50 press barons openly boasted that they ran their newspapers for the express purpose of propaganda that reflected their political views. Curran points out that even when engaged in investigative reporting, the majority of newspapers in Britain have supported the Conservative Party.

Curran also notes that the period 1974-92 saw the emergence of Rupert Murdoch. However, Curran rejects the idea that Murdoch is part of a unified capitalist elite but acknowledges that Murdoch's newspapers are conservative in content and strongly supportive of capitalist interests. He argues Murdoch's motives are economic rather than ideological in that Murdoch believes that right wing economic policies are the key to vast profits.

Curran's analysis of British newspapers suggests that both pluralist and Marxist theories may be mistaken in the way they look at media ownership. He argues the pluralist view that media owners do not intervene in media content is evidentially false. Curran argues that since 2000 there has been even greater intervention by owners such as Murdoch. However, Curran disagrees with Marxists about the motive for this. He notes that the actions of media owners are not collectivised, rather they pursue their economic goals in a ruthlessly individualised way in an attempt to obtain a bigger share of the market than their capitalist competitors.
The Glasgow University Media Group KEY POINT - The Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) suggests that media content does support the interests of those who run the capitalist system. However, this is an unintended by-product of the social backgrounds of journalists and broadcasters rather than a conscious capitalist conspiracy. The GUMG points out that most journalists working for national newspapers, television and radio tend to be overwhelmingly male, White, and middle class, e.g. 54% are privately educated.
The GUMG claims that these journalists and broadcasters tend to believe in middle-of-the-road (consensus) views and ideas because these are generally unthreatening. Journalists believe that these appeal to the majority of their viewers, listeners and readers. Ideas outside this consensus are viewed by journalists as 'extremist'. People who hold these opinions are rarely invited to contribute their views in newspapers or on television, or if they are, they are ridiculed by journalists.

The GUMG argues that these journalists are not motivated by a desire to defend capitalist interests. Media companies are profit-making businesses. Those who commission and plan programmes, or decide newspaper or magazine content, usually play safe by excluding anything that might offend or upset readers or viewers. Losing several thousand readers, or viewers, because they were offended by 'extreme' views and potentially losing millions of pounds in revenue and profit is too much of a risk.

Barnett and Weymour argue that such decisions have had a negative cultural effect in the sense that education, information and news have been increasingly sidelined. They compared television schedules in 1978, 1988 and 1998 and argued that the evidence suggests that television in Britain has been significantly dumbed down, e.g. the number of one-off dramas and documentaries has halved, while soap operas and cheap reality shows have increased fivefold. There are also now more repeats and cheap American imports. Time allocated to news programming has fallen dramatically, and more time on serious news programmes is devoted to celebrity news and human interest stories. Barnett and Weymour note that even the BBC is succumbing to these commercial pressures. Furthermore, they conclude that despite having hundreds of television channels, we do not have more choice, just more of the same thing.

Agenda setting
The result of this journalistic consensus, argues the GUMG, is that the media set the agenda and decide what issues are discussed by society and which ones are not. This is known as agenda setting. The GUMG argues that the media consequently present society with a fairly narrow agenda for discussion. Agenda setting therefore results in cultural hegemony. The basic principles of capitalism - private enterprise, profit, the free market and the rights of property ownership - dominate media content and are presented as 'normal' and 'natural'. There is actually little choice for audiences in that there is no radical alternative to the mainstream newspapers and dissenting views on subjects like the monarchy are rarely presented.

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Ownership and control of the media | a2-level-level-revision, sociology, mass-media-0, ownership-and-control-media | Revision World

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand: trends and patterns in ownership and control of a range of mass media the theoretical perspectives on the relationship between ownership and control of the media Trends in ownership and control

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand:

the evidence relating to the relationship between screen violence and violence in real life

active audience approaches

the process of moral panics

Mass media effects: the relationship between screen violence and real-life violence
Influential psychologists, pressure groups, religious leaders and politicians have suggested that there is a direct causal link between violence in films, television programmes and computer games and violent real-life crime. It is argued that such media content exerts an overwhelmingly negative effect on impressionable young audiences. These beliefs have led to increased state control over and censorship of the media in Britain.
KEY POINT - Sociologists have argued that media content can have a direct effect upon their audiences and trigger particular social responses in terms of behaviour and attitudes.

Gerbner (2002) sees a cause-effect relationship between screen violence and real-life violence.

Some feminist sociologists, e.g. Dworkin (1988) and Morgan (1980) have suggested that there is a strong relationship between the consumption of pornography and sexual crime.

Orbach (1991) and Wolf (1990) argue that there is a causal link between representation of (US) size zero models in magazines and eating disorders.

Norris (1996), claims that media coverage of political issues can influence voting behaviour.

Some early Marxist commentators, particularly those belonging to the Frankfurt School, such as Marcuse (1964), believed that the media transmitted a mass culture which was directly injected into the hearts and minds of the population making them more vulnerable to ruling class propaganda.

The hypodermic model of media violence
The hypodermic syringe approach to media effects believes that a direct correlation exists between the violence and anti-social behaviour portrayed in films, on television, in computer games, in rap lyrics, etc. and violence and antisocial behaviour such as drug use and teenage gun/knife crime found in real life. The model suggests that children and teenagers are vulnerable to media content because they are still in the early stages of socialisation and therefore very impressionable.

Believers in this hypodermic syringe model (also known as the 'magic bullet' theory) point to a number of films which they claim have resulted in young people using extreme violence.

Imitation or copycat violence
Early studies of the relationship between the media and violence focused on conducting experiments in laboratories, e.g. Bandura et al. (1963) carried out an experiment on young children which involved exposing them to films and cartoons of a self-righting doll being attacked with a mallet. They concluded on the basis of this experiment that violent media content could lead to imitation or copycat violence.

McCabe and Martin (2005) concluded that media violence has a disinhibition effect - it convinces children that in some social situations, the 'normal' rules that govern conflict and difference can be suspended, i.e. discussion and negotiation can be replaced with violence with no repercussions.

Desensitisation
Newson argued that sadistic images in films were too easily available and that films encouraged viewers to identify with violent perpetrators rather than victims. Furthermore, Newson noted that children and teenagers are subjected to thousands of killings and acts of violence as they grow up through viewing television and films. Newson suggested that such prolonged exposure to media violence may have a drip-drip effect on young people over the course of their childhood and result in their becoming desensitised to violence. Newson argues that they see violence as a normal problem-solving device and concluded that, because of this, the latest generation of young people subscribe to weaker moral codes and are more likely to behave in anti-social ways than previous generations.

Censorship
Newson's report led directly to increased censorship of the film industry with the passing of the Video Recordings (Labelling) Act 1985, which resulted in videos and DVDs being given British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) age certificates. The BBFC also came under increasing pressure to censor films released to British cinemas by insisting on the film makers making cuts relating to bad language, scenes of drug use and violence.

Television too was affected by this climate of censorship. All the television channels agreed on a nine o'clock watershed, i.e. not to show any programmes that used bad language or contained scenes of a sexual or violent nature before this time. Television channels often resorted to issuing warnings before films and even edited out violence themselves or beeped over bad language.

Critique of the hypodermic syringe model
A number of critiques have developed of the imitation-desensitisation model of media effects, e.g. some media sociologists claim that media violence can actually prevent real-life violence.

Fesbach and Sanger (1971) found that screen violence can actually provide a safe outlet for people's aggressive tendencies. This is known as catharsis. They suggest that watching an exciting film releases aggressive energy into safe outlets as the viewers immerse themselves in the action.

Young (1981), argues that seeing the effects of violence and especially the pain and suffering that it causes to the victim and their families, may make us more aware of its consequences and so less inclined to commit violent acts. Sensitisation to certain crimes therefore may make people more aware and responsible so that they avoid getting involved in violence.

The methodological critique of the hypodermic syringe model
Gauntlett (2008) argues that people, especially children, do not behave as naturally under laboratory conditions as they would in their everyday environment, e.g. children's media habits are generally influenced and controlled by parents, especially when they are very young.

The media effects model fails to be precise in how 'violence' should be defined. There are different types of media violence such as in cartoons, images of war and death on news bulletins and sporting violence. It is unclear whether these different types of violence have the same or different effects upon their audiences or whether different audiences react differently to different types and levels of violence. The effects model has been criticised because it tends to be selective in its approach to media violence, i.e. it only really focuses on particular types of fictional violence.

The effects model also fails to put violence into context, e.g. it views all violence as wrong, however trivial, and fails to see that audiences interpret it according to narrative context. Research by Morrison suggests that the context in which screen violence occurs affects its impact on the audience.

Some sociologists believe that children are not as vulnerable as the hypodermic syringe model implies, e.g. research indicates that most children can distinguish between fictional/cartoon violence and real violence from a very early age, and generally know that it should not be imitated. Sociologists are generally very critical of the hypodermic syringe model because it fails to recognise that audiences have very different social characteristics in terms of age, maturity, social class, education, family background, parental controls, etc. These characteristics will influence how people respond to and use media content.

Cumberbatch (2004) looked at over 3500 research studies into the effects of screen violence, encompassing film, television, video and more recently, computer and video games. He concluded that there is still no conclusive evidence that violence shown in the media influences or changes people's behaviour.
Active audience approaches KEY POINT - Active audience approaches see the media as far less influential. They believe that people have considerable choice in the way they use and interpret the media. There are various versions of this view, outlined on the next page.
The two-step flow model
Katz and Lazarsfeld (1965) suggest that personal relationships and conversations with significant others, such as family members, friends, teachers and work colleagues, result in people modifying or rejecting media messages. They argue that social networks are usually dominated by opinion leaders, i.e. people of influence whom others in the network look up to and listen to. These people usually have strong ideas about a range of matters. Moreover, these opinion leaders expose themselves to different types of media and form an opinion on their content. These interpretations are then passed on to other members of their social circle. Katz and Lazarsfeld suggest that media messages have to go through two steps or stages.

The opinion leader is exposed to the media content.

Those who respect the opinion leader internalise their interpretation of that content.

KEY POINT -
Consequently, media audiences are not directly influenced by the media. Rather, they choose to adopt a particular opinion, attitude and way of behaving after negotiation and discussion with an opinion leader. The audience is, therefore, not passive, but active.
However, critics of this model point out two problems.

There is no guarantee that the opinion leader has not been subjected to an imitative or desensitising effect, e.g. a leader of a peer group, such as a street gang, might convince other members that violence is acceptable because he has been exposed to computer games that strongly transmit the message that violence is an acceptable problem-solving strategy.

People who may be most at risk of being influenced by the media may be socially isolated individuals who are not members of any social network and so do not have access to an opinion leader who might help interpret media content in a healthy way.

The selective filter model
In his selective filter model, Klapper (1960) suggests that, for a media message to have any effect, it must pass through three filters.

Selective exposure - the audience must choose to view, read or listen to the content of specific media. Media messages can have no effect if no one sees or hears them. However, what the audience chooses depends upon their interests, education, work commitments and so on.

Selective perception - the audience may not accept the message; some people may take notice of some media content, but decide to reject or ignore others.

Selective retention - the messages have to 'stick' in the mind of those who have accessed the media content. However, research indicates that most people have a tendency to remember only the things they broadly agree with.

The uses and gratifications model
Blumler and McQuail (1968) and Lull (1995) see media audiences as active. Their uses and gratifications model suggests that people use the media in order

to satisfy particular social needs that they have, e.g. Wood (1993) illustrated how teenagers may use horror films to gratify their need for excitement. Blumler and McQuail identify four basic needs which people use the media to satisfy.

Diversion - people may immerse themselves in particular types of media to make up for the lack of satisfaction at work or in their daily lives, e.g. women may compensate for the lack of romance in their marriages by reading Mills and Boon romantic novels. Some people even have alternative lives and identities as avatars on websites such as Second Life.

Personal relationships - media products such as soap operas may compensate for the decline of community in our lives, e.g. socially isolated elderly people may see soap opera characters as companions they can identify with and worry about in the absence of interaction with family members. Cyber-communities on the Internet may also be seen by users as alternative families.

Personal identity - people may use the media to 'make over' or to modify their identity. Social networking websites, such as Facebook, allow people to use the media to present their particular identities to the wider world in a way that they can control.

Surveillance - people use the media to obtain information and news in order to help them make up their minds on particular issues.

Marxists are critical of this model because they suggest that social needs may be socially manufactured by the media and may therefore be 'false needs'.

The reception analysis model
The reception analysis model suggests that media content is not passively accepted as truth by audiences. Morley's (1980) research into how audiences interpreted the content of a well-known 1970s evening news programme called Nationwide examined how the ideological content of the programme (i.e. the messages that were contained in the text and images) were interpreted by 29 groups made up of people from a range of educational and professional backgrounds. Morley found that audiences were very active in their reading of media content and did not automatically accept the media's perspective on a range of issues. Morley concluded that people choose to read or interpret media content in three ways.

The preferred (or dominant) reading accepts the media content as legitimate, e.g. the British people generally approve of the Royal Family, so very few people are likely to interpret stories about them in a critical fashion. This dominant reading is often shared by journalists and editors, and underpins news values.

The oppositional reading opposes the views expressed in media content.

The negotiated reading whereby the audience reinterpret the media content to fit in with their own opinions and values, e.g. they may not have any strong views on the Royal Family, but enjoy reading about celebrity lives.

Morley argues that the average person belongs to several sub-cultural groups and this may complicate a person's reading of media content in the sense that they may not be consistent in their interpretation of it. Reception analysis theory therefore suggests that audiences are not passive, impressionable and homogeneous. They act in a variety of subcultural ways and, for this reason, media content is polysemic, i.e. it attracts more than one type of reading or interpretation.

The cultural effects model
The Marxist cultural effects model sees the media as a very powerful ideological influence that is mainly concerned with transmitting capitalist values and norms. Marxists argue that media content contains strong ideological messages that reflect the values of those who own, control and produce the media. They argue that the long-term effect of such media content is that the values of the rich and powerful come to be unconsciously shared by most people - people come to believe in values such as 'happiness is about possessions and money', 'being a celebrity is really important', etc. Marxists believe that television content, in particular, has been deliberately dumbed down and this has resulted in a decline in serious programmes such as news, documentaries and drama that might make audiences think critically about the state of the world. Consequently, there is little serious debate about the organisation of capitalism and the social inequalities and problems that it generates.

However, in criticism of the cultural effects model, these 'cause' and 'effects' are very difficult to operationalise and measure. It also implies that Marxists are the only ones who can see the 'true' ideological interpretation of media content, which suggests that most members of society are 'cultural dopes'.

The post-modernist model
Strinati (1995) argues that the media today are the most influential shapers of identity and offer a greater range of consumption choices in terms of identities and lifestyles. Moreover, in the post-modern world, the media transmit the idea that the consumption of signs and symbols for their own sake is more important than the goods they represent. In other words, the media encourages the consumption of logos, designer labels and brands, and these become more important to people's sense of identity than the physical clothes and goods themselves.

Other post-modernists have noted that, since 2000, the globalisation of communication has become more intensive and extensive, and this has had great significance for local cultures, in that all consumers of the global media are both citizens of the world and of their locality. Seeing other global experience allows people to think critically about their own place in the world. However, Thompson notes that the interaction between global media and local cultures can also create tensions and hostilities, e.g. the Chinese authorities have attempted to control and limit the contact that the Chinese people have with global media, whilst some Islamic commentators have used global media to convince their local populations of the view that Western culture is decadent and corrupt.

Every now and then, the media, particularly the tabloid news media, focus on particular groups and activities and, through the style of their reporting, define these groups and their activities as a problem. This focus creates public anxiety and official censure and control.

What is a moral panic?
The term moral panic was popularised by Cohen (1972) in his classic work Folk Devils and Moral Panics. It refers to media reactions to particular social groups and activities that are defined as threatening social consensus. The reporting creates anxiety or moral panic amongst the general population which puts pressure on the authorities to control the problem and discipline the group responsible. However, the media concern is usually out of proportion to any real threat to society posed by the group or activity.

Both the publicity and social reaction to the panic may create the potential for further crime and deviance in the future. In other words, the social reaction may lead to the amplification of deviance by provoking more of the same behaviour.

There have been a number of moral panics in the last 30 years including:

Ravers and ecstasy use - Redhead notes that a moral panic in regard to acid house raves in the late 1980s led to the police setting up roadblocks on motorways, turning up at raves in full riot gear and the Criminal Justice Act (1990) which banned illegal parties.

Refugees and asylum seekers - in 2003 there was a moral panic focused on the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers entering Britain and their motives. Elements of the tabloid press, particularly the Daily Mail and The Sun, focused on the alleged links between asylum seekers and terrorism which created public anxiety.

Hoodies - Fawbert (2008) examined newspaper reports and found that 'hoodies' became a commonly used term, especially between 2005 and 2007, to describe young people involved in crime.

Why do moral panics occur?

Furedi argues that moral panics arise when society fails to adapt to dramatic social changes and it is felt that there is a loss of control, especially over powerless groups such as the young. Furedi therefore argues that moral panics are about the wider concerns that the older generation have about the nature of society today - people see themselves (and their families) as at greater risk from a variety of groups. They believe that things are out of control. They perceive, with the media's encouragement, that traditional norms and values no longer have much relevance in their lives. Furedi notes that people feel a very real sense of loss, which makes them extremely susceptible to the anxieties encouraged by media moral panics.

Some commentators argue that moral panics are simply a product of news values and the desire of journalists and editors to sell newspapers - they are a good example of how audiences are manipulated by the media for commercial purposes. However, after a while, news stories exhaust their cycle of newsworthiness and journalists abandon interest in them because they believe their audiences have lost interest too. The social problems, however, do not disappear - they remain dormant until journalists decide at some future date that they can be made newsworthy again and attract a large audience.

Marxists, such as Hall, see moral panics as serving an ideological function. His study of the media coverage of Black muggers in the 1970s (Hall et al., 1978) concluded that it had the effect of labelling all young African-Caribbeans as criminals and a potential threat to White people. This served the purpose of diverting attention away from the mismanagement of capitalism by the capitalist class, as well as justifying the introduction and use of more repressive laws and policing.

Left Realists argue, however, that moral panics should not be dismissed as a product of ruling class ideology or news values. Moral panics have a very real basis in reality, i.e. the media often identifies groups who are a real threat to those living in inner-city areas. Portraying such crime as a fantasy is naïve because it denies the very real harm that some types of crime have on particular communities or the sense of threat that older people feel.

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Effect of Media on Audiences & Society | a2-level-level-revision, sociology, mass-media-0, effect-media-content-audiences-society | Revision World

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand: the evidence relating to the relationship between screen violence and violence in real life active audience approaches the process of moral panics Mass media effects: the relationship between screen violence and real-life violence

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Equally those who mainly played solitary games generally performed better academically and were less likely to display aggression.

But it concluded that any effects were small and that overall video games were at most a "statistically significant, yet minor, factor" in shaping children's behaviour.

Researchers interviewed just over 200 children aged 10 and 11 about their playing habits including how long they spent each day and what types of game they preferred.

Meanwhile their teachers were asked to assess the children's academic engagement, behaviour and ability to deal with problems.

Two thirds of the children said they played video games every day - although boys were almost twice as likely as girls to do so. Around one in 10 said they played more than three hours a day, again a group dominated by boys.

Overall those who played for less than an hour a day were less likely to have problems such as aggression than those who did not play at all.

But those who spend more than three hours a day displayed higher levels of aggression and were less academically engaged.

"Taken together, this suggests that quantity may play a larger role than the quality of games played - a counter intuitive finding for many focused on the violent contents of some gaming contexts," the paper concludes.

It adds: "These findings do not support the idea that regular violent game play is linked to real world violence or conflict."

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Study finds no evidence violent video games make children aggressive

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Equally those who mainly played solitary games generally performed better academically and were less likely to display aggression. But it concluded that any effects were small and that overall video games were at most a "statistically significant, yet minor, factor" in shaping children's behaviour.

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The first of two screencasts examining recent developments in the Sociology of the media. This one focuses on globalisation and the media. Aimed at A/S and A level students.S

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Revise all key words to be used in essays and 9 mark questions for the exam Learn with flashcards, games, and more - for free.

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UK corporates are slow learners when it comes to capitalising on social media channels as a means of communicating with customers and prospects in an immediate and engaging way.

A survey by Investis has found that US corporates are outperforming their UK counterparts by some margin - on average they are tweeting four times as much and posting updates on LinkedIn three times as much. What is holding UK corporates back? Are UK CEOs just too sceptical: they don't buy the bottom line benefit that an effective social media strategy can bring?

The most probable conclusion is that UK CEOs are lagging behind because they just don't get the value of social media marketing activity. On the one hand, they lack the vision that a board-level marketing and business development director would bring. And on the other, the plans put in place for budgeting purposes often take a channel-by-channel approach, instead of focusing on customer groups and live industry issues. As a result, it is all too easy for social media spending to be viewed as a box-ticking exercise - directed by a misplaced desire to ensure that the company has a presence on the same channels as its competitors.

Designing integrated plans that address real customer issues and that work across a variety of communications channels is likely to be a much more effective approach. Such plans allow businesses to grab the attention of the target audience while convincing them that the company's goods and services are part of the solution.

There are some signs that UK corporates are wising up to the power of social media. The number of FTSE 100 companies that link to corporate social media accounts from their websites has risen from 35% to 72% in three years, according to the Investis research. These companies will most likely be starting to use their social media channels more fully; gathering data about their target audiences and taking a frontline role in managing customer interaction. Innovative corporate communicators may also be using targeted social media strategies to create demand for specific products or services too.

Some UK CEOs are already knocking spots of their US counterparts when it comes to their use of social media. Richard Branson stands out as a top performer here - with over 5 million followers on Twitter, he has more than Apple's Tim Cook (926,000) and Tesla's Elon Musk (1.55 million). He clearly understands the opportunity that social media presents for him to represent the Virgin brand to a wider group of people and make them feel part of its story.

In certain situations, the role of social media comes to the fore. Instead of just sharing content with a wider audience, social media channels can act as a conduit for relaying timely and accurate information to stakeholders in a crisis. The real-time nature of Twitter means it is an ideal channel for broadcasting corporate statements and updates at regular intervals to help satisfy the need for information in a crisis. When managed well it can also be an effective means of managing negative customer reaction; helping to diffuse digital arguments, taking them offline before they escalate.

Just in case there are still any CEOs out there who think it safer not to join in socially, imagine this; your company has been affected by a crisis on the scale of BP's Deepwater Horizon and the whole world (or so it seems) is talking about how your company has failed. Would you prefer to be part of that online conversation so you can influence it and straighten out the facts, or just a passive onlooker?
Rebecca Scully is managing director of Smarts Illuminate
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Are UK CEOs underestimating the power of social media?

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UK corporates are slow learners when it comes to capitalising on social media channels as a means of communicating with customers and prospects in an immediate and engaging way. A survey by Investis has found that US corporates are outperforming their UK counterparts by some margin - on average they are tweeting four times as much and posting updates on LinkedIn three times as much.

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Panorama: Hacking Power, Corruption & Lies documentary

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Panorama: Hacking Power, Corruption & Lies documentary

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BBC Panorama Hacking Power, Corruption and Lies BBC Full Documentary 2014 Panorama - Hacking: Power, Corruption and Lies In a Panorama Special, Robert Peston investigates the questions behind the phone hacking trial which saw David Cameron's former spokesman, Andy Coulson, convicted and three other News of the World News editors plead guilty.

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News selection and presentation taboo cards

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Nearly three-quarters of top management jobs in news media across the world are held by men, as are two-thirds of reporting jobs, a new study has found.

But the International Women's Media Foundation in Washington found 41% of senior anchors, writers, editors and producers in the industry were women.

Women were best represented in Europe and worst in Asia, the study of 170,000 people in 522 news companies found.

But the survey found no significant improvement from a smaller 1995 study.

Across the entire newspaper, radio and television workforce studied, the survey found 65% of jobs were held by men, compared to 35% by women.

"There is still quite a lot of work to be done to achieve some sort of equal footing in the industry," said Liza Gross, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation.

Egalitarian Eastern Europe

The study did not address the affects the disparity has on the news media product, findings Ms Gross expected from a future study.

Among the news organisations studied, the survey found the most gender equity in 85 newsrooms of Eastern Europe, in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

There, men's and women's salaries were comparable across all levels in the profession, a finding the survey authors attributed to the Soviet-era practice of educating women and moving them into the work force in great numbers.

In 47 newsrooms surveyed in France, Germany, Spain and the UK, women were nearing parity with men among the ranks of "junior professionals", a category which included correspondents, writers, sub-editors, producers and presenters.

But the survey reported women hit a "glass ceiling" at the senior professional level, holding only roughly a third of jobs in middle management and a quarter in top management.

In the 14 newsrooms surveyed in the US, women comprised about 41% of the total workforce, but were under-represented in the executive ranks, filling only 23.3% of the top management jobs, the survey found.

Under-represented in Asia

"Women have been successful in gaining access to US news companies in numbers approaching those of men overall, but they are not yet at parity with men in their status across occupational levels," the study found.

The study found women the most under-represented in 10 nations of Asia and the Pacific rim - Australia, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, India, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines and South Korea.

In Japan, for example, only one in eight newsroom jobs are held by women. The study suggested that low number was down to the relatively low rate of turnover in the Japanese workforce.

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Nearly three-quarters of top management jobs in news media across the world are held by men, as are two-thirds of reporting jobs, a new study has found. But the International Women's Media Foundation in Washington found 41% of senior anchors, writers, editors and producers in the industry were women.