‘t News Does Not Just Happen-It Involves Planning And Construction’. Using Media Theories Covered In This Unit, Current News Examples And The Text Wag The Dog, Explain Whether You Agree Or Disagree With This Statement And Why.
The concept of news can be defined as a report of recent events and any material reported in a newspaper, news periodical or on a newscast . Through this definition, it is clear that the news does not just happen, rather, an event occurs and when this event is presented to an audience in the context of news, it is inevitable that there is planning and construction involved in the process. Construction and planning can be seen in three different levels; the symbolic level of construction from which all communications is derived from, the practical level of physical and tangible construction of the news, and the planning or construction involved in sending a message in the act of communicating. It can therefore be said that the news is heavily reliant on planning and construction through the following arguments:
Firstly, all communicative processes are reliant upon systems or constructions of meaning, therefore, news, as a method of communications is also based on socially constructed meanings and ideologies.
Secondly, news is planned and constructed as a means to communicate a message by replaying an event. This goes hand in hand with power, as it raises questions like why this piece is shown, and what message the communicator is trying send.
Finally, as the genre of news follows a certain narrative, any news item must be constructed and planned to satisfy this narrative for it to be viewed as news. Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the medium being the message supports this.
News is essentially a process of media communication, and therefore relies on pre-existing methods of meaning constructed in society. As news is created for an audience, it is constructed to satisfy ideologies and cultural literacies so that the audience understands what is shown. To do this, news media uses agenda setting and language with a specific outcome in mind. One recent news example that demonstrates this is the Sydney anti-war in Iraq...
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