My Notes for Beca 460: September 2007

Objective (not biased):

Examine Sources
- How many sources did they use?
- Who did they talk too , who did they not talk too?
Look at reporters facial expressions and tone?
- Tone is hard to quantify.
- Some times language can be neutral but the tone can reveal the bias.
Analyze the language
- Look at the adjectives
Look at the Pictures
- Sometimes the prettiest pictures are not what is the most newsworthy
Look at how marginal vs mainstream is portrayed
Are we relying to much on “official sources”
- Just because they have a PHD doesn’t mean they know anything about the subject

Political / Ideological
Racial
Ethnocentrism - your culture is always right and is always superior to other cultures
Structural Media Bias
- The environment prevents spontaneity
- People get used to the way things happen
- Because of TV things are easier if things are the same day in and day ou
Good Video / Audio Bias - if its not really news just funny or interesting
Need to get ratings bias

Talking about subjectivity in news
About FOX news network
Has the potential to reach 3.7 billion people / thats only reach, not viewership
Memos from the top tell people how to prepare news for the day

very few people read
90% of public use television as primary source of news
some are saying we use online, but primary still TV
Newspapers are fucked - PRINT is loosing lots of $$$ moo-la # thats why some are going hyper-local, trying new and innovative business plans
- readership is declining slowly
- newspapers are hyping their content # controversial to old people
  - pie charts, color picture
reading news => active | watching news => passive
PRINT Explains the WHY, BROADCAST focuses on WHERE, WHEN
PRINT = EXTENSIVE | BROADCAST = CONCISE
BROADCAST and RAIDO look at PRINT for their news
PRINT in-depth and investigative