Power Without Responsibility

Curran, James; Seaton, Jean

doi:10.4324/9780203296035

Cited by 43 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…Yet the number of titles in circulation have risen and regional newspapers have maintained high levels of profitability (Franklin, 2006: 3), profit margins which are higher than comparable industries (William and Franklin, 2007). Despite operating in a highly competitive marketplace driven by new technological changes, conglomeration, deregulation, competition from freesheets and declining numbers of readers (Curran and Seaton, 1997;Davis 2003;Franklin, 1997;Tunstall, 1996, Williams andFranklin, 2007), newspapers' managements have squared the circle by lowering wages, shedding staff, while simultaneously increasing output, including online content (Murphy, 1998;Williams and Franklin, 2007). Softer, lifestyle journalism has been promoted (Franklin, 1997) at the expense of costly investigative, hard news, which attracts less advertising, and is therefore less appealing an investment for news organisations.…”

Section: Changes In Local Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Passive Journalist

O’Neill

O’Connor²

2008

Journalism Practice

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Section: Changes In Local Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Passive Journalist

O’Neill

O’Connor²

2008

Journalism Practice

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“…Five of these serve relatively small affluent markets, rely heavily on advertising and are oriented towards public affairs, while the other five are directed towards a mass market and focus on entertainment. The latter group, which accounts for over three quarters of national newspaper circulation, has become increasingly frenetic in the pursuit of readers in response to a steady but now accelerating decline of newspaper sales (Curran and Seaton 2003).…”

Section: Media Systems In Cross-national Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy

Curran

Iyengar

Lund

et al. 2009

European Journal of Communication

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424

294

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We address the implications of the movement towards entertainment-centred, marketdriven media by comparing what is reported and what the public knows in four countries with different media systems. The different systems are public service (Denmark and Finland), a 'dual' model (United Kingdom) and the market model (United States). The comparison shows that public service television devotes more attention to public affairs and international news, and fosters greater knowledge in these areas, than the market model. Public service television also gives greater prominence to news, encourages higher levels of news consumption, and contributes to a smaller within-nation knowledge gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged. But wider processes in society take precedence over the organisation of the media in determining how much people know about public life.In press: European Journal of Communication 1In most parts of the world, the news media are becoming more market-oriented and entertainment-centred.* This is the consequence of three trends that have gathered pace since the 1980s: the multiplication of privately owned television channels, the weakening of programme requirements on commercial broadcasters ('de-regulation'), and a contraction in the audience size and influence of public broadcasters.Our interest lies in addressing the consequences of the movement towards marketbased media for informed citizenship. The democratic process assumes that individual citizens have the capacity to hold elected officials accountable. In practice, political accountability requires a variety of institutional arrangements including free and frequent elections, the presence of strong political parties, and, of particular importance to this inquiry, a media system that delivers a sufficient supply of meaningful public affairs information to catch the eye of relatively inattentive citizens. Thus, we are interested in tracing the connections between the architecture of media systems, the delivery of news, and citizens' awareness of public affairs. In particular, we test the hypothesis that market-based systems, by delivering more soft than hard news, impede the exercise of informed citizenship. Media Systems in Cross-National PerspectiveThere is considerable cross-national variation in the movement towards the American model. We take advantage of this variation by focusing on four economically advanced liberal democracies that represent three distinct media systems: an unreconstructed public service model in which the programming principles of public service still largely dominate (exemplified by Finland and Denmark), a dual system that combines increasingly deregulated commercial media with strong public service 2 broadcasting organisations (Britain), and the exemplar market model of the United States.This sample enables us to investigate whether variations in media organisation affect the quality of citizenship by giving rise to different kinds of reporting and patterns of public knowledge.

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“…However, this information has only a minority market. The solution to this problem in Britain is to ration: popular national papers (accounting for three out of four sales) devote less than 20 per cent of their editorial content to public aff airs 53 . The solution chosen by American local TV in the 1990s was to give prominence to crime because it was both cheap and popular (particularly if it included human interest drama, car chase action or contained ingredients that aroused fear or indignation).…”

Section: Tension Between Market and Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinterpreting the Democratic Roles of the Media

Curran

2007

BJR

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British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) transmitted an undercover documentary, The Secret Policeman, which exposed racism in the British police force. A hidden camera showed, among other things, a police recruit wearing a Klu Klu Klan hood simulating -for pleasure -the beating up of an Asian. The programme was watched by 5 million people, resulted in six police offi cers resigning, and led to major reviews of police training and recruitment procedures.Both the government and the police had attacked the programme before it went out, with the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, declaring it a 'stunt' intended "to create, not report, a story" Gates. However, the three police offi cers involved in Rodney King' s beating were subsequently acquitted.Less celebrated but in some ways more impressive was Peter Karl' s investigation of the Chicago police in 1983. This took six months to research, aided by three journalism students, and resulted in the fi ve-part series, Beating Justice, transmitted on the Chicago NBC affi liate, Channel 5. It revealed shocking instances of police violence, including the use of an electric cattle iron on a suspect' s genitals and down his throat, and the transformation of a once healthy 21-year old man into a quadraplegic, following a ride in a police wagon4. These abuses were committed by a small group of offi cers, mostly on black people. They were being in eff ect hushed up, according to Karl, through large out of court settlements paid over a number of years.The series reached 526.000 people, and became a major debating point in a local primary election. The local police chief resigned, and the Offi ce of Professional Standards overseeing the police was reformed REINTERPRETING THE DEMOCRATIC ROLES OF THE MEDIA Traditional TheoryAll these inspiring examples of investigative journalism conform to the traditional theory of the democratic role of the media, and help to explain its continuing hold on our imagination. This theory proclaims that the fi rst democratic function of the media is to monitor the state, and shield citizens from the tyrannical abuse of its power. 'The Press may be judged …as the chief agency for instructing the public on the main issues of the day…. The democratic form of society demands of its members an active and intelligent participation in the aff airs of their community, whether local or national. It assumes that they are suffi ciently well informed about the issues of the day to be able to form the broad judgements required by an election, and to maintain between elections the vigilance necessary in those whose governors are their servants and not their masters' 7 .In addition to providing a faithful record of all that is important, the media should also off er a platform for diff ering points of view. They should, in the words of the British Royal Commission, 'provide a forum for the expression and exchange of opinion' 8. By thus furnishing information and diff ering opinion, the media facilitate public debate. This leads to the formation of public opinion on the...

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Power Without Responsibility

Cited by 43 publications

References 0 publications

The Passive Journalist

The Passive Journalist

Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy

Reinterpreting the Democratic Roles of the Media

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