Television News holds a prime position in assessing The significance in moulding opinion and thereby influencing public life.
Once we recognise that News is not an unmediated reality but a selected and represented reality we start looking at other elements behind The selection of items that constitute News. The manner in which items are selected and The way in which The story is "constructed" tells us clearly that News is never "NEUTRAL".
Politics, economy, foreign affairs,domestic affairs, sport and occasional storiyes are usually topics that feature in The News।।
In the West there are four prime news values in the Western world:
· Reference to elite nations
· Reference to elite persons
· Personalization
· Negativity
It is often said that the unexpected always has new value and more so if it has negative consequences involving elite persons of an elite nation.
News on TV can also be an example of manipulation by agencies that control the medium, as in the case of authoritarian regimes or an ideology driven govt which will also use pressure to shape the News the way they want it. Often the owners of the medium become collaborators with the govt.
This sort of “shaping” of the News takes place in the propagandist News that came from the early govts of Soviet Union and China, for example।
In the present set up it is
i) market forces
ii) plurality of voices addressing different audiences and
iii) plurality of outlets
and over above all this professional journalists who ultimately determine the NEWS.
But here what often happens is that there is one part of the world which is kept in total darkness, the spotlight never falls on those ‘backyards’ because ‘Newsmakers” fall in the power elite!
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