News

==Social organization of news production==
===News organizations===
Viewed from a [[sociology of knowledge|sociological perspective]], news for mass consumption is produced in hierarchical organizations. Reporters, working near the bottom of the structure, are given significant autonomy in researching and preparing reports, subject to assignments and occasional intervention from higher decision-makers.<ref>James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in ''Handbook of Communications Science'' (1987), ed. C.H. Berger & S.H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), p. 37.</ref> Owners at the top of the news hierarchy influence the content of news indirectly but substantially. The professional norms of journalism discourage overt censorship; however, news organizations have covert but firm norms about how to cover certain topics. These policies are conveyed to journalists through socialization on the job; without any written policy, they simply learn how things are done.<ref>Warren Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis" ([https://umdrive.memphis.edu/cbrown14/public/Mass%20Comm%20Theory/Week%208%20Journalism%20Studies/Breed%201955.pdf pdf]), from ''Social Forces'' 33 (1955); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 108–110.</ref><ref>John Soloski, "News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on Reporting the News", from ''Media, Culture & Society'' 11 (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 139–140, 146–152. "One method management could use to control its journalists would be to establish rules and regulations. This bureaucratic form would not be very efficient […] A more efficient method for controlling behavior in nonbureaucratic organizations, such as news organizations, is through professionalism. Professionalism "''makes the use of discretion predictable.'' It relieves bureaucratic organizations of responsibility for devising their own mechanisms of control in the discretionary areas of work (Larson, 1977: 168) (emphasis in original)."</ref> Journalists comply with these rules for various reasons, including job security.<ref>Warren Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis" ([https://umdrive.memphis.edu/cbrown14/public/Mass%20Comm%20Theory/Week%208%20Journalism%20Studies/Breed%201955.pdf pdf]), from ''Social Forces'' 33 (1955); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 111–114.</ref> Journalists are also systematically influenced by their education, including [[journalism school]].<ref>John Soloski, "News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on Reporting the News", from ''Media, Culture & Society'' 11 (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 141–142.</ref>

News production is routinized in several ways. News stories use familiar formats and subgenres which vary by topic. "Rituals of objectivity", such as pairing a quotation from one group with a quotation from a competing group, dictate the construction of most news narratives. Many news items revolve around periodic press conferences or other scheduled events. Further routine is established by assigning each journalist to a [[Beat reporting|beat]]: a domain of human affairs, usually involving government or commerce, in which certain types of events routinely occur.<ref>James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in ''Handbook of Communications Science'' (1987), ed. C.H. Berger & S.H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), p. 38.</ref>

A common scholarly frame for understanding news production is to examine the role of information [[Gatekeeping (communication)|gatekeepers]]: to ask why and how certain narratives make their way from news producers to news consumers.<ref>Pamela J. Shoemaker, "A New Gatekeeping Model", from ''Gatekeeping'' (1991); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), p. 57. "Simply put, gatekeeping is the process by which the billions of messages that are available in the world get cut down and transformed into hundreds of messages that reach a given person on a given day."</ref> Obvious gatekeepers include journalists, news agency staff, and wire editors of newspapers.<ref>David Manning White, "The 'Gate Keeper': A Case Study in the Selection of News", from ''Journalism Quarterly'' 27 (1950); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), p. 63.</ref> Ideology, personal preferences, source of news, and length of a story are among the many considerations which influence gatekeepers.<ref>David Manning White, "The 'Gate Keeper': A Case Study in the Selection of News", from ''Journalism Quarterly'' 27 (1950); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 66–71.</ref> Although social media have changed the structure of news dissemination, gatekeeper effects may continue due to the role of a few central nodes in the social network.<ref>Thomas John Erneste, "Toward a Networked Gatekeeping Theory: Journalism, News Diffusion, and Democracy in a Networked Model"; Dissertation accepted at University of Minnesota, January 2014.</ref>

New factors have emerged in internet-era newsrooms. One issue is "click-thinking", the editorial selection of news stories—and of journalists—who can generate the most website hits and thus advertising revenue. Unlike a newspaper, a news website has detailed data collection about which stories are popular and who is reading them.<ref name=JohnstonForde /><ref>An Nguyen, "Online News Audiences: The challenges of web metrics", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), ''Journalism'' (2013).</ref> The drive for speedy online postings, some journalists have acknowledged, has altered norms of [[fact-checking]] so that verification takes place after publication.<ref name=JohnstonForde /><ref>Joanna Redden, "[http://research.gold.ac.uk/6540/ The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media and Politics]"; Dissertation accepted at Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011.</ref>

Journalists' sometimes unattributed echoing of other news sources can also increase the homogeneity of news feeds.<ref name=Matthews /> The digital age can accelerate the problem of [[circular reporting]]: propagation of the same error through increasingly reliable sources. In 2009, a number of journalists were embarrassed after all reproducing a fictional quotation, originating from Wikipedia.<ref name=Matthews /><ref>John Timmer, "[https://arstechnica.com/science/2009/05/wikipedia-hoax-reveals-limits-of-journalists-research/ Wikipedia hoax points to limits of journalists' research: A sociology student placed a fake quote on Wikipedia, only to see it show up …]"; ''Ars Technica'', 7 May 2009.</ref>

News organizations have historically been male-dominated, though women have acted as journalists since at least the 1880s. The number of female journalists has increased over time, but organizational hierarchies remain controlled mostly by men.<ref>Allan, ''News Culture'' (2004), pp. 119–121.</ref> Studies of British news organizations estimate that more than 80% of decision-makers are men.<ref>Allan, ''News Culture'' (2004), p. 124.</ref> Similar studies have found '[[Old boy network|old boys' networks]]' in control of news organizations in the United States and the Netherlands.<ref>Allan, ''News Culture'' (2004), pp. 127–129.</ref> Further, newsrooms tend to divide journalists by gender, assigning men to "hard" topics like military, crime, and economics, and women to "soft", "humanised" topics.<ref>Allan, ''News Culture'' (2004), pp. 129–130.</ref>

===Relationship with institutions===
For various reasons, news media usually have a close relationship with the state, and often church as well, even when they cast themselves in critical roles.<ref name=Fang14 /><ref name=Stephens27 /><ref name=Salmon90>Salmon, ''The Newspaper and the Historian'' (1923), pp. 90–91.</ref> This relationship seems to emerge because the press can develop symbiotic relationships with other powerful social institutions.<ref name=Salmon90 /> In the United States, the [[Associated Press]] wire service developed a "bilateral monopoly" with the [[Western Union]] telegraph company.<ref name=Starr177>Starr, ''Creation of the Media'' (2004), pp. 175–177.</ref><ref>Annteresa Lubrano, ''The Telegraph: How Technology Innovation Caused Social Change''; New York: Garland, 1997; pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=IVWAAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA72 72]–74.</ref>

The news agencies which rose to power in the mid-1800s all had support from their respective governments, and in turn served their political interests to some degree.<ref name=OBB23 /> News for consumption has operated under [[Statism|statist]] assumptions, even when it takes a stance adversarial to some aspect of a government.<ref>Stephens, ''History of News'' (1988), p. 5. "Free of an extended view of the history of press-government relations, it is easy to maintain a romantic image of the journalist, when unchained by repressive regulation, as a staunch adversary of government; it is easy to overlook the basic pro-authoritarian role that has been played by those who spread news: their success in occupying the minds of the governed with a belief in the importance, if not the inevitability, of a system of government."</ref> In practice, a large proportion of routine news production involves interactions between reporters and government officials.<ref>Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production", from ''Media, Culture & Society'' (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), p. 14. "One study after another comes up with essentially the same observation, and it matters not whether the study is at the national, state, or local level—the story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials."</ref> Relatedly, journalists tend to adopt a hierarchical view of society, according to which a few people at the top of organizational pyramids are best situated to comment on the reality which serves as the basisi of news.<ref>Allan, ''News Culture'' (2004), pp. 62–63. "To clarify, H.S. Becker (1967) employs the notion of a 'hierarchy of credibility' to specify how, in a system of ranked groups, participants will take it as given that the members of the highest group are best placed to define 'the way things really are' due to their 'knowledge of truth'. Implicit in this assumption is the view that 'those at the top' will have access to a more complete picture of the bureaucratic organization's workings than members of lower groups whose definition of reality, because of this subordinate status, can only be partial and distorted."</ref> Broadly speaking, therefore, news tends to normalize and reflect the interests of the power structure dominant in its social context.<ref>James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in ''Handbook of Communications Science'' (1987), ed. C.H. Berger & S.H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 34–37. "In sum, a considerable body of research supports the argument that inter-organizational- and institutional-level forces, realized in a journalistic culture of 'objectivity,' fostered by, and in the service of, progressive liberal capitalism, constrain what journalists report. News thus exhibits an identifiable and widely shared form and a content broadly consonant with the social structures and values of its political-economic context."</ref>

Today, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rival and may surpass governments in their influence on the content of news.<ref name=VanLeuvenJoye>{{cite journal | last1 = Van Leuven | first1 = Sarah | last2 = Joye | first2 = Stijn | title = "Civil Society Organizations at the Gates? A Gatekeeping Study of News Making Efforts by NGOs and Government Institutions"; | journal = International Journal of Press/Politics | volume = 19 | issue = 2| year= 2013 }}</ref>

===State control===
{{Main|State media}}

Governments use international news transmissions to promote the national interest and conduct [[political warfare]], alternatively known as [[public diplomacy]] and, in the modern era, [[international broadcasting]]. International radio broadcasting came into wide-ranging use by world powers seeking cultural integration of their empires.<ref>Geniets, ''Global News Challenge'' (2013), pp. 4–6, 15.</ref> The British government used BBC radio as a diplomatic tool, setting up Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese services in 1937.<ref>Wood, ''History of International Broadcasting'' (1992), p. 39.</ref> American propaganda broadcasters include [[Voice of America]] and [[Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]], [[Crusade for Freedom|set up during the Cold War]] and still operating today.<ref>Wood, ''History of International Broadcasting'' (1992), pp. 177–182.</ref> The United States remains the world's top broadcaster, although by some accounts it was surpassed for a time {{Circa|1980}} [[Radio Moscow|by the Soviet Union]]. Other major international broadcasters include the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Korea, India, Cuba, and Australia.<ref>Wood, ''History of International Broadcasting'' (1992), pp. 129–133, 132, 206–207.</ref> Around the world (and especially, formerly, in the Soviet bloc), international news sources such as the [[BBC World Service]] are often welcomed as alternatives to domestic state-run media.<ref>Geniets, ''Global News Challenge'' (2013), p. 47.</ref><ref>Hachten, ''World News Prism'' (1996), pp. 66–67.</ref>

Governments have also funneled programming through private news organizations, as when the British government arranged to insert news into the Reuters feed during and after World War Two.<ref>Wood, ''History of International Broadcasting'' (1992), pp. 21, 55. "The Reuters news service would be broadcast from Rugby with an insertion written by the Foreign Office. The secret agreement provided that both Leafield and Rugby Radio would carry 720 000 words per year, at a cost of three and a half pence per word. During and after the Second World War, these two radio stations transmitted news whose content had been falsified with the intention of deceiving the enemy."</ref> Past revelations have suggested that the U.S. military and intelligence agencies create news stories which they disseminate secretly into the foreign and domestic media. Investigation into the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] pursued in the 1970s found that it owned hundreds of news organizations (wire services, newspapers, magazines) outright.<ref>Parenti, ''Inventing Reality'' (1993), pp. 66–68.</ref><ref>Hachten, ''World News Prism'' (1996), pp. 116–118.</ref> Soviet news warfare also involved the creation of front groups, like the [[International Organization of Journalists]]. The Russian [[KGB]] heavily pursued a strategy of [[disinformation]], planting false stories which made their way to news outlets worldwide.<ref>Hachten, ''World News Prism'' (1996), pp. 113–116.</ref>

Broadcasts into Iraq before the [[Gulf War|Second Gulf War]] mimicked the style of local programming.<ref>Silverblatt & Zlobin, ''International Communications'' (2004), p. 49; also see</ref> The US also launched Middle East Broadcasting Networks, featuring the satellite TV station [[Alhurra]] and radio station [[Radio Sawa]] to beam 24-hour programming to Iraq and environs.<ref>Silverblatt & Zlobin, ''International Communications'' (2004), p. 49; also see: Josh Getlin and Johanna Neuman, "[https://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/10/news/war-iraqmedia10 Vying for Eyes, Ears of Iraq]"; ''Los Angeles Times'', 10 May 2003.</ref>

Today, [[Al Jazeera Media Network|Al Jazeera]], a TV and internet news network owned by the government of [[Qatar]], has become one of the foremost news sources in the world, appreciated by millions as an alternative to the Western media.<ref>Geniets, ''Global News Challenge'' (2013), p. 8</ref> State-owned [[China Central Television]] operates 18 channels and reaches more than a billion viewers worldwide.<ref>Geniets, ''Global News Challenge'' (2013), p. 66.</ref> Iran's [[Press TV]] and Russia's [[Russia Today]], branded as RT, also have multiplatform presences and large audiences.

===Public relations===
{{Quote box
| quote = If important things of life to-day consist of trans-atlantic radiophone talks arranged by commercial telephone companies; if they consist of inventions that will be commercially advantageous to the men who market them; if they consist of Henry Fords with epoch-making cars—then all this is news.
| source = [[Edward Bernays]], ''Propaganda'' (1928), pp. 152–153.
| width = 39%
}}
As distinct from [[advertising]], which deals with marketing distinct from news, [[public relations]] involves the techniques of influencing news in order to give a certain impression to the public. A standard public relations tactic, the "third-party technique", is the creation of seemingly independent organizations, which can deliver objective-sounding statements to news organizations without revealing their corporate connections.<ref>Rampton & Stauber, ''Trust Us, We're Experts'' (2001), pp. 13–20.</ref> Public relations agencies can create complete content packages, such as [[Video News Release]]s, which are rebroadcast as news without commentary or detail about their origin.<ref>Rampton & Stauber, ''Trust Us, We're Experts'' (2001), pp. 22–24.</ref> Video news releases seem like normal news programming, but use subtle [[product placement]] and other techniques to influence viewers.<ref>Straubhaar and LaRose, ''Communications Media in the Information Society'' (1997), pp. 395–396.</ref>

Public relations releases offer valuable newsworthy information to increasingly overworked journalists on deadline.<ref name=Matthews>Jamie Matthews, "Journalists and their sources: The twin challenges of diversity and verification", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), ''Journalism'' (2013).</ref> (This pre-organized news content has been called an [[information subsidy]].)<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Curtin | first1 = Patricia A. | title = Reevaluating Public Relations Information Subsidies: Market-Driven Journalism and Agenda-Building Theory and Practice | journal = Journal of Public Relations Research | volume = 11 | issue = 1| pages = 53–90 | year = 1999 | doi = 10.1207/s1532754xjprr1101_03 }}</ref> The journalist relies on appearances of autonomy and even opposition to established interests—but the public relations agent seek to conceal their client's influence on the news,. Thus, public relations works its magic in secret.<ref name=VanLeuvenJoye /><ref name=MoloneyJacksonMcQueen />

Public relations can dovetail with state objectives, as in the case of the [[Nayirah (testimony)|1990 news story]] about Iraqi soldiers taking "babies out of incubators" in Kuwaiti hospitals.<ref>Parenti, ''Inventing Reality'' (1993), p. 169.</ref> During the [[Nigerian Civil War]], both the federal government and the secessionist Republic of Biafra hired public relations firms, which competed to influence public opinion in the West, and between them established some of the key narratives employed in news reports about the war.<ref>Karen Rothmyer, "What really happened in Biafra? Why did themes such as mass starvation and genocide alternately surface and fade? A study of media susceptibility to public relations manipulation." ''Columbia Journalism Review'' 9.3, Fall 1970.</ref>

Overall, the position of the public relations industry has grown stronger, while the position of news producers has grown weaker. Public relations agents mediate the production of news about all sectors of society.<ref name=MoloneyJacksonMcQueen>Kevin Moloney, Daniel Jackson, & David McQueen, "News journalism and public relations: a dangerous relationship", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), ''Journalism'' (2013).</ref>