Ability Of News Research Articles

Nurturing Authority

When considering the role of local journalism in a networked media environment, it is crucial to examine how audiences attribute news with the power to define social knowledge. In particular, television news programs need to appeal to audiences by reinforcing a sense of local journalistic authority to assert the parameters of who and what is worthy of coverage. This article presents the findings from interviews with a range of commercial television news viewers in Sydney, Australia. It positions viewership in the context of people’s wider engagement with news, and in relation to their interpersonal and digital social interactions. The paper argues that local audiences have conflicting attitudes to the role of television news, both contesting and re-inscribing the programs with the power to demarcate social, political, and cultural knowledge. It traces how local audiences challenge the ability of news to convey boundaries within the community through processes of exclusion, connecting the contestations to the lived experiences of the individuals. It identifies that television news programs nurture journalistic authority in terms of their local relevance, and it contributes insights on the significance of local news by engaging with the means by which audiences themselves attach social power to journalism.

An Urban Physiognomy of the 1964 Kitty Genovese Murder

This article analyzes how news photographs and textual accounts of the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder and its 38 witnesses formulated the problem of crime in the city as one of failed witnessing in urban conditions. It analyzes the press images of Austin Street in Kew Gardens and a police portrait of the victim as facialized surfaces that journalists and editors used to interpret the failure of witnesses who were said to have watched or heard Winston Moseley’s assaults on Genovese. In years since, the number of witnesses has been called into question, as has the claim that Genovese’s neighbors did not call the police or offer direct assistance. In reviewing a case made famous through the construction of its 38 witnesses, the author shows how crime scene photography and victim portraiture played their part in conjuring the witnesses and their presumed inaction. Through these representations, this famous story of failed witnessing created an urban physiognomy of the Genovese murder whose truths lie not in the veracity of the witnesses themselves but in the ability of news and police photography to spectate the crime scene and murder victim for readers.