Journalistic Stories Research Articles

Book Review: Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture by Matthew C. Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman

Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Culture. Matthew C. Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 241 pp. $95 hbk. $25 pbk.In the 1939 movie Nancy Drew, Reporter, the exuberant teenage heroine (played by Bonita Granville) ignores an assigned puff piece to investigate a murder. Idealistic and determined, she sneaks a camera into jail, breaks into a house, concocts a fake news story, and wiretaps a hotel room-all in the search for truth and justice. It says right in my textbook on journalism that a newspaper man or woman must stop at nothing to get the news, Nancy tells her editor.This Hollywood blend of journalistic zeal and ethical stumbles illustrates the deeply ambiguous depiction of journalists in popular culture, where dramatic storylines prevail and journalists routinely portrayed as either saints (Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck) or villains (poison-pen columnist Rita Skeeter in the Harry Potter books and movies).Despite such simplified depictions, authors Matthew Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman make a convincing case that fictional journalists both ubiquitous and significant in pop culture-in plays, movies, television, novels, short stories, comic strips, graphic novels, video games, and so on. These images matter, they argue, because they are likely to shape the people's perception of the news media as much if not more than the actual press does. At the societal level, the authors note that popular stories of fictional journalists illustrate our expectations and our apprehensions regarding the press and its relation to democracy.Ehrlich, professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Saltzman, director of the Image of the Journalist in Culture (IJPC) project at the University of Southern California, focus their research largely on 20th-century popular culture in the United States. They catalog a range of journalistic myths perpetuated in popular culture and offer insights into the meanings and consequences of these myths. Importantly, too, they examine stories by female, minority, and gay or lesbian authors for their unique take on issues of difference that many journalists confront.Ehrlich and Saltzman document many cases where pop culture venerates journalism, offering idealized examples of reporters serving the public good, as in All the President's Men. At the other extreme, pop culture trashes journalists as self-serving liars and moral deadbeats. Fabrication, deception, obfuscation, plagiarism, and arrogance all too common, they write. In cases such as Nancy Drew, Reporter, Popular culture implies that whatever the niceties of ethics codes, journalists can resort to whatever means necessary to serve the higher end of promoting the public interest. Not surprisingly, such mixed messages distort the public's view of the press. …

When Codes Collide: Journalists Push Back Digital Desecration

In an examination of the contemporary transformation of journalism at a granular level, this article exposes the process at work in the cultural construction of crisis and struggles for institutional experimentation in the New Orleans based The Times-Picayune. Layoffs and a digital-first strategy in 2012 triggered public outcry that strongly polluted the changes as anti-democratic. A narrative analysis of articles published in a variety of media and in-depth interviews with journalists and editors showed that events were related to broad and systemic cultural values, a core cultural structure inherent in every journalistic institution—including The Times-Picayune. In their narrative dimension, journalistic stories took the form of a moral texture that, in turn, fostered civil interpretations and reactions. The available narratives of the changes were—and still are—filtered, selected, and outlined from those core values.

How Narrative Journalistic Stories Can Communicate the Individual's Challenges of Daily Living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

To complement the clinical and therapeutic knowledge about the symptoms, prognosis, and social implications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), health research and care need to develop methods that capture and communicate the unique individual impact on daily living with the disease. To explore how narrative journalistic stories can communicate experiences of daily living with ALS and compensate the progressive loss of the ability to speak. Twenty-four interviews at home with six people diagnosed with ALS were transformed into narrative journalistic stories. A formal readership was selected by the participant among his or her most significant health professionals. Topics of stories were categorized and selected themes analysed and interpreted. The stories communicated daily living with ALS as a continuous process of creating a new normality of everyday life. The stories also revealed conflicting views between patient and professionals regarding information about disease and prognosis. The approach used provided an understanding of the individual healthcare professionals' engagement with the patient. The narrative journalistic story enhances communication about daily living with ALS by offering a mode of sharing experiences that compensate the progressive loss of communicative abilities. The story sustains meaning for patients living with ALS, and supports them in appreciating a day-to-day life where they are not just waiting for death. Narrative journalistic storytelling may educate health professionals to more effectively comprehend that a medical prognosis should be complemented by understanding the individual's unique experience of vulnerability. In particular, this applies to severe rare diseases where insight is difficult to obtain.

Journalists’ Role Conceptions and Choice of Official News Sources: Beyond Instrumental Rationality

A number of earlier studies have focused on how journalists’ conceptualise news ideas through their heavy reliance on official sources. These sources are judged as ‘rational’ through their location in large institutions – government or corporate. A fundamental logic that informs legitimacy of these sources is an emphasis on working within a routinised set of procedures. Journalists regularly judge sources as inside or outside of the world of ‘reasonable’ knowledge. Habermas in his celebrated work on communicative action outlines three types of reason: instrumental, ethical and aesthetic. These forms of rationality are appreciated in different components of modern life the systems world and lifeworld. For Habermas, these two worlds utilise different types of reasons. Bureaucracies, scientific activities and corporations are part of the systems world. The lifeworld, in contrast, is informed by social norms and ethical considerations. The new digital milieu has pushed traditional journalism to an area where news operations are much more responsive to their empowered and engaged audiences. This paper contends that in this new digital environment the officially sanctioned instrumental reason takes a backseat. This influences how stories and the stakes are constructed. This paper looks at the role of the lifeworld through online contacts to reveal the central values and epistemologies that inform journalistic choices and stories. This paper uses the theoretical paradigm of systems world and lifeworld to understand the motivations that drive the input for routinised media products of journalists. An online survey of 216 journalists, those with both print and electronic, based in the Indian cities of Delhi, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata, maps the usage of online resources and its influence on role perceptions and choice of sources. This paper hypothesises that the perception of journalists in a ‘disseminator’, ‘interpretative’ or ‘adversarial’ role impacts their choice of instrumental rationality or otherwise.

Portraits of People Who Are Homeless in the Canadian Media: Investigating the Journalists behind the Stories

Homelessness is a complex social issue facing many communities in Canada, but most people, including policy makers have not talked or associated with someone who is homeless. Their experience is most often acquired through the skillfully framed stories of media journalists and reporters. How do journalists acquire their knowledge and frame the story in ways that impact and influence the public or policy makers in forming their perceptions? Why have they taken the position they have with the story? These and other questions about the journalists themselves, are rarely pursued, but are of value in revealing the motivation, objectivity and subjective biases in their story-telling. With social issues such as homelessness, this is of relevance as perspectives and decisions can be influenced which could have positive or negative consequences. Based on this premise, a mixed methods case study involving journalists’ motivation for writing about homelessness and how they framed their stories was pursued. Our results reveal that journalists feel that social issues, such as homelessness, are more challenging to report about as they are personally affected with what they see and hear. Their personal experiences, as well as what they want others to feel, influence what and how they frame their reporting on this situation. They do want to impact the public and policy makers – increasing their awareness and advocating for changes. Their preferences for story topics, framing considerations and impact goals reveal who they are as the people behind the media stories.

La censura indemostrable. El debate sobre <i>Presunto culpable </i> como un problema de definición del género audiovisual

A partir de un análisis crítico de la cobertura informativa y de un estudio de la retórica audiovisual, este ensayo señala que el largometraje <em>Presunto culpable</em> no tiene la forma de un documental. Su intención comunicativa no fue la socialización periodística de datos sobre una problemática social, sino que se trató de propaganda cívica a favor de una propuesta de reforma legal. El equívoco en la definición del género audiovisual causó que el debate público sobre su condición jurídica se concentrará en la tesis indemostrable de una censura a pesar de que los productores del filme incurrieron en faltas éticas en el tratamiento visual e informativo del tema.

Sobre o caráter histórico dos efeitos de realidade no Jornalismo // ON HISTORICAL STATUS OF REALITY EFFECTS IN JOURNALISM

Since journalistic report is subject to certain pre-coded forms of narration, so that the recognized journalistic discourse is subject to a specific and standardized way of narrating the events, in this article, we will discuss the historical status of reality effects engendered narratively by news stories. Over time, although the use of reality effects is constant in news, the narrative techniques that harbor these effects have changed. In different historical periods, different narration codes had assumed the role of making the journalistic stories more credible. As material of analysis, we will show certain narrative techniques linked to reality effects used by magazines such as Revista da Semana (1900-1958), O Cruzeiro (1928-1975) and Manchete (1952-2000). Each one of these used certain storytelling techniques that have been abandoned in subsequent periods and that show the historical status of reality effects linguistically constructed in journalism.

On the (dis)continuity of the cases in the newspapers: the coverage of domestic violence against children and adolescents

This paper discusses the presences and absences that journalistic stories put into play to address violence against children and adolescents committed by people with whom they have ties of kinship or trust and coexistence. The analysis focuses on texts (letters from readers, articles, editorials, news and reports) published in 2008 and 2009, in three daily newspapers in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais: Estado de Minas, O Tempo and Super Notícia. Based on Content Analysis, we have systematized reports, pointing out the types of violence that appear more frequently as well as the locations in which these events unfold and the actors identified as responsible for the violent gesture. We also discuss how the analyzed newspapers confirm the existence of "preferential victims" and how certain events receive more attention than others.

SUBJECTIVITY AND STORY-TELLING IN JOURNALISM

This paper studies the role of subjectivity in the language of award-winning journalism. The paper draws on a content analysis of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in a range of news categories between 1995 and 2011. The analysis indicates that despite the continued prominence of the ideal of objectivity in scholarly and journalistic debates, award-winning journalistic stories are in fact pervaded by subjective language in the form of what linguists refer to as “appraisals,” as well as the narrative construction of emotive appeals. The subjective language use of award-winning stories, however, does not straightforwardly or consistently undermine claims to objectivity. On that basis, the paper concludes that any binary oppositions between objectivity and subjectivity and, relatedly, emotionality and rationality, may be overly simplistic and obscure the complexities of journalistic story-telling.

The Effects of News Stories on the Stigma of Mental Illness

The media are often identified as partially responsible for increasing the stigma of mental illness through their negatively focused representations. For many years, training programs have educated journalists on how to report on mental illness to reduce stigma. This purpose of this study was to evaluate the benefits of reading a positive, neutral or a negative journalism article that discusses mental illness. Consenting adult participants were randomly assigned to read one of three published articles about recovery from mental illness, a dysfunctional public mental health system, or dental hygiene. The participants completed measures immediately before and after the intervention; the measures administered evaluated stigmatizing and affirming attitudes toward people with mental illness. Public stigma was assessed using the nine-item Attribution Questionnaire and the Stigma Through Knowledge Test (STKT). The STKT is a measure of mental illness stigma less susceptible to the impact of social desirability. Affirming attitudes represent public perceptions about recovery, empowerment, and self-determination, indicated as important to accepting and including people with psychiatric disabilities into society. Significant differences were observed between the articles on recovery and dysfunctional public mental health system, as well as the control condition, on the measures of stigma and affirming attitudes. The recovery article reduced stigma and increased affirming attitudes, whereas the dysfunctional public mental health system article increased stigma and decreased affirming attitudes. Not all journalistic stories have positive effects on attitudes about mental illness.

Locative journalism: Designing a location-dependent news medium for smartphones

This article provides an account of the tensions between locative context-awareness and the act of writing journalistic copy for a mobile application. Based on the field trials of the interdisciplinary LocaNews project, the article discusses locative media’s potential for spatially sensitive news journalism. In 2009 researchers in Norway made a medium design called LocaNews, and tested it out with pre-planned procedures for the two fundamental activities: production and reception. Of those who participated, 12 people worked as journalists, editors, technicians, and they generated 93 journalistic stories that were read and watched by 32 test-users who were interviewed. The present article deals with findings regarding the production of news content, and presents the strategies used to reinterpret the traditional news criteria of journalism to be fit for a GPS-equipped smartphone. First, the article discusses the connection between journalism and cartography, and then introduces the experimental method used for this research. The bulk of the article consists of an evaluation of the experimental attempt at practising location-dependent journalism. It deals with four issues: putting stories on the map, the characteristics of ‘zoom in stories’, the construction of an implied position for the readers, and finally the formulation of news criteria that focus on spatial proximity instead of temporal actuality.

Literature Review: Journalism and Disability from a Canadian Perspective

Using a dual lens of disability theory and journalism, this literature review compacts a wide range of sources to investigate the reasons for the nature of journalistic representations of disability in Canadian media, and the subsequent interpretations of these by disability scholars and advocates. Through five key themes – attitudes, representation, language, framing, and a broader category of gate-keeping, agenda setting and editorial controls -- this review recognizes longstanding and persisting gaps between journalists’ understanding of disability and disability advocates’ understanding of journalism, as well as a jarring lack of Canadian research to these ends. Encouraging a shift from dialogue about disability and journalism to a dialogue between players in both fields, this paper calls for further Canadian-based research at a time when journalistic stories are shaped by more than journalists’ attitudes towards disability, and disability representation exists stereotypically or out of synch with journalistic principles of fairness and accuracy.

Searching for Truth: Arnon Grunberg’s Literary Journalism

Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg compares himself to a dog: always attracted to sniffing in bins. What kind of journalistic stories does he delve up? And should his nonfiction be characterized as literature or as journalism?

Searching for Truth: Arnon Grunberg’s Literary Journalism

Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg compares himself to a dog: always attracted to sniffing in bins. What kind of journalistic stories does he delve up? And should his nonfiction be characterized as literature or as journalism?

Living and ageing with spinal muscular atrophy type 2: Observations among an unexplored patient population

Objective: To study conditions of living, participation and diagnostic perceptions in a national population of adult persons with spinal muscular atrophy type 2 (SMA 2).Methods: A mixed method design combining cross-sectional survey data with personal narratives was chosen. Twenty-nine of 37 patients with SMA 2 aged ≥18 years participated in a semi-structured questionnaire survey and three were selected for in-depth journalistic interviews. Socioeconomic data, activities and personal significance of problems were calculated. Journalistic stories were analysed for constructs of personal diagnostic qualities.Results: Everyone was actively directing their life despite being heavily dependent. Deterioration of physical abilities was a major concern for women. Seventy-six per cent were single, but stated their quality of life as fine. Narratives of living with SMA 2 were associated with positive characteristics, as opposed to the medical diagnostic wording.Conclusion: Female coping needs more research. Narrative method complements medical knowledge.ResumenObjetivo: Estudiar las condiciones de vida, la participación y las percepciones diagnósticas en una población nacional de personas adultas con atrofia muscular espinal de tipo 2 (SMA 2).Métodos: Se eligió un diseño de método mixto que combina los datos de una encuesta transversal con las narrativas personales. 29 de los 37 pacientes con SMA 2 con 18 años de edad participaron en una encuesta con un cuestionario semi-estructurado, seleccionándose a 3 pacientes para que se les realizaran entrevistas periodísticas a profundidad. Se calcularon los datos socioeconómicos, las actividades, y el significado personal de los problemas. Las historias periodísticas fueron analizadas con el propósito de elaborar las construcciones de las cualidades de diagnóstico personales.Resultados: Todos dirigían activamente sus vidas a pesar de ser dependientes de manera importante. Una de las mayores preocupaciones para las mujeres era el deterioro de las capacidades físicas. 76% eran solteros, pero declararon tener una buena calidad de vida. Las narrativas de vida con SMA 2 se asociaron a tener características positivas, en contraposición a lo redactado en el diagnóstico médico.Conclusión: La capacidad de las mujeres para enfrentar los problemas requiere de mayores investigaciones. El método de la narrativa complementa a los conocimientos médicos.

Science journalism in Latin America: how the scientific information from a scientific source is accommodated when it is transformed into a journalistic story

Scientific information ­ from the moment it is produced by the scientific community until it reaches the non- expert audience through the newspapers ­ is submitted to a complex process of adaptation. In this paper, we investigate the process of accommodating the scientific information provided by a primary scientific source (a peer-review journal) into journalistic discourse (a newspaper). As case studies we analyzed four scientific papers published by the peer-reviewed scientific journals Nature and Science, which were simultaneously used as primary scientific sources by Latin American newspapers. We observed that the process of accommodation into a new space, journalistic space, represents a significant shift in the content of the texts, including information that appears, disappears and is transformed in the process; transformations in the lexica, the style and the argumentation; a change in the hierarchy of the information; a shift in the information emphasized and in the social impact it might have.

Journalism and Institutional Review Boards

The author opposes any Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) overseeing the work of journalism professors and journalism students in any academic institution. He argues that the tendency for IRBs to require anonymity for persons interviewed immediately reduces the credibility of any journalistic story. The composition of an IRB is questioned on grounds that its faculty and public members may be uncomfortable with the thrust of a journalistic inquiry and, in reaction, thwart the intention of a journalist by refusing approval. The medical human subject IRB model of oversight is supported, but the author is perplexed how this medical model has awkwardly extended into such areas a social science. The journalist's first obligation is to the public's right to know under the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution and IRB oversight unconstitutionally interferes with that obligation. Moreover, IRB oversight amounts to “prior restraint,” a practice the U. S. Supreme Court ruled is unconstitutional in the “Pentagon Papers” case.

Cónclave y “apagón” informativo: Información y especulación en la elección de Benedicto XVI

The journalistic story of Pope’s election is complex task for journalists because of information’s control. This article analyzes the publication of candidacies and its evolution in the days before the conclave that chose Benedict XVI, april 2005, when there was no access to the information.

“How we Performed”: Embedded Journalists' Attitudes and Perceptions Towards Covering the Iraq War

A survey of embedded journalists suggests an overall positive perception of embedded reporting. While most embeds agreed their reports provided a narrow slice of the conflict, they still had a positive view of their work. Respondents also noted their stories differed from the stories of non-embedded journalists and perceived both types of reporting as invaluable. Further, embeds' attitudes towards the war, age, professional experience, and online reporting were correlated with perceived performance.

Combating Stigma in the Printed News: Contributions of Direct Quotations and Journalistic Story Type to Reader Perceptions of a Controversial Gay Man

This study investigates how presenting the same factual content with varying narrators, as required by harder-versus softer-news formats, influences the way readers perceive the gay male subject of an actual news story. Because previous social-psychological findings have suggested that people typically respond to others first as members of distinct groups and then later as individuals if and only if they have sufficient motivation for doing so, the expectation was that presenting the same factual content with varying narrators—effected through the quantity of direct quotations included from the news subject—would provide such motivation. The findings of this study support this contention.