Straight News Research Articles

Blogswarms and Press Norms: News Coverage of the Downing Street Memo Controversy

Among well-documented factors that shape political news coverage are reliance on official sources, indexing of coverage to the range of opinion among officials, and privileging of “episodes” over “themes.” The Downing Street Memo controversy of 2005 embodies a clash among those media agenda-setting factors and the intense desire of Internet activists to bring coverage to an issue that most political and media elites initially ignored. This case study analyzes the brief burst of mainstream coverage of the controversy. While straight news and television coverage was pegged mostly to official words and action, activists apparently had an easier time penetrating the op-ed pages of major newspapers.

Business News Web Sites Differ from Newspapers in Business Content

The growth of competition in broadcast television, in weekly magazines and, most recently, on the Internet inevitably has impacted newspaper circulation. Changing lifestyles with greater emphases on recreation and other outdoor activities also apparently have caused the decline of newspaper circulations.1 In addition, the difficult readability of newspapers may be another reason for continuously dropping circulations.Journalism scholars have attempted to analyze the readability of mass media such as newspapers and magazines.2 Fusaro and Conover noted that if the readability levels of a newspaper demand too much of a reader's skills, reader satisfaction will be reduced.3 Burgoon, Burgoon and Wilkinson argued that newspapers should lower their readability levels if they want to appeal to more readers.4 Because longer sentences mean more relationships between words and require the reader to expend more mental energy, they might reduce reader satisfaction.5 If newspapers are difficult to read, readers may turn away from them as a source of information.Visuals are often discounted or ignored in word-oriented journalism. However, several scholars pointed out that photographs are popular with readers and call attention to news stories.6 Hynds, for example, concluded that most newspapers were seeking to make their pages more attractive and understandable through greater use of pictures, drawings, cartoons, and diverse colors.7Even though business news is very critical for industry and general readers, few researchers have examined the content of business news. In 1938, Carswell, a financial writer on the New York World-Telegram, criticized newspapers' over-emphasis on Wall Street and argued that the editorial point-of-view must be reoriented to the average reader, not the investor.8 Barkin examined the changes in the business section of three major dailies from 1931 to 1979 and found newspapers covered the stock market less and international business more.9 Feldman and Aronoff also found newspapers moved away from straight news coverage, such as lengthy earnings reports, to stories oriented toward the implications of domestic and international economic policies and problems.10The Internet is the ideal medium for business news. Because of its real time information and its visuals, more people rely on the Internet to check market fluctuations. The purpose of this study is to examine how the most popular newspapers and Internet Web sites in the U.S. covered business news, especially focusing on readability and content differentiation.MethodsThree newspapers (Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times) were selected based on circulation.11 Three business news Web sites (CNNfn, CNBC, and CBSMarketWatch) were selected based on the number of visits to those sites.12The variables for analysis were average sentence length, Flesch reading ease score, Flesch-Kincaid grade-level readability, the visual type and subject of stories.Average sentence length is the average number of words per sentence. The Flesch reading ease score is calculated using average sentence length and number of syllables per 100 words. The Flesch-Kincaid Index uses the number of syllables per word and words per sentence to calculate a grade level required for reading. Visuals were analyzed based on the type: photos, computer graphics and data format.13 Stories were classified in terms of their specific content area, which in turn belonged to one of nine categories: 1) national economy, 2) international business and trade, 3) legal and regulatory issues, 4) individual firm, 5) industry profiles 6) executive profiles, 7) stock market, 8) consumer guides, 9) others.14The unit of analysis was the article. The front page of The Wall Street Journal and the business section front pages of USA Today and The New York Times were content analyzed. Even though it was difficult to choose the top news stories from a Web site, there were top stories indicated by bold type at the homepages. …

Friendly Persuasion

Friendly Persuasion

Straight news: gays, lesbians, and the news media

Addressing the critical role of the media in creating a public image of gay issues and lives, this is a comprehensive survey of how the news media have covered, or failed to cover, major lesbian and gay issues since the 1940s. A former CNN reporter, the author provides an insider's view of the changing fortunes of lesbians and gays in American print and broadcasting media. The book traces the stories on gay and lesbian issues which have been featured in the American press, and the changing attitudes towards those issues which they represent. Through close examination of the stories to which the media failed to devote attention, such as the Stonewall rebellion of 1969 and the mass murder at New York's Ramrod bar in 1980, the book sheds light on processes by which news items are generated, assigned and edited, and how these processes have more often than not translated into the exclusion of gay and lesbian voices and concerns.

Enemy Images and the Journalistic Process

This article discusses changes in enemy image in the three Norwegian daily newspapers through a comparative analysis of the coverage of four international conflicts: the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, martial law in Poland in 1981 and martial law in Romania in 1989. Content analysis of a sample of 915 articles shows how Norway's traditional `enemy', the Soviet Union, ceases to be an enemy during this ten-year period. The study compares newspaper coverage of the social unrest in Poland, when the threat of Soviet intervention was manifest, with coverage of the rebellion against Ceauşescu in Romania. The author discusses what has happened since the Soviet Union ceased to be the `main threat' to Norwegian security. Has a `new' enemy linked to Islam emerged? This is discussed while comparing news coverage of the Iraqi invasion of Iran with that of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This sample found several articles revealing prejudice against Muslims in general, but enemy images were mainly linked with the Ayatollah Khomeini in the first invasion and with Saddam Hussein in the second. The dominant use of enemy images of these two leaders is in itself an interesting part of the coverage. The author concludes that enemy images are obstacles to analytical journalism, making it more difficult for journalists to see the obvious parallels between the two invasions. Enemy images are projected mainly in editorials and commentary columns and less so in straight news articles. However, the angling of articles through headlines, illustrations and cartoons may reveal the attitudes of news desks as to who the `enemy' is, even when the text itself is written in `neutral' prose.

The Right to Report by Television

The author, an authority on press law, discusses the right of access of the TV cameraman and newsman, and the right to report by television in the areas of straight news, features and entertainment. He also applies the law of privacy to those areas of TV program content, and to advertising.

Cold War Propaganda

Coincident with the outbreak of the “cold war” the Soviet Union began a series of propagandistic attacks on the United States, its leaders and its policies, using every medium of communication for this purpose, but with special emphasis on radio propaganda. For some time the United States Government suffered these attacks to go unanswered, but in February, 1947, the “Voice of America” began to include among its other foreign programs regular broadcasts in Russian to the Soviet Union. At first these programs were confined almost entirely to music and straight news reports, but gradually more and more time was devoted to answering Soviet attacks considered hostile to the United States or harmful to its national interests.In retaliation Moscow, on April 24, 1949, embarked on a vast effort to jam the American programs, and is at present devoting over 1000 broadcasting stations to this single purpose. The American Government protested through diplomatic channels and to the International Telecommunications Union against this jamming campaign. Furthermore, jamming was condemned by the United Nations Sub-Commission on Freedom of Information and of the Press at its Montevideo meeting in May, 1950, as a violation of accepted principles of freedom of information. Also, the Economic and Social Council, at its eleventh session, held in Geneva during the summer of 1950, adopted a resolution recommending to the General Assembly that it call on all Members to refrain from jamming.