Political or economic determinants of news production

FUOYE Journal of Communication, 2020

Ownership has remained a critical factor in understanding content creation in the newspaper. How ownership pressures content in the newspaper has been a key issue in political economy of media. Several studies have confirmed that media ownership pressures content, although its extent has remained contentious. Anchored on Altschull (1984) and Shoemaker and Reese (1991) theory of media ownership, the study adopted qualitative interviews with 20 purposely select newspaper editors and senior journalists in two high circulating mainstream newspapers in Nigeria, Daily Trust and The Punch, to investigate whether ownership factor plays a role in news slanting, the pattern of influence and its implications. The findings showed that ownership influence on news content did exist in the two newspapers; that ownership influence exists not only in government-owned but also in privately-owned newspapers. It was found that forms of ownership influence include direct intervention and self-censorship by journalists and editors while owners’ interest, regional or religious, also influence news content. It concluded that where news was found to be pressured by the newspaper owners’ profit motive or ideological goals, objective journalism would suffer and that the socio-political and economic configuration in Nigeria also hinders professionalism among journalists. It therefore, recommended that for newspapers to be able to play their effective role in nation building, newspaper owners need to subordinate their interests to that of objective journalism.

Brazilian Journalism Research

2009

Histories of the printed press and occupational myths tend to emphasise that journalists in most European countries have long been concerned about interferences from political authorities in the editorial sphere. But over time, other sources of potential influence, including advertising, commercial pressures, competition and other economic pressures became matters of concern. As news evolved to become a big business, news desks have had to cope with different forms of political and economic influences, ranging from soft pressures to strict censorship. On the whole, journalistic practices have been strongly marked by national historical situations and values linked to the particular context in which media were built and to the balance of power with political authorities. European democracies and Eastern regimes produced many national journalistic traditions and models, reflecting differing forms and degrees of media independence and editorial freedom.

This essay explores how the advent of new media, such as the Internet, has posed a challenge to conventional media, focusing on newspapers and its evolution as a mass communication medium.

International Journal of Communication, 2017

Content analyses of large and internationally influential American newspapers show that today only 35% of the front-page articles are traditional, event-centered news articles, down from 69% 25 years ago. Of the event-centered news, only 47% mentioned the main development in the first paragraph. This study argues that newspapers have transformed in functions and style such that they no longer deliver first-instance news reporting, but serve as an analytical and/or in-depth complement to the more immediate, instantaneous online news outlets. Broader implications of the findings including theoretical connections to comparative media systems, medium theory, and professional role conceptions of journalists are discussed.

Communication Theory, 1995

This article proposes the first model to show bow markets-not just for consumers, but also for advertisers, investors and sources-shape commercial news production. B y applying to news what we know of bow markets work with other commodities, the model clarifies the logic of news selection in an era of increasing economic rationalism in print and broadcast journalism. Most importantly, the article also explores how news fails to meet the minimum conditions economists have established as necessary for markets to benefit society.

Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 2019

Purpose of the study: This paper reviews recent literature on issues and challenges of the future newspaper. It traces issues and challenges that generally impacting the journalism industry worldwide and may be applied for future studies that shall further examine this matter empirically. Methodology: This is a discussion paper that does not apply any research method. The discussion is done based on recent reviews related to the issue of the future of the newspaper and its trend. Main Findings: Based on the review, there are five major issues and challenges identified which are the decline in newspaper circulations around the world, and the shrinking size of the industry. Following Wahl-Jorgensen et al. (2016), risks and threats, opportunities and digital journalism are fundamental questions that constitute a discussion of the future of the newspaper. Among the clear risks and threats is the issue of circulation, the emergence of the digital industry and its business model, social m...

Chapter 2 of The Rise of Mass Advertising: Law, Enchantment, and the Cultural Boundaries of British Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2022, open access 2023)

Chapter 2 examines the dilemma of differentiating adverts from news. It begins in 1848 with the successful campaign to free the press from the so-called taxes on knowledge, one of which was the advertisement duty. The campaign relied on a theory of advertising as essential information, which undergirded a liberal-individualist account of the market. However, newspapers owners, who became free to print adverts without tax inhibitions, discovered that advertisers threatened their control of the medium. It was not clear how adverts differed from news when both were described as information, and both were produced in a commercialized environment. Newspapers therefore engaged in boundary work through trade-wide legal practices that included recommended policies, articulations of the roles of journalists, editors and departments, flaggings of violations, and examinations and channelling of everyday contracts. While these treated advertising as an informational category, they also developed theories that conceptualized it as inherently biased and therefore inferior to news. The persistent informational focus thus celebrated news as the main public service of the press and elevated it over advertising, which appeared compromised. However, the same focus legitimized advertising within the terms of a disenchanted modernity. Legitimation and degradation were both necessary for newspapers to operate on a commercial model based on advertising revenues. The informational hierarchy had little to hang on in theory and in practice, yet gradually assumed the status of common sense. Meanwhile, it marginalized the possibility that information was simply an incomplete framework for assessing advertising. Enchantment, irreducible to biased information, was absent from the discussion.

This chapter provides an overview of the entire American media landscape, with an emphasis on the various degradations caused by commercial imperatives. As media outlets desperately chase increasingly elusive revenues, they further debase journalism. Problems that emerge from journalism’s decline range from the turn to invasive and deceptive forms of advertising to a growing precarity in news labor. The chapter systematically goes through potential alternatives to the advertising revenue model and concludes that a public option is the best model going forward.

Newspapers’ online experiments have not reversed their falling fortunes. Despite the decreases in print circulation suffered by newspapers in developed countries, and two decades of investment in digital distribution, many newspapers still have a larger number of readers for their print products than for their online editions via PCs (see, e.g., NRS, 2017a). The effects of these undersized online audiences are exacerbated by the fact that readers of digital editions are an order of magnitude or two less attentive than their print counterparts (Thurman, 2017). The result is that newspapers receive by far the greater part of their audience attention from their print channels (ibid.). This distribution of attention is an explanation for why print continues to deliver high proportions of newspaper revenue (Pew Research Center, 2016: 14). This chapter examines some of the symptoms and causes of the crisis facing newspapers via analyses of their finances and of audience measures. The consequences of the crisis, and whether there are any realistic remedies, are also considered, both in relation to journalism as a product and to the institutions, such as newspapers, that have traditionally produced it. We start with an analysis of the financial performance of multiplatform news publishers in Australia, Europe and the USA, which leads us to conclude that digital distribution is not reversing newspapers’ decline, and raises questions about the support for journalism in the long term. Next, some of the consequences of the declines that have already taken place are discussed. Moving from consequences to possible remedies, the chapter focuses on two areas. Firstly, media policy, and secondly, journalism as a product: what news should be produced and how it should be delivered. Another strand of the chapter concerns audience measures. They are used to help explain newspapers’ continuing dependency on print revenues, and are understood, depending on their constitution and use, as both a party to the crisis and as an able assistant in its alleviation.

New Media, Old News: Journalism & Democracy in the Digital Age, 2010

De Gruyter eBooks, 2013

The advertising industry and the media industry have long been tied together to reach their main objectives. The advertising industry used media as ad vehicles to embed and transport their ad messages and the media needed advertising money to finance and subsidize their activities. Additionally the advertising income of media outlets depends on economic changes-be they cyclical or structural. Journalistic media seem to be more affected by cyclical downturns than other media types, and they seem to be at least as much affected by structural changes than other media. Structural changes in advertising as well as the possibility to combine advertising in new ways, lead to a loss of advertising money for journalistic media. While advertising money is still important in the financing of journalistic media, at the moment the future of this funding source is unclear. Most likely, advertising revenue will not be large enough to finance newsrooms that are designed to make important contributions to democratic societies.

2013

The advertising industry and the media industry have long been tied together to reach their main objectives. The advertising industry used media as ad vehicles to embed and transport their ad messages and the media needed advertising money to finance and subsidize their activities. Additionally the advertising income of media outlets depends on economic changes-be they cyclical or structural. Journalistic media seem to be more affected by cyclical downturns than other media types, and they seem to be at least as much affected by structural changes than other media. Structural changes in advertising as well as the possibility to combine advertising in new ways, lead to a loss of advertising money for journalistic media. While advertising money is still important in the financing of journalistic media, at the moment the future of this funding source is unclear. Most likely, advertising revenue will not be large enough to finance newsrooms that are designed to make important contributions to democratic societies.

Journalistica - Tidsskrift for forskning i journalistik, 2013

The aim of this study is to analyse journalists' view on commercialization over time. Since society as well as the media business have changed dramatically for the last few decades, it is reasonable to believe that opinion among journalists has changed as well. The study is based on three surveys conducted in Sweden between 1989 and 2011. The journalists are rather unanimous in their opinion, but workplaces differ. In general, the journalists feel that journalism is more commercialized today than before, and they find this to be negative.

Mgbakoigba: Journal of African Studies, 2015