JOUR1111 Lecture 9: Monetary Value

Apologies for the title of this instalment. It sucks, I know, but I'm not feeling terribly creative at the moment. Ah well. Forward, unto relevent things!

Today, I'm actually blogging about a lecture the day it happened!

This rambling rundown touches on the concept of 'News Values'. As Bruce mentioned, news values are determined by how prominent a media outlet makes a particular story, and how much attention the story receives from the public. Through this, we can determine what people want to hear, read and watch.

It should be readily apparent that every media outlet has a different set of values they apply to news, as do different cultures and nations. Fox News can hardly be compared to Al Jazeera, which in turn is completely different to our own ABC News. But how do these different bodies shape their separate values?

As was shwon in the lecture, there is an incredible amount of concepts drawn together to make up differnet ideas of news values. These include negativity, uniqueness, simplicity, exclusivity, significance, human interest and conflict, just to name a few! The lists are endless.

Unfortunately, the ideals of news worthiness are being corrupted by an array of factors, such as the incluence of PR on journalism, the horror that is the tabloids, hyper-commercialisation, and just plain lazy journalism.

The tabloids do know how to grab your attention, I'll admit.

  News values today are further being corrupted by the nature of media in itself. Mergers of various corporations and bodies create massive media cartels, which stagnate the diversity of perspectives presented by the news, as these cartels are often driving at their own values and agendas. Unfortunatley, this can prevent the real stories from getting out.

But never mind all that. It's time to look to the future! What are the news values of tomorrow? What decisions will be made in the coming years to decide what is newsworthy? To me, it's a pretty easy question to answer. We are the journalists of tomorrow. The news values of tomorrow are OUR values.

Power to the youth!

JOUR1111 Lecture 8: Naughty and Nice

Ethics. Political correctness. Good practice. We've all heard at least one of these terms before. They provide a moral ground of sorts, which we can use to work out what is acceptable and what is not. To me, ethics is one of the most important aspects of journalism, given how necessary it can be in 'mainstream' society to conform to commonly accepted values of right and wrong.

But what is unethical, and what is not? What is politically incorrect, and what is correct?

Seems legit.

Thankfully, guest lecturer Dr John Harrison was there to set us on the right path! With a series of photos and videos, we were shown a sample of questionable ads.

My mainstream journalist job prospects have shrunk rapidly, because I found a fair few of those images and videos to be absolutely hilarious!

I can't help it. Being politically incorrect goes hand in hand with my sarcasm, moderate cynicism and irreverence. I also read Cracked every day. Yes, you may judge me.

Anyway. I was very interested to discover that ethics isn't just based on public perception of right and wrong. While the theory of Consequentialism revolves around majority rule and 'the end justifies the means', the theories of Deontology and Virtue are vastly different.

Deontology (if I remember correctly) actually lists the rules and requirements of being ethical. However, the problem with this system is that the list of rules might not be your own personal values. What you consider to be wrong, the writers might think right, and vice-versa.

Virtue ethics seem to be the most 'realistic' set, as they are based around universal good habits or dispositions of character. These dispositions include courage, justice, temperance, prudence, and other nice-sounding words.

To me, it seems that consequentialism is the least effective set of ethics, as it is based on the opinions and values of the majority of people, rather than an established, unchangable system. In other words, something that really isn't ethical might be considered normal. You know, like this:

Put your back into it!

Food for thought, boys and girls!



 

JOUR1111: Factual Storytelling Exercise

What would you do if you were told you had just two years to live? This is the question facing my dad, Brenton, who was recently hit with the news that his life expectancy had suddenly been cut to 2-4 years.

Brenton was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004 at the age of 45. Prostate cancer is usually an ‘older man’s’ disease, with an average age of 70 years at diagnosis. Since then he has undergone surgery, biopsies, radiotherapy and been prescribed multiple drugs in a bid to keep the disease at bay. Whilst some of this treatment initially proved promising, the disease has now spread to his bones and become metastatic. Brenton is now entering the palliative phase of his treatment.

Palliative treatment is a term despised by sufferers of any disease. It means that doctors have given up on an actual cure, and are now focussed on buying time, making the patient as comfortable as possible and treating symptoms, rather than treating the disease. This is the point a patient is normally given their ‘life sentence’.

Since Brenton was ‘sentenced’, he has found it difficult to control his thoughts, which he has placed in three basic categories: the logistics of dying; past memories; and what he is going to miss.

The logistics should be the easiest of the three; it’s a cold and emotionless thing to start investigating how to change all bank accounts into his wife’s’ name, but that list is never ending. It includes the house, insurance, mobile phones, internet accounts, water, electricity, car leasing and so on. He needs to dig out his superannuation and life insurance details and make a few calls. This should be easy, but he hasn’t started. When he begins thinking about it, his mind wanders to where he would like his ashes spread.

 Brenton is finding it difficult to direct his thoughts away from his memories and what he believes he will miss out on. He believes his life had been divided into two distinct periods. Not ‘pre-cancer’ and ‘post-cancer’ as might be assumed, but the period prior to meeting Allison, his wife-to-be, and the period since then. Whilst pre-Allison memories sometimes bubble to the top, it is the memories since meeting her which dominate his mind.

The greatest day of his life was not his wedding day, or the birth of his children, but of his first date with Allison. Despite a poor choice of movie, it ended with their first kiss, and he clearly recalls whooping and hollering the whole way home.

The most defining moment of his life was their second date. It didn’t start well, with the relationship one doorbell ring away from ending before it began. Fortunately Brenton managed to drag himself and his hangover out of bed to answer the door. What followed was his total honesty about everything – something never before shared with anyone.  He realised right then that Allison was ‘the one’.

Pouring over old photo albums has become a favourite past-time. Holiday photos, wedding photos, honey-moon snaps and photos of his two sons from birth until the present are now firmly etched in his brain, but he knows he will drag them out again and again over the next few years.

The thought of dying is not what scares Brenton the most. While it is often a dark cloud hanging over his mind, he is more terrified of the months immediately leading up to his death, and the years that will follow.

Brenton will likely be quite incapacitated in the months preceding his death. He will find moving about very difficult and painful, and may be confined to a wheelchair. He’ll likely be nauseous from chemotherapy and other treatments. He’ll probably become incontinent and lose full control of his bowels. He knows this, not just from the words of medical professionals, but from firsthand experience. Brenton witnessed the very same things in the last months of his own father’s life, as he too endured the final stages of prostate cancer.

This experience had a profound effect on Brenton, and he believes he has never really got over the guilt of wishing his own father would die – to put both of them out of their pain and misery. It was years before those painful last memories of his father could be replaced by the thousands of fond memories of him from happier times. Despite this, significant guilt remains. He is terrified of putting his family through the same thing.

Like many people undergoing a similar experience, Brenton has an unwritten bucket list. However, his doesn’t include tandem parachute jumps, bungy-jumping, swimming with sharks or visiting exotic locations throughout the world. Brenton’s bucket list revolves around some of the things he might live to see, but many that will be beyond him. Most of all, it is exclusively family related.

He’d like to see his youngest son graduate from high school, and discover what career pathway he decides to pursue. He’d like to see me graduate from University and get my first full-time job. He wants to see more of his sons’ friends. He wants to see milestone birthdays. He knows it is highly unlikely that he’ll see his sons get married, but he’d like to be around when we have our first ‘serious’ girlfriends, just so he can see what we look for in potential partners. He’d like bury his mother; only so she doesn’t have to go through the pain of burying a son. Most of all, he’d dearly love the opportunity to grow old and cantankerous with Allison at his side.

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Sadly, it’s not something I can give.

JOUR1111 Lecture 7: Public Decency

This week's lecture was a belated follow up to the previous, with the minor interruption of mid-semester break in the middle. As such, I had completely forgotten what the last lecture was about, and had to do some quick note flipping to jog my memory.

Last time, we discussed commercial media. This week its counterpart, public media, stepped up to be judged. And boy did we JUDGE it. A summarised analysis is judgement, right?

I like public media. It just seems to have so much more to it than commercial media. As mentioned last week, commercial media is dependent on the whims of advertisers, and other such evil beings. Public media relies on the whims of the public. And that's how it should be. "Public media should have 'public value'."

Furthermore, ABC and SBS, the two major public media TV stations, seem to have a much higher quality of content than their commercial counterparts. I will take  Summer Heights High, Psychoville and anything by the The Chaser over The Voice, MasterChef and The Bold and the Beautiful any day of the week! 

A major problem I have with commercial media (that I don't think I mentioned in the relevant blog post, whoops) is the junk that commercial programs and newspapers etc consider to be 'news'. Take today's Courier Mail, for example. It started promisingly, with a portion of the front page dedicated to a story about a 'suburban arms race'. Yay! But then they ruined it, by slapping an enormous picture of one of the dudes from One Direction holding a koala. Cutting edge stuff!

Public media news just has that serious quality to it, as Bruce mentioned. I don't know about anyone else, but heavy-hitting stories keep me interested longer than tripe about boy-bands and marsupials. Unless One Direction kidnapped a koala. Or the koala attacked them. That would be funny! 

All this aside, my favourite part of public media is Triple J. Why? Because they actually play (good)music; they don't talk your ear off for hours on end. Shocking! Not really, because that's what I, and many others, actually want to hear. Not only that, but the various hosts actually use listener feedback when selecting the next song. Unlike 97.3FM. Dear lord, I HATE 97.3FM and their 'Greatest Hits of the 80's, 90's and Now'. I'm going to blog about my dislike for it one day. Until then, hearing Kelly Clarkson's 'Mister Know-it-all' three times a day over the radio at work will fuel my hatred. I'm coming for you, Robin, Terry and Bob in the mornings!

Anyway, back to the lecture. Public media is also the last real bastion of proper investigative journalism. Not the chasing people down the streets rubbish on A Current Affair. More like the Fitzgerald Enquiry, is what I'm getting at. It's not often enough that we hear, see or read that kind of reporting anymore. But as Bruce said, "The ABC and SBS are not 'owned' by the government. They are held in 'common' by the people." We have a say (of sorts) in what goes on public media. Maybe, instead of joining the sheeple watching Australian Idol and The Biggest Loser, we should flick to the ABC or SBS more often. More interest, more money from the government. More money, more of what WE want to see. Good idea? I think so!

JOUR1111 Lecture 6: "And now a message from our sponsors!"

Ahh, Commercial Media. The sometimes bane of my television-watching existence. We've all experienced that moment where we're watching our favourite tv show and something major occurs. We're on the edge of our seats, waiting for the dilemma to be resolved, when instead the picture changes, and we're informed that Super Cheap Auto is having a massive sale! "Oh, thank heavens," we exclaim. "Of all the things that could have interrupted my tv program, I'm glad it was Super Cheap. I'll be down there to buy new seat covers and some fluffy dice for my rear view mirror right away!" If you don't actually do this, don't worry. No one does.

But you still remember about Super Cheap Auto and their massive sale. Maybe next time you go past a Super Cheap Auto, you will go inside and have a look. And therein lies the value of commercial media.

As Bruce said during the lecture, commercial media exists to provide 'eyeballs and ears' for advertisers. They aren't particularly concerned with the programs being aired. They just want people watching their advertisements and buying their products.

Seeing as commercial media depends on business success to survive (no government funding for the media moguls, it seems!), it isn't surprising that the main focus is advertisements. Without ads, the advertisers can't show off their products, so they can't sell them. If they can't sell their wares, they can't make money. If the advertisers don't make money, there's no one to fund commercial media. No commercial media, no ads. It's a vicious cycle.

When Bruce started listing off all the various commercial media groups and what they run, I tried to write them all down, but gave up fairly quickly. The list was staggering. A fair portion of everything we read, hear and watch is commercially funded.

The point and purpose of commercial media in a democratic society (apart from making money) is to provide a truthful and intelligent account of important, interesting and relevant information/news to the masses, as well as provide a forum for comment and criticism about anything and everything, including those we elect to govern us. However, you can often see when The Man has started to apply pressure to get his way, particularly with the often ridiculous smear-campaign ads that are aired every election time. I guess the government pays as well as anyone else.

I also don't always agree with the 'truthful and intelligent' accounts being presented. Commercial media has a reputation for bending the truth in order to make a story seem more exciting. For example, in my last tutorial we discussed a story about a man and a young girl from a remote indigenous community getting lost in the desert, with the girl tragically dying of malnutrition a few days later. Once commercial news got their hands on the story, they broke or bent half the rules in the book, reporting conjecture or outright falsehood as fact. In the end, many reported versions of the story revolved around 'paedophilia' and 'abduction'. Classy.

To round off the lecture, it was mentioned that advertising revenue for commercial media is down, meaning reduced quality and more 'bought-in' content. Yay, repeats! However, I think that fixing this situation would require an increase in quality, in order to keep people watching. Showing endless repeats of 'Two-and-a-Half Men' and 'The Big Bang Theory' or whatever it is they repeat is not going to attract new audiences, or bring the old ones back. Take a gamble and go for some variety!  

 

JOUR1111 Lecture 5: LOUD NOISES

I will confess to being very lazy since I handed in a brutal round of assignments last week and the week before. Due to this laziness, I have only just gotten round to listening to Week 5's sound lecture. To be honest, it didn't exactly stimulate my higher brain functions. Which is to say that I found it really, REALLY boring.

Now don't get me wrong, I looooove radio. I did work experience at ABC Radio during the Queensland Floods at the start of last year and had an amazing time. Also, as anyone who's had a look at my Media Use and Production Diary would know, I listen to a lot of radio throughout the week. Nevertheless, I just had an excruciatingly dull half an hour listening to this lecture. It's a good thing I took notes, because I barely remember a thing that was said. I don't even remember what the names of the interviewer and guests were. Sadly, I was that bored. It could just be early Alzheimer's settling in, I suppose. Which is worse?

For the purpose of distinguishing who was who, I'm going to give the three speakers slightly exciting-sounding monikers. The female host shall henceforth be known as 'Threshold'. The first guest will be 'Gunslinger'. Last but not least, the second guest will be 'American'. Incidentally, these code names have been taken straight from the titles of various books littered about my room. A mystery prize shall be awarded if you feel like guessing which ones (and get them right)!

Anyway. I felt Gunslinger made a lie of his words while talking about sustaining radio stories and keeping conversations open. To me, it seemed like his own story was not being sustained very well, as he was like to wander off on random tangents about his life and various experiences he'd had. While this is all well and good, it didn't exactly help me process and understand the tenants of radio journalism. Come to think of it, I don't think these were covered at all, really. Furthermore, Threshold seemed content to let him waffle, even though she mentioned that this was being heard by University students who were 'just starting out'. I'm perplexed as to why she didn't make many attempts to steer the conversation towards more helpful insights, as opposed to the quick comments at the end of the interview.

The only interesting thing that I picked up while doing my best to listen was the comment made about radio being a 'voice inside your head', and how this helped to keep the audience engaged and listening. An interesting concept, to be sure, and definitely food for thought. It's almost as if radio is a kind of extra conscience that echoes things that you either believe or don't believe, depending on what you listen to.

American was slightly better than Gunslinger in that he stayed on more on topic, but fell down majorly in the vocal department. I felt he could have made use of a lot more inflection and emphasis on his words; it was a bit monotone to listen to, and had a nullifying effect on what he had to say. Nevertheless, American did have a few very good pointers. The ones I found most useful were to ask blunt, simple questions in order to get listeners to phone in with feedback or opinions, and to watch/listen to the mannerisms of guests in order to gauge which way an interview is heading.

Once again though, I thought Threshold could have done a better job directing the interview; she let American plot his own path, much like she did for Gunslinger.

But hey, these are just the grievances of a first-year University student, and really, what do I know? I'm sure others really enjoyed this lecture, but it wasn't my bag, baby. As they say, you can't please everyone!