Essay Question: Evaluate the importance of story-telling in journalism and the techniques used to create supposed truths in the news process. Does the public play a role in this process?

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‘Story-telling’ is of paramount importance to the news process. With increased demand and greater centrality of media ownership, ‘story-telling’ has fostered an environment of ritual communication which sees the journalist as responsible to “make meaning” (Schudson 2003: 177) of an apparently chaotic modern existence. Truth in this system becomes a subjective commodity which is sensationalised, manipulated, sacrificed and fabricated to meet the needs of media owners. As will be displayed however, supposed truths are presented as fact to a public domain which inevitably becomes defined by this process of ‘story-telling’ in news production. Throughout the 20th century demand for news increased exponentially due largely to the progress of technology. The effect this had on the news process was to change the face of journalism permanently. The journalist became the ‘sense-maker’ of modernity (Hartley 1996: 33) in response to the public’s constant demands to be updated on the happenings of day-to-day life. If there was no news to the naked eye, it needed to be produced! (Boorstin 1992: 8) This point is extremely important, as the successful journalist became the individual who could locate a tale of intrigue even if there was no major disaster. To create a story around a topic which is “interesting” (Schudson 1995:13) became everything. The reality of the current environment is that news is “not information but drama.” (Carey 1989: 21) News which does not contain a dramatic element is unlikely to reach the general public. To clarify this statement further the techniques of the pseudo event, the use of objective fact and the use of ‘weasel words’ will be analysed as examples of tools used in the process of story telling. Pseudo events confirm the statement of Bird and Dardenne that news whilst not being fictional “is a story about reality, not reality itself.”

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