making the best of the worst: how terrorism can be an 'explosive' plus from the media's perspective

Now I hate to reference myself but for the sake of keeping somewhat closer to the word limit...

As mentioned in a previous post, as society's "fourth estate", the media has a 'watchdog position' to fulfill. Some news outlets however (yes the decision of the outlet, not the individual journalists), have xa deluded sense of this role and being the commercialised industries that they are, attempt to exploit this position of trust entrusted upon them by the public to increase their profits.

Because advertisers within the online news market pay for increased coverage (and therefore work on a pay-per-view basis), any story that can captivate more interest is of great value to such a news outlet. In addition to this is the reality that the broader a target audience appears to be, the more likely an advertisement will buy the associated space corresponding to that particular article.
What is most interesting about this phenomena is the psychological reasoning amongst which they write the articles; using the [where they make something appear as though it appeals to everyone] principal, allow for the article to be read in a way that is a threat to the reader, regardless of their age, race, gender or creed. These menacing articles make out that “we” are constantly being threatened by things such as Burqas, or even their banning and that such actions are “Un-Australian”, an emotive call for everyone to create a fuss, and blindly oppose what is being discussed. This “us vs them” mentality is known as “scaremongering” and is commonly used by the media to ensure ongoing readership as throughout an ongoing ordeal or saga, or even to satisfy political interests with a particularly positive tainting of a certain politician or party.

The news that generally has the most widespread and universal appeal is that of terrorist attacks or terrorism-related offenses (such as attempting to procure the weapons necessary to achieve terrorist attacks). This is because an illusion is created by the media that the possibility of one of these terrorist attacks occurring is abundantly high at any time and that they could affect dozens of people that you (the reader) know and love. News outlets generally capitalise on these stories by stretching out facts and details over a plethora of ongoing coverage and "exclusive reports"; a recent example of this was the trial of the group of men that were allegedly plotting to attack the Holsworthy Army Base.
This case was dragged over many articles as the details were slowly released to the trial, however almost every article that regarded this case was used as the Cover page article of the Daily Telegraph [demonstrating its ability to generate interest and sell.

Conversely, such scaremongering by the media can aid political movements; one such instance was that of the "children overboard" scandal which occurred in the lead up to the 2001 Australian federal election, and is thought to have played a large part in having the conservative party re-elected./main/images/articles/aus8_manning-phiddian_2.jpg">

has the media manipulated their ultimate (and seemingly impartial) goal as the fourth estate?

Certain news outlets express certain ideas and inclinations in the tone in which their works are produced, (such as the News Ltd./Murdoch media corporations demonstrating an overbearing conservative frame of mind amongst all of their publications online and in newspapers) occasionally to the extent that they may appear to have a vendetta against a certain faction in the government or ideology of a party.

This deviation from strictly following reportings of the government or even the monarch derives from the prescribed role of the media as the "fourth estate". This idea was formed in the Victorian Era when a politician of the time, Edmund Burke, stated in parliament that the media was to fulfill the role of acting as an entity that was separate from the rest of society, one that should act as a "watch dog" in the way that it was to monitor the happenings and actions of the aforementioned bodies and to report openly to the public. This worked to ensure that everything was entirely transparent, so as to provide a fully-functioning and efficient government for the people.


This role of the media to act as the fourth estate of society has taken many different angles since its introduction here but nothing has had a greater influence over it than commercial power. Commercial power has allowed for many sways of the tone of contemporary journalists, in particular to write in a way that conforms to the interests of its owners; one recent example of this that was brought to the public's attention by the ABC's Media Watch is that of The Australian who were consistently bathing the Greens in a negative light. This newspaper is owned by News Ltd., a company known for its conservative and even pro-liberal views - most likely as it is another under the helm of Rupert Murdoch.
This instance is rather ironic as Media Watch essentially had to 'play' as the fourth estate to demonstrate another news outlet as failing to have done so.

Another key reason for the failure of the fourth estate is the rise in concern for governments to maintain respectable levels of public relations, and the subsequent enhancements in their ability to remain secretive. Such a concern has made the need for such external entities all the more poignant however many secrets are guarded high up in the ranks of government officials.
With the advent of the internet - and the further evolution to produce the concept of Web 2.0 which allows for any user to contribute - the free flow of information has skyrocketed allowing for whistle-blower websites such as Wikileaks to flourish.
One notable instance of Wikileaks' power to expose and make transparent where would not otherwise be the case is the recent release of videos that show a soldier in Iraq negligently shooting and killing civilians from a helicopter - all very light-heartedly. These videos were highly-confidential and first needed to be unencrypted however since their release, it was revealed that they were more than 2 years old and no action had been taken.




Since the time of the helicopter video release, a public prosecution has been initiated on the soldier in charge of shooting the civilians implicating him for their murders - an outcome that would not have been likely sans the release of the tapes demonstrating not only the effectiveness of the fourth estate, but also that it remains a relevant concept even after the many evolutions that the media has undertaken since its introduction.

18 Chileans underground are worth more air-time than the 500 that were killed in an earthquake?

I find the ABC's Media Watch to be one of the most poignant shows but I can't manage to pin it down to just any one reason; I'm not sure whether it's the unrivalled depth of research, or the ultra sharp eye with which they notice flawed reporting, or even just the grand observations that they make, but the effect that they have on their audience is not by any means a light one. Since having started watching, I am now far more sceptical and even more likely to pick up manipulations of the truth.

An example of this that really sticks with me – most likely as it was a concept that we recently studied as a class – is that of 'newsworthiness', that is, what makes one story more worthy of reporting than another; what characteristics or traits does it posses to make it more likely to draw readers or viewers over any other?

In the episode that aired on the 18th of October, the majority of the airing time was devoted to the rescue of miners from the Chilean mine collapse that occurred on the 5th of August 2010 and the consequential rescue mission.



Media Watch host Paul Barry points out that in multiple reports delivered by the media - and even one press release from the Chilean president - on the trapped miners, it is said to be the first news of significance to emerge from the nation in decades; contradictory to this, Barry points out that at the beginning of this year, nearly 500 people were killed when an earthquake hit chile. He also proceeds to speak of the dedication that the BBC pledged towards the miners by sacrificing much of their budget for foreign correspondents by instead using it to send more journalists to the rescue sight that was already being covered by more than 2000 reporters from around the world.


It is quite safe to say that this news was far further reported by these agencies as it is a far rarer story to have people trapped underground for such time and still be rescued in good health. this type of 'feel-good' story is also being pushed very hard by the PR department of the Chilean government as it demonstrates the length to which the government went to rescue even people that are low on the socio-economic scale.
Similarly, there is a prescribed number of features that can make one crime more worthwhile to report than another; according to the "News Manual" (a "professional resource for journalists"). It has to be highly personalised not only in the way that the story is written, but also in the type of crime that was committed (it must appear possible for any reader to have had it happen to them). an example of this is the reporting of random kidnappings or attacks (that have no particular targeted demographic) such as the Skaf Brothers rape cases which targeted women in general rather than women of a specific-age or nationality.

I want to be Ocean's 14th, just that i want to have no ties to the illegal goings-on

Day dreaming on the bus the other day, I got to thinking about how much easier life would be as a criminal; I'd hardly ever have to work hard, and I'd be living far more comfortably than my society-contributing, law-abiding counterparts.
I had it all planned out, I'd plan elaborate heists - surrounded by other such suave and sophisticated people as myself - before outsourcing to all of the work to fellow criminals that would prevent me from getting my hands dirty and would allow me to get richer, whilst doing nothing (much like the way of a franchise).

Only later did I remember that there were legal repercussions for criminal behaviour and that it would be only too easy to get caught. I put all of this daydreaming down to me having watched Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven the night before. In this movie, much like many other crime-idolising movies, we see a grand crime get pulled off which leaves the criminals reaping huge benefits and living grand and lavish lives, whilst the threat of the justice system is very minuscule if not diminished entirely.

Sarah Coyne has written on this topic previously, concluding that there is a strong and unmistakeable – though somewhat slow - correlation between the rise of criminal behaviour since the introduction of television. Many studies previous to hers have shown conflicting numbers in their studies of criminal statistics but the grand majority of those do tend to illustrate a steady pattern; two particularly famous instances are the brutal murder of James Bulger, and the Columbine High School Massacre – both of which have been largely attributed to the influence of violent movies, and video games.

Just as such medias make crime appear entertaining, they conversely blur the lines of “official police business” and entertainment; shows such as COPS are a particularly relevant example of this as it does it's best to portray the criminals as buffoons and thus, make the entire scenario in which they find themselves in, rather humorous. Judge Judy plays a similar role in the civil crime field as it too makes entertainment of what should be serious matters before a sanctioned judge that is vested power officially.

Shows such as this detract from the overall image of the police and in the greater scheme of things, the entire justice system as they undermine it's ability to hit back at those which commit wrong-doings, and even make a mockery of those that are employed to uphold it.

The inadmissable power of the media to fill us with... ironically, empowerment

As I have previously mentioned, the homepage for my internet browsers is set as default to the landing page of the ABC News page; appropriately titled “Just In”, this page lists all the latest stories in chronological order, regardless of the amount of information at hand.

Having come home rather late on an otherwise regular Wednesday night (08/09/10), I decided to aimlessly log onto the internet - as any university with impending assignments does – to see what had been happening whilst I was in the (rather ironically) isolated outer world.

Immediately I was prompted by a headline that was literally flashing stating rather ambiguously "shots fired; cop down". It goes without saying that I immediately clicked on this link, before it was replaced by another headline that didn’t carry such stature of abnormality.

Having divulged then refreshed and re-divulged all of the (scarce) facts that were available at this point (pretty much just the location and the ensuing crowds), I began straying from my primary news source to find more details.
Much like a drug-addict desperately scrounging for any change that can contribute towards funding their next hit, I rushed to Google and after throwing a number of key terms in, I found some extra details such as the time of the incident, and the raid that had preceded it. Although all of these facts were at this time unconfirmed, they were sufficient to keep the itching at bay.



In my exaggeratedly exhausted ‘recovery’ from the feast of information, I began to reflect on what had compelled me to first click, and then pine for the information that related to a story that could have in no way involved me given that I know no police officers, I don’t know any people within the criminal realm that operate from that particular suburb, and I was not nearby.
My first assumption was that it was so that it was because I have always felt this need to be informed but that begged the question “what was the motive for wanting to be so informed?” It seems “news addiction” was a possibility and not one that was all that uncommon but I thought there must be more to it, a lot more.

Having given it more thought – in particular regarding my coinciding activities (namely, interaction with a number of different social networking mediums), it began to dawn on me that I had discussed the topic, emphasising particularly on the most recent and little known facts, treating it almost as though it added social status.

While news stories and other such happenings were once used merely as social lubricants in the form of “small talk” (as seconded by Ventola), its purpose has evolved. Many people, myself included in this instance, indulge in using their knowledge and ability to stay informed as an indicator of social stature, utilising every instance provided to share their self-gained wealth of knowledge.

My new found conclusions on tabloid 'journalism' (08.08.2010)

Due to the fact that I have different needs at different times, I happen to operate daily between a number of different computers; the thing that all of these computers hold in common however, is their browser homepage: the ABC “Just In” News page. I guess that’d make me an avid fan of being up to date with news but more than anything, I wish to impress upon my reader (YOU!) that I do generally try to read what one would consider to be the most objective and factual source of news that is, the most objective and factual source of news sans-subscription (unlike Crikey).

Although I do try to keep my mind clean and pure through this, I can’t help but occasionally find myself straying to the ‘dark side’ of journalism - tabloid media - be this lack of faithfulness because I have followed a link from a social networking site, or even just from flicking through someone else’s newspaper, I do find myself returning to follow the ‘saga’ of the time, the latest of which is that of missing child Kiesha.

This late story is a great example of many things that make modern media what it is, and upon thinking about it for this blog, further revelations did dawn upon me – which one could safely assume is the intended purpose of the exercise.
One thing that does form a large part of what tabloid media stands for is its unrivalled ability to get people behind a cause, to convince them of something, to essentially, manipulate both the truth, and their thoughts in order to serve an ulterior motive: to make money (they are a business after all). Prior to online media, this goal was to sell papers however given the fact that newspaper sales continue to dive, they are attempting to secure more revenue through sponsorship of their website by selling advertising spots.

To convince advertisers to commit, they must first show that there is an audience and this is achieved through publishing emotion evoking content such as Tribute: Light a candle for Kiesha and Missing girl: Please bring Kiesha back with feedback sections where readers are encouraged to voice their thoughts. This is further fuelled by what could be seen as side-taking by the journalists as they emphasise certain facts to imply a conclusion such as “family and friends ... can't remember seeing Kiesha for about three weeks ...” resulting in readers implicating the step-father.
They then counter this with a follow-up article on the following day with an “exclusive interview” where they empathise with the accused step father saying there is no reason for the “tough” accusations that the police have made against him.

This style of melodramatic reporting leads me to a sole conclusion and that is that as the average adult’s day to day life gets busier, they find they have less leisure time to be able to watch a dramatic television show such as Home and Away, so they can instead compress their informative and entertainment period into one session: the reading of a newspaper.