news: reportage or reading

Proceedings and E-Journal of the 7th AMSAR Conference on Roles of Media during Political Crisis Bangkok, Thailand, 20th May 2009

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News: Reportage or Reading?

Brian Saludes BantuganUniversity of the Philippines Diliman (PhD student)

St. Paul University Manila (Institutional Research Officer)

[email protected]

Abstract

The paper explores the newly emerging understanding of what news is about in the New Media

Age. Through an analysis of old and new paradigms that govern the practice of journalism in

democratic and democratizing societies all over the world, a more nuanced perspective that takes

into consideration the more diversified forms of news in a new media and globalizing

environment is brought to light. The conclusion implicates in the nature of news production and

appreciation the reality of "shared authorship" which has enormous impact into how news must

be constructed in spaces of conflict in the postmodern world.

News: Reportage or Reading?

Introduction

“News around the world vary considerably in their styles, structures and social and political

roles,” according to Hallin and Giles in Presses and Democracies (in Overholser, 2005). The

distinction they made between the liberal, polarized pluralist and the democratic corporatist

models highlight the diversity in form and content and the overlapping of perceived boundaries

as they seek to achieve particular goals within the socio-political system which they uniquely

serve.

Entman, meanwhile, in The Nature and Sources of News (in Overholser, 2005), remarked that

“traditional journalism has not fulfilled the key democracy-enhancing purposes of news” which

lead people to seek what traditional journalism has dismissed as merely soft news and

entertainment sources. As a result, he declared that news is no longer an exclusive domain of

traditional journalism, knowing for a fact that new forms of “journalistic” practice have emerged

and satisfied what hard news has failed to deliver.


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Hard news from the liberal model of Hallin and Giles (in Overholder, 2005) has seemingly lost

its privileged position as illuminator of power, policy, ideology and self-interest, especially in

democratic societies inspired by the United States. The profit orientation in capitalist economies

is a major factor driving the ascendancy of “less-than-hard news” in the media landscape but

such was only possible because democracy, more than any other political system, allows it to

flourish.

Hence, the demise of traditional news, as perceived today, is democracy allowing for the

subversion of its long-standing structures (the practice of traditional journalism) and dynamics

(how it is consumed). Knowing this, one cannot help but question the very nature of news.

Entman’s (in Overholser, 2005) statement alone that “media not bound by the canons and

practices of traditional journalism can serve the core democratizing functions of news, the

functions that help citizens hold government to account,” already points to the reality that

traditional journalism has already lost its exclusive claim to the democratizing role but only

because the old and new readers have taken it upon themselves to derive news in newer, more

controversial and less defined spaces.

Whether the news found in these spaces can compare to the “hard news” or traditional journalism

is a concern that privileges once more the latter. However, from a more democratizing

standpoint, such a question privileges the media above the audience who, as “pro-sumers” in the

new Internet-driven mediascape, has gained power to define their own needs, issues and agenda

and determine how they are to be addressed with information from a variety of media. This

situation clearly begs the question, “Should news be understood still as mere reportage (defined

by the expert reporters alone) or a reading (determined by an analytic-synthetic activity of

information consumers)?”

To pursue and answer the question is to enlighten the new journalists, especially in the

Philippines, who ought to be clarified about their new role in an evolving media environment.

Are they to remain mere pawns of the old order of liberal journalism where they provide ready-

to-consume news to the still media-dependent public? Or are they to become drivers of discourse,

allowing the media-selective public to determine their own information diet and supply sources?

The answers to these will have serious repercussions in the management of conflict in any nation.


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To ponder on such questions in itself is a clear expansion of pluralism in a democratic academic

space which is crucial in the training of teachers who are to educate future critical media

practitioners and journalists in the field. Furthermore, as an exercise in clarifying concepts that

change through time and practice, it is an empowering activity that encourages theory-grounding

and building that could have a lot of impact in the future of democratic societies. Hopefully,

Hallin’s and Giles’ concern on how “little (media scholars had done until recently) to understand

the nature (of news media) or the reasons they exist” may be to a point somewhat addressed, if

not satisfied, for the benefit of all.

The Paradigms

This paper hopes to address the question of whether news is reportage or reading by first

anchoring the conceptual exploration on appropriate paradigms that could help look upon news

from different vantage points. Berkowitz (1997:xi) stated

The study of news is much like viewing a hologram. A person can

get closer or farther away… stand in different places. Each new

perspective will reveal a different aspect of the same holographic

picture. There is no way, though, that a person can find a single

vantage point where the entire hologram can be viewed all at once.

Traditional journalistic perspective defines news as things that people need to and should know

about their surroundings so they can “debate their responses to it and reach informed decisions

about what courses of action to adopt” (Dahlgren, 1991:1). As such, the news is especially suited

for the effective running of democratic societies and is, therefore, guaranteed protection under the

law. Gieber (1964:173), Fishman (1980:14), Cohen and Young (1973:97) were cited by

Schudson (in Berkowitz, 1997:7) as defining news as “what newspapermen make it,” “the result

of the methods newsworkers employ,” and “manufactured by journalists,” respectively. This

paradigm depicts news as “reportage,” being solely determined by those who report the world “as

they see it, the facts, facts and nothing but the facts” - singled out as important for people to

know.

From the sociological perspective, Berkowitz (1997:xi-xii) posited that three principles –

“constituting the ideology of journalism” - can be dismissed. The assumptions that news is “out


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there,” tangible and could easily be identified by competent journalists, consists of values that

allow for events to be newsworthy or otherwise, and can be reported objectively and considered

value-free. Devoid of such, however, news could be seen as “a human construction that gains its

characteristics through the social world from which it emerges.” The construction emerges from

“mutually agreed work procedures… (with) humanly imposed” limits in time and space, values

formed via “informal consensus among journalists and others over time,” and a result of “socially

learned beliefs about society and how the world works.” This paradigm may not agree absolutely

with the traditional view but does not in any way invalidate the contribution of “reportage.” It,

however, defines the news as something bigger than the work of the reporter.

The emergence of “citizen journalism,” however, questions the position of reportage in the

communication flow. Unlike the years before the mainstreaming of the Internet, when reportage

was exclusive to the “gatekeeping” mechanism that does not involve directly the reading public,

readers have now become reporters themselves through weblogs or blogs. Tom Curley of

Associated Press (Jay Rosen, 2005 in http://journalism.nyu.edu/) acknowledged the “huge shift in

the ‘balance of power’ in our world, from the content providers to the content consumers… (that)

professional journalism is no longer sovereign over territory it once easily controlled.” Rosen

(2005) declared that while not all blogs are news, some blogs can be news. Conversely, not all

reported as news in traditional journalism pass the latter’s canons (Patterson and McClure, 1976

in Iyengar and Kinder, 1997:127; Robinson and Sheehan, 1983 in Iyengar and Kinder,

1997:127).

As a result, the linearity of news flows has been reversed and situated reportage in the midst of

the reading public, as well, making the latter both producers and consumers or “prosumers” of

news. As such, new technology has not only changed the way news is made but also the way it is

understood. The technological determinism paradigm puts forward the idea that technology also

shapes news, through netizens, rendering news as both reading and reportage. A humanistic lens,

meanwhile, may look upon the phenomenon as “having ritual or communal dimensions” (Zelizer

in Berkowitz, 1997:25) that may also be understood as consistent with Fish’s (in Littlejohn,

2005:130) assumption of the power of “interpretive communities,” inherent even among

organized journalists.


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Discussion

News as Reportage. In the era of mass communication, the news appears as a finished product.

News are stories written or composed by journalists “as words that turn up in the papers or on the

screen” (Schudson in Berkowitz, 1997:8). As a form of writing, according to Deuze (2005), it is

based on the ideals of public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy and ethics. Due to the

problematic nature of objectivity, values of fairness, professional distance, detachment or

impartiality have become replacements. As a widely acknowledged field, it is considered as a

discipline “based on a consensual body of knowledge, a widely shared understanding or key

theories and methods, and an international practice” (p.442). Hence, it is easily understood as an

occupational ideology that has found its legitimate training ground in the universities.

As a modern or industrial artifact, it is a result of an assembly process where the professional

journalists are the frontliners. Gatekeeping theory accounts for the unseen news organization’s

influence on news writing, publication and/or broadcast. More often, journalism manifests as a

finished text belonging to a genre called “news” satisfying ethical and professional requirements

set by a community of communicators who strive for reliability and public trust. At face value,

the news is a finished product waiting to be read by the public who are constantly unaware of

events beyond their personal space. At first glance, it is a mere commodity whose mode of

production is alien to its consumers. Hence, only the reporter can account for its existence. There

is no news without reportage.

The results of agenda setting studies manifested that news “shapes the relative importance

Americans attach to various national problems” (Iyengar and Kinder, 1987:113). If any, it points

to the reality that the news is a cause and not a result of changes in the reader’s awareness.

Hence, it is an entity independent of its audiences. The process of gatekeeping alone further

detaches the audience from the decision-making process that determines whether or not a report

reaches them, and the form and content when it does. And because the agenda-setting studies

confirm that “citizens must depend on others for their news about national and world affairs – a

world they cannot touch themselves” (p. 114), the reality of news as reportage by a person or

institution who/that is more informed than readers about events seem to highlight that reportage

precedes and is a prerequisite to reading. This view is reproduced “in part through the roles,

relationships and patterns of behavior that are essential (not only to) the established form of


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journalism but also through the particular ideology that characterizes journalism’s self-

understanding” (Ekstrom, 2002:275).

As an ideology or “an (intellectual) process over time, through which the sum of ideas and views

– notably on social and political issues – of a particular group is shaped… (it) is also a process by

which other ideas and views are excluded or marginalized” (Deuze, 2005:444). It is not

surprising that Hallin and Mancini (1984 in Berkowitz, 1997) added that the politics that is often

associated with news is often attached to the sphere of journalists and political elites but not the

audience. Reportage, then, is a privileged position that informs through the reading process.

The unidirectional mass communication flow further reinforces this sequentiality that makes the

two processes unique, although related. If news is reportage, it cannot be reading. Often, the

reportage is even more privileged by “convey(ing) an impression of authority (Weaver, 1975:90

in Berkowitz, 1997) and omniscience (Weaver, 1975:84 in Berkowitz,1997)” as it seemingly

lacks “ambiguity, equivocation, or uncertainty” (Iyengar and Kinder, 1987:126).This reality

reinforces the notion of news as an exclusive domain of professionals.

News as reportage only? A number of studies have cast a shadow of doubt on reportage as the

sole foundation of news. Clarke’s (2003) analysis of the Vietnam “pseudoevent’ that was

accepted and reinforced by journalists question the ability of journalism to guarantee reality and

present a situation where news was not what it promised to be. Clarke examined “through a

questionnaire and content analysis how reporters who covered Vietnam’s final withdrawal of

troops from Cambodia in 1989, staged as a pseudo-event, dealt with the opposing interpretations

by Vietnam, an international outcast, and its opponents, who said the pullout was a fake. The

power of the pseudo-event was such that nearly all journalists accepted the Vietnamese version as

it was shown to them but most also used their knowledge of the international situation as a

reinforcement.” The report by international journalists, then, was not news.

Dolan (2005), studying the commotion a photo montage by Los Angeles artist Alma López called

Our Lady created in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2001, revealed that the journalistic practice of

waiting for officials or major players to raise issues before doing stories on them in order to claim

‘objectivity’, led to newspaper coverage that left many underlying issues surrounding the

controversy largely unexamined. Looking at how news conventions blinded journalists in a


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particular controversy, Dolan attested to the insufficiency of standards of traditional reportage to

account for the real issues, by saying, that the controversy “is a great example of how journalism

must… (move) to a thorough examination of the ‘intransingent’ foundations of how news is

made’” (Rhodes, 2001 in Dolan, 2005:393). In this case, the report missed the news.

The study conducted by Zelizer, Park and Gudelunas (2002:303), on the other hand, uncovered

how the best of American journalistic practices, especially in news coverage and presentation,

can falter through political bias that can over- or under-represent participants in

conflict and result to “a deviant view of the crisis.” The New York Times, according to Zeliger

and colleagues, “has come under scrutiny because it has… unevenly maintained its status as a

newspaper of record against accusations of preferential reporting from both sides of the conflict.”

(p.1). If a ‘gold standard’ report can mislead, how can it absolutely lay claim to news? Clearly,

even “the” reportage can be less than acceptable news. Likewise,.Shah and Nah’s (2004) research

on how racial oppression is constructed by American newspapers revealed that the current

construct on racial oppression in US journalism, recognizing only apartheid, slavery and dealings

with the confederate flag, create a blindspot that renders it powerless to address contemporary

forms of oppression inside and outside of the US. Failure to update old concepts of extreme

importance in a democratic society casts a shadow of doubt on the ability of traditional

journalism to perform the unique role it has been entrusted with, especially in the fight for

equality. Thus, if reportage can be blind, what becomes of the news?

News Beyond Reportage. While it seems rather convenient to simply look at news as reportage,

the reality of gatekeeping itself is an indication that what determines news is more than just the

reporter. Berkowitz (1997) suggested that structures that define the role of the reporter have

much to do with the selection and writing of any news. First, from the view of political economy,

the result of any news process is linked to economic structures upon which the news organization

is built – mostly capitalist (Hallin, 1985 in Berkowitz, 1997). The need to market to specific

audiences who can buy a particular newspaper or watch a news program in need of advertising

revenue to sustain itself or become profitable determine the form and content of news. American

media corporations, according to Dreier and Weinberg (1979 in Berkowitz, 1997:12), are

“interlocked with other major corporations” and has given way to fewer entities dictating upon

the operations of “more and more American news media” (Bagdikian, 1983 and Compaigne,

1979 in Berkowitz, 1997:12) and maintaining hegemonic processes (Herman and Chomsky, 1988


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in Berkowitz, 1997:12). Profit, being the primary motivation behind news writing, renders each

reporter, then, as its servant, every news item as mere “propaganda” of those in control, and as a

result, an ineffective democratic tool.

Meanwhile, Molotch and Lester (1974 in Berkowitz, 1997:13) describe newspapers as

determined by “the practices of those who have the power to determine the experiences of

others.” Fish (1980 in Berkowitz, 1997:13) has found that journalists orient their work towards

the bureaucracy of government, especially when officials have direct influence (Gans, 1979 and

Cohen, 1963 in Berkowitz, 1997), maintaining a perception of a “bureaucratically-structured”

society and determining a journalist’s choice of events. Dependence on institutional sources and

existing interactions between organizations (Gitlin, 1980 in Berkowitz, 1997) further strengthens

the influence of established power centers on news generation.

Other studies have uncovered reporters orienting their work to editor preferences (Breed, 1955 in

Berkowitz, 1997), pointing clearly to indirect, or even direct, editorial influence on news

gathering (Crouse, 1973, Gans, 1979, Gitlin, 1980 and Hallin, 1986 in Berkowitz, 1997),

manifesting self-censorship, consent to intervention or self-appropriation to the news

organization (Epstein, 1973 in Berkowitz, 1997:15), if not personal compatibility to the

organization’s ideology (Lichter et al, 1986 in Berkowitz, 1997) or simply indifference

(Robinson and Sheehan, 1983 and Hess, 1981 in Berkowitz, 1997).

Although it has been found that “social validation of judgments through social interaction” and

the “stabilizing (of) existing attitudes and cognitions,” inherent in all human beings, are “more

present and more relevant” to journalists (Donsbach, 2004:151-152) because of their effect to

their “perceptual decisions (truth, relevance, acceptability of facts and issues),” what is clearly

unique to journalism is the stimulus determined by a complex relationship of organizations – the

news company and those that sustain its operations – that causes them. One needs to understand

such organizational dynamics, then, instead of mere individuals, to understand news. There is

clearly something beyond the reporter that determines the news. It is beyond mere reportage.

From a culturological perspective, news is a social, not individual, construction facilitated by a

“given symbolic system” (Sahlins, 1985 in Berkowitz, 1997:16) that encompasses reporters


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and officials of any news organization. This view highlights the contribution of “symbolic

determinants of news in the relations between ideas and symbols” (Berkowitz, 1997:17). Such

symbols constituting the “cultural air” (Bennett, 1982 in Berkowitz, 1997:19), “news values”

(Hall, 1973 in Berkowitz, 1997:18) and “the secret knowledge, the secret ability of the newsman

which differentiates him from other people” (Tuchman, 1972 in Berkowitz, 1997:18) have been

found often conflicting with but gaining reinforcement from news featuring anomalies (Pearce,

1973 in Berkowitz, 1997) or reflecting racial discrimination (Hartmann and Husband, 1973 in

Berkowitz, 1997). It is also usually manifested in and identified with a specific “cultural

idealism,” “identification” and “frequency factor” (Galtung and Ruge, 1970 in Berkowitz,

1997:19).

Taken at the level of cultural form, news is guided by “assumptions about narrative, storytelling,

human interest, and the conventions of photographic and linguistic presentation” inherent in

media (Berkowitz, 1997:20) as a result of historical (Schudson, 1982 in Berkowitz, 1997) or

technological or political (Hallin and Mancini, 1984 in Berkowitz, 1997) developments in any

country and by “a number of vital assumptions about the world” (Berkowitz, 1997:20). Baym

(2004:295), citing Schudson (1995), posited that “the power of news… may lie less in the stories

it tells than in the form those stories assume.” Such forms are givens journalists adapt to, not

create.

Recognizing the contribution of political economy, organizations and culture clearly identify

news as a complex social product. However, this view still does not consider any significant

contribution from those who consume the news in the production process. If any, readers are

mere social dependents relying on the activity of power structures to provide them the

information they need for effective participation in a democratic society. They have no agency

over the news. If any, this paradigm asserts that reportage is a shared action where structures of

power contribute more. The power of the reporter is diminished, as a result. Nevertheless, news is

still defined by its production and is rendered as “reportage of many” and not a reading.

This paradigm, however, opens the authority of news for questioning and subject to a

deconstruction of publics who look upon themselves as another power structure for whom

journalism must ultimately be accountable. Its lack, stemming from an “inquiry (that favors)

examining the dominant… form of practice” (Zelizer in Berkowitz, 1997:24), in terms of “news


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text” (Fowler, 1991, Glasgow University Media Group, 1980 and van Dijk, 1988 in Berkowitz,

1997:24), “news gathering setting” (Fishman, 1980, Gans, 1979, Gitlin, 1980 and Tuchman, 1978

in Berkowitz, 1997:24), or “news audience” (Graber, 1988, and Robinson and Levy, 1986 in

Berkowitz, 1997:24) rather than the “deviant” (Zelizer in Berkowitz, 1997:24) or as a

“continuous negotiation towards such products” (Berkowitz, 1997:24) describes news as

hegemonic and following the linear view of communication and nothing else. From a

communication perspective, then, the other side of power has remained underestimated, if not

unexplored and unrecognized.

News as Reading. The humanistic perspective provides the insight on the political ascendancy of

readers in the production of news. Although, according to Zelizer (in Berkowitz, 1997:25), its use

has not “made sufficient inroads into journalism scholarship,” much of the discourse in this arena

has been ongoing in cyberspace and has been an outgrowth of the “blogging vs. journalism”

debate. This perspective, Zelizer maintained, could be explored by looking at journalism as

“performance, narrative, ritual and interpretive community.”

As performance, and not text in the traditional view, news can be seen as a “fluid, less fixed…

(and) unfolding” (Bauman, 1986 and Fine, 1984 in Berkowitz, 1997:25) than a finished script,

which necessarily includes “media coverage” in the equation. Zelizer (in Berkowitz, 1997:25)

noted that “as performance, news is understood as a situationally variant process” of negotiation

with a less than stable meaning.

As narrative, news can be seen as knowledge codes that are “upheld, repeated and altered”

(Zelizer in Berkowitz, 1997:26) that “help construct our view of the world, by allowing us to

share stories within culturally and socially explicit codes of meaning” (Barthes, 1977, 1979 in

Berkowitz, 1997:26), or “challenge or interrupt a community’s so-called master discourses”

(Bhabha, 1990 in Berkowitz, 1997:26), remember and represent history (Halbwachs, 1950/1980

and Kammen, 1991 in Berkowitz, 1997), or present to storytellers “ways of reconfiguring their

authority for events” (White, 1981 in Berkowitz, 1997:26).

A number of studies have documented news as “social narrative” (Carey and Fritzler, 1989 in

Berkowitz, 1997:26), based on “narrative frames and themes” (Barkin and Gurevitch, 1987,

Bennet and Edelman, 1985, Campbell and Reeves, 1989 and Carragee, 1990 in Berkowitz,


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1997:26), “’narrativizing’ strategies” (Bird and Dardenne, 1988, Mander, 1987 and Schudson,

1982 in Berkowitz, 1997:26) or in relation to “collective memory” (Schudson, 1992 and Zelizer,

1992b in Berkowitz, 1997:26). Hence, more and more, news can be seen as deriving its life from

a notion of a collective.

As a ritual, news may be seen as “a periodic restatement of the terms in which [people] of a

particular culture must interact if there is to be any kind of a coherent social life” (Turner, 1968

in Berkowitz, 1997:26). It is also crucial to the creation of meaning, according to Rothenbuhler

(in Berkowitz, 1997), or changes in culture (Glasser and Ettema, 1989 in Berkowitz, 1997:27),

and the assertion of a reporter’s power (Elliot, 1982, Manoff and Schudson, 1986, Tuchman,

1972 in Berkowitz, 1997) that allows for critique of self and others within a community.

Finally, taken with a notion of the interpretive community that “determine(s) the shape of what is

read” (Fish, 1980 in Berkowitz, 1997:27), news has become detached from the traditional news

production structure and will remain as such as the collective becomes a “community of

memory” (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swindler and Tipton, 1985 in Berkowitz, 1997:27) with a

“shared discourse and collective interpretations of key public events” (Berkowitz, 1997:28).

Ekstrom (2002:261) discussed this frame as the “public acceptance of knowledge claims” where

the audience becomes the determinant of the legitimacy of a journalistic product.

When a reporter attempts to satisfy the expectations of the reading public, he, in effect locates

him/herself and his/her work within an interpretive community. The news organization, aiming

for wider readership, positions their news within a specific discourse structure of an interpretive

community that renders it acceptable to the latter. While it has been found by Gans (1979 in

Berkowitz, 1997) that some mass media gatekeepers of news had no adequate knowledge of their

actual audience, their efforts at trying to cater to their preferences (as marked by diversities in

news forms) is a clear sign of marketing via the integration into the interpretive community’s

discourses. These cases attest to the power of a community or readers to validate what news

organizations only assume as significant to them (Ekstrom, 2002).

Recent studies are now slowly uncovering the news as a reading, that is, a shared construction or

reporters and audiences. The study of Deuze (2005) clarified that journalists themselves can be

considered a reading collective or an interpretive community, made of “cultural knowledge that


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constitutes ‘news judgment’, rooted deeply in the communicators’ consciousness” (Schudson,

2001 in Deuze, 2005:444). While commonalities in the processes of the professional practice

exist among somewhat similar countries (Weischenberg and Scholl, 1998 in Deuze, 2005), there

is “too much disagreement on professional norms and values to claim an emergence of ‘universal

occupational standards’ in journalism” (p.445). Thus, normative standards of news are subject to

interpretation or reading by journalist communities (Fakazis, 2006; Tsfati, Meyes and Peri,

2006).

Nossek (2004) also found that “there is an inverse relation between professional news values and

the national identity of the journalist and the… editors,” indicating that “the more ‘national’ the

report is, the less ‘professional’ it will be” (p.343). This only means that even among journalists a

conceptual conflict can emerge as a result of differences in interpreting the news or the normative

standards that it acceptable to a nation or otherwise. In this case, not all reports are deemed

relevant by journalists themselves. This is even strengthened by the findings of Hamilton and

Jenner (2004), whose study revealed that the standard of news often associated with elite foreign

correspondents is no longer the sole benchmark, as is the case of public journalism (Haas and

Steiner, 2001:139), which was “a reaction to perceived flaws in conventional journalistic

practices,” and is often contested (Manzella, 2000). Reportage, at this point, then, can be seen as

a reading, specifically as a negotiation of the core values of journalism in their professional

practice.

The notion of the interpretive community is even more identified with the actual readers of news.

The interpretive community, according to Fish (in Littlejohn, 2005:130), are “groups that interact

with one another, construct common realities and meanings, and employ these in their readings.”

Individual readings, then, as a result of constant interaction with others, reflect diverse

interpretive communities. He added, “meaning really resides in the interpretive community of

readers.” Following the argument, news, as meaningful text, is necessarily a reading. The claim

of relevance to an audience by any news collapses without reading. Littlejohn (2005) explains

Fish further by saying that even within a singular interpretive community there can exist multiple

meanings from individual readings and that, contrary to the traditional view, the report has no

real substance since “the reader always projects his or her own meaning into features of the text

and only comes up with the reader’s meaning in the end” (p. 131).


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To some extent, Evans’ (2002:323) study strengthens Fish when his data showed that “even

media do not function together as a homogeneous, harmonious unit and that they resist

hegemonic pressures to differential degrees.” By inference, resistance is as likely, if not more,

among interpretive “reader” communities that are not as absorbed to the media ideology absorbed

by journalists. Like the non-hegemonic media within media, the readers of journalism always go

through the “the recognition of contradiction and disjuncture in social structures” (Mumby, 1997

in Evans, 2002:323). It suggests that it is very possible that readings may contradict the intended

message of any text. If such is the case, the news does not just disappear in the meaning, it is

subverted. The subversive brings about “an alternative power structure” (Evans, 2002:309).

News, then, is negated as reportage.

Because such a disjuncture between the reportage and reading will diminish readership and

profitability, “news must be framed not only to make certain facts and interpretations salient but

also to resonate with what writers and readers take to be real and important matters to life,“

according to Ettema (2005:132). Resonant journalism negotiates the meanings of the interpretive

communities of journalists and readers and requires that the reportage integrate itself with the

reading without itself disappearing. Here, the news is both reportage and reading.

The case studied by Marchi (2005:480), on the other hand, showed the initiative of the reading

public to shape the reportage by documenting “how activists may successfully impact news

coverage.” Pantti’s (2005:374) study, meanwhile, highlighting the pressure among journalists to

“present emotions more personally and extensively” in the form that imitates ordinary people’s

grief, depicts how a specific reading culture invades reportage practices. Kitch (2005:171), on the

other hand, documented commemorative journalism in US journalism that “affirms rather than

informs” the ideals of the interpretive “reader” community, thereby, reflecting a consent of the

reportage to be transformed into the “collective identity” of the readers. These are very clear

instances where the reading assumes greater power over the reportage.

This power has become more evident in the changes in journalism as a result of recent

technological developments. The studies of Ursell (2001), Garcia Aviles and Leon (2002),

Aufderheide (2002) and Wall (2005) revealed that changes have occurred in the operations, news

values, agenda and treatments, and product ranges of news companies that have adopted new

technologies, producing collaboration between journalists, managers and engineers or much


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dismay in journalists who refuse to produce low standard outputs due to the lack of time needed

to work adequately on a piece, respectively. As news product quality falls short of reader

expectations, those who are Internet-connected opt to search cyberspace where news alternatives

(Harcup, 2003) or “indymedia journalism” (Platon and Deuze, 2003) abound. In the midst of new

media, according to Williams and Delli Carpini (2000), the gatekeeping of the traditional press is

virtually eliminated, the distinction between news and entertainment becomes fuzzy, and “the

common sense assumptions used by both elites, citizens and scholars to understand the role of

media in a democratic society” (p.61)is undermined.

As such assumptions become questionable, the responsibility of making sense of the new media

and journalism configuration is inevitably assumed by every reader. Williams and Delli

Carpini (2000), noting Fiske (1996), Lipsitz (1990) and others, and resonating with Wall (2005),

pointed the same idea by remarking that “this can sometimes lead to giving a voice to

traditionally disempowered cultures and classes” (p.79). Deuze and Dimoudi (2002), on the other

hand, specifically identify such an effect to “a distinct media logic for online journalists” that has

emerged (p.85). The hyperreality of the new media has, therefore, given rise to “new, multiple,

and shifting axes of political power” (p.80). This new configuration, though threatening the

structures of traditional journalism, is what is crucial in a democratic society that aims for greater

participation of citizens and plurality of voices.

Conclusion

Hence, Stephens (1988 in Wall, 2005), defining news as “what is on a society’s mind,” has never

been truer. Freedom of expression lies at the very core of communication and communication

drives discourse which is crucial if democracy were to remain authentic. But what counts in

democratic societies is a journalism that empowers citizens to make responsible decisions that

enhance governance, that is, a journalism that, according to Sotirovic and McLeod in Knowledge

as Understanding (Kaid, 2004) “stimulate reflection and encourage individuals to create meaning

that can assume social relevance” (p.386). Such a normative standard does not discount what

traditional news offers but it demands a recognition of shared authorship where the readers’

contributions count as much as those of the reporters or those institutions they present and/or

represent overtly and/or covertly. If such is the normative standard, news must go beyond the


15

facts that make up reportage and orient itself towards the learning or a sense-making process that

defines news as reading in the context of a democratic interpretive community.


16

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