Last Issue
Abstracts of Vol 15(2), October 2009
Editors
Wendy Bacon, Jan McClelland and David Robie
Editorial
A viable public sphere?
Wendy Bacon, pp. 5-8
Theme
The Public Right to Know
1. Covering the environmental issues and global warming in Delta land: A study of three newspapers
Jahnnabi Das, Wendy Bacon and Akhteruz Zaman pp. 10-33
This article explores the coverage of environmental issues in the daily newspapers of Bangladesh, a South-Asian country facing the onslaught of global warming because of its low-lying deltaic plains and overpopulation. The results are based on an examination of the content of environmental coverage in three national daily newspapers (two Bangla and one English-language) during June 2007. Drawing on field theory and analytical frames from journalism studies, this study examines the principles of journalistic practices as revealed by the content of these publications. The findings indicate that environmental journalism is a strong subfield in Bangladesh’s media, which constructs its own veracity in ways that reflect the social, economic and political contexts of each publication. Based on this small study, the authors conclude that environmental journalists in Bangladesh adopt approaches to sourcing and causation which enable them, in alliance with non-government organisations, to pursue their aim of actively intervening in the field of government policy of Bangladesh, both in international and local spheres.
2. Reporting controversy in health policy: A content and field analysis
John Roberts and Chris Nash pp.35-53
This article reports on the research and analysis of editorial attitudes and news reporting in two prominent Sydney newspapers—The Daily Telegraph (DT) and The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH)—about the establishment and operation of the Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIC) in Kings Cross from January 1999 to December 2006. The establishment of the MSIC was highly controversial and generated strongly partisan attitudes among politicians, experts, local businesses and the general community. The research compares the editorial stance of these newspapers towards the injecting room and the reporting practices of the newspapers, in particular the range of sources used by the journalists; it deploys a content analysis to identify positive and negative attitudes in the preferred readings of the texts, the usage of sources within the reports and the partisan affiliations of those sources. It reveals stark differences in the reporting of the controversy by the two newspapers, and that the reporting differences were aligned with the respective editorial policies of the mastheads. The interpretation of these empirical findings using field theory is located within the debates in the journalism studies literature about the power relationship of journalistic practices to the interests of sources.
3. 'Letting them eat cake': Narrative templates in current affairs/news journalism
John Carr pp.54-70
This article explores the role of narrative templates in a core domain of
public communication, describing a series of narrative structural patterns that underlie the scripting of news and current affairs ‘reports’. From
an initial account of the nature of narrative templates and their relation to audience expectations and interpretative regimens, a number of
specific story-styles that are employed recurringly in news programmes are described, examining their use and impact for capturing and maintaining audience attention. The process of telling the audience the stories it wants to hear is critiqued in terms of the capacity to subvert the quality of public communication and in terms of enduring concerns within discursive theory.
4. The question of crime: How much does the public have the right to know?
Joy Cameron-Dow pp. 71-84
The public right to know is of particular significance when considering the reporting of crime and criminal justice. The internet has demonstrated strong influences upon crime reporting in mainstream media, including the range of material it provides to audiences. In addition, the internet has exposed journalists to new legal and ethical ramifications that accompany reportage on an international scale and, while it may be ‘giving the people what they want’, it has also exacerbated the controversy surrounding the perennial question of how much the public has a right to know. Research suggests that giving online readers what they want in the context of crime reporting includes the transition to shorter, more concise stories at first point of access, with further background and detail available through links to multi-media facilities. Often these offer far more graphic detail and specificity than is available in mainstream media, bringing the audience closer to the scene of the crime and the people involved. This is reopening the argument of the right to know versus the desire for privacy. These developments raise questions about the level of gatekeeping that is applied to internet coverage of crime. Analysis of media reporting on the disappearance in May 2007 of British toddler Madeleine McCann has shown how online access has raised an increasing number of ethical and legal issues relevant to the question of whether giving audiences what they want can conflict with what the public have a right to know. This article examines how the internet has influenced crime reporting and gatekeeping online.
5. Behind the Fiji censorship: A comparative media regulatory case study as a prelude to the Easter putsch
David Robie pp. 85-116
On 10 April 2009, a military backed regime wrested total control of the Fiji Islands in what was arguably a fifth coup and imposed martial law. The then President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, abrogated the 1997 Constitution and dismissed the judiciary in response to a Court of Appeal ruling—by a bench of three Australian judges—that the interim government of Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama established after the fourth coup in December 2006 was illegal. Bainimarama was reinstated, emergency regulations—including state censorship—were decreed and elections were deferred until 2014. Earlier, in the first five months of 2008, two expatriate publishers of the leading daily newspapers, the Murdoch-owned Fiji Times and the local Fiji Sun, were deported amid an international furore. In January 2009, a second Fiji Times publisher was expelled. Other journalists have been detained, threatened and harassed. Ironically, the military imposed censorship in the Easter putsch followed two reviews of Fiji’s self-regulatory mechanisms in an attempt to strengthen the media landscape. One controversial report has since been used by the military regime as a justification for a plan to consolidate all existing media laws under a single ‘Media Promulgation’ law. During a parallel time frame, the New Zealand Press Council also conducted an independent review. With reference to the media accountability systems (M*A*S) model developed by the late Claude-Jean Bertrand, this article analyses the public right to know discourse in Fiji in the context of an authoritarian regime.
6. What is happening to investigative journalism? A pilot study of ABC’s Four Corners
Marni Cordell pp. 118-131
The purpose of investigative journalism is to hold powerful interests to account and highlight systemic corruption and breakdown. Ettema and Glasser, and de Burgh, define the investigative journalist’s role as to bring attention to injury and injustice, expose information that is in the public interest, and encourage legislative reform. As traditional media models falter in response to the popularisation of the internet, it is argued that quality and investigative journalism is in decline. Little empirical research has been undertaken which can help answer the question of whether such claims are justified or not. As a preliminary step to establishing a methodology for undertaking such research, a pilot study investigated the amount of investigative journalism produced by ABC Television’s premier current affairs programme Four Corners, which claims to be a platform for investigative journalism. Two data sets were the subject of content analysis, in which definitions of investigative journalism of Ettema and Glasser, de Burgh and others were used to create categories for analysis. Results indicate that only half of the journalism produced by the programme can be defined as investigative journalism.
7. Arts journalism and exiled writers: a case study of fugal, reflexive practice
Ruth Skilbeck pp. 132-151
Arts journalism and reflective practice intersect in a new field of ‘journalism as research’ (Bacon 2006). This article takes an innovative approach informed by the multimodal, musical and psychogenic fugue to discuss a case study of arts journalism reflexive practice. The journalistic research topic is the impact of the traumatic journey of exiled writers on their creative writing, the empathetic effects of trauma and courage on their advocates and the impacts of researching trauma on the researcher. The journalistic, interview-based articles discussed in the case study are on exiled writers in Australia, Iranian poet-musician Mohsen Soltany Zand and Ivory Coast political journalist Cheikh Kone. In reflecting on processes of writing of the stories, the author begins to outline the foundations of an innovative, critical fugal methodology of reflexive practice for modes and pieces of arts journalism.
8. Media convergence in Bhutan: Case studies in 2008 link local voices to central infrastructure
Kinley Wangmo and John Cokley pp. 152-172
Evidence is produced that Bhutanese citizens are adopting many of the media and communication technologies and practices common in more developed countries, and that the government has the political will to encourage this with infrastructure spending. This article links the two and reports that infrastructure spending and legislative encouragement, especially through unique social and cultural structures, appears to enhance the growth and emergence of media enterprises, a key driver of diversity and democracy. Key limitations on further expansion are identified as the remote location of the country and the low teledensity evident in this village-based society.
Articles
Intentional use of te reo Māori in New Zealand newspapers in 2007
Jenny Rankine, Angela Moewaka Barnes, Belinda Borell, Hector Kaiwai, Raymond Nairn, Timoth McCreanor and Amanda Gregory pp. 174-190
This study aimed to measure the intentional use of words in te reo Māori in a representative sample of newspaper news items about Māori issues. While te reo Māori was made an official language in 1987, it remains endangered and New Zealand remains one of the most monolingual countries in the world. The news items analysed were about Māori issues, and thus more likely to include Māori words. Only words with an alternative in English were counted, and the origin of articles was analysed. Forty-five percent of items included no Māori words with an alternative in English, and the average across the sample was 2.4. More than half the Māori words counted described social culture. Use of te reo varied widely among newspapers. No regular Māori language promotion items appeared in the sample, and it provides little evidence of support for New Zealand’s endangered indigenous official language.
A comparison of teenage views on journalism as a career in Australia and New Zealand
Mark Pearson pp. 191-203
Australian and New Zealand journalism programmes report a disproportionate number of female students and the industry in both countries is becoming increasingly feminised. Densem (2006) explored the reasons for the popularity of journalism as a career among young New Zealand women and the relative lack of appeal for young men. This article reports upon preliminary results from an Australian study covering some common ground and offers some comparisons and contrasts with the New Zealand findings. This article uses the high school student responses from a larger study as the basis of comparison with similar data in the Densem (2006) study. Key similarities are that young respondents in both countries did not see journalism as a ‘blokey’ career; many showed ignorance about journalism salaries; and they perceived both male and female journalists as intelligent and serious. Students in both countries perceived good looks as a more important quality for female journalists than males. There were, however, marked differences in the responses of high school males in Australia to the perceptions of the qualities of female journalists. Rather than the intelligence, credibility and seriousness they assigned to male journalists (and their New Zealand male counterparts also assigned to female journalists), the young Australian males ranked good looks, pushiness and nosiness as the chief qualities assigned to female journalists, a disturbing finding worthy of more investigation.
Vol 16(1) May2010
Vol 15(2) Oct2009
Vol 15(1) May2009
Vol 14(2) Oct2008
Vol 14(1) Apr2008