Dan Berkowitz

Doing double duty: Paradigm repair and the Princess Diana what-a-story

This study draws on journalistic discourse about the death of Princess Diana to frame everyday newswork as cultural ritual, and show how some kinds of newswork serve to maintain and restore the core tenets of the cultures beliefs. The study focuses on the ritual of paradigm repair and its particular case employed in what-a-story newswork.

Refining the gatekeeping metaphor for local television news

The gatekeeping process in local television news was examined by applying content analysis techniques to observational research in a network‐affiliate stations newsroom. Stories about government, accidents, and crime aired more often than other topics, although planned event stories aired less often than non‐event stories. Timeliness and significance were most closely associated with airing of stories. These analyses, however, accounted for only a small proportion of variance, suggesting that other elements were likely to be relevant. Process elements included group decision‐making, organizational constraints, and a broad interest‐importance framework. A new formulation of the gatekeeping metaphor was presented.

Information Subsidy and Agenda-Building in Local Television News

A study of subsidized information received by an Indianapolis television station over a four-week period in 1987 found less than one-fourth of news releases and other subsidies survived the first cut by producers and assignment editors. Information from non-profit organizations and interest groups was kept most frequently, while that from government and business was kept least frequently. It is suggested that two levels of agenda building operate simultaneously in local TV news—the relationship between journalists and local sources, and the less purposive level where non-local sources haphazardly attempt to get on the local agenda.

News Sources and News Context: The Effect of Routine News, Conflict and Proximity

This content analysis of three newspapers looks at the extent to which two context elements, routine and conflict, affect the mix of sources. The hypothesized effect (that nonroutine and conflict-based news would contain a greater diversity of sources) was found only for proximate news stories. Although journalists can develop a diverse pool of sources in their own communities, only the most visible sources are easily reachable in other locations.

Blasphemy As Sacred Rite/Right: "The Mohammed Cartoons Affair" and Maintenance of Journalistic Ideology

The controversy surrounding the publication of 12 cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten can be seen as an issue of religion and freedom of speech. However, when European and American newspapers began to write articles and opinion pieces on the controversy, it began to represent something larger: the core values of a culture, including beliefs about national identity, immigration, and multiculturalism. This study examines news coverage by Frances Le Monde and Americas The New York Times through a qualitative textual analysis. Findings suggest that coverage became a journalistic ritual to restate and maintain core values of distinctly different French and American journalistic paradigms, as well as the national cultures from which those paradigms evolved.

Looking through Gendered Lenses: Female Stereotyping in Advertisements and Gender Role Expectations.

This study applied cognitive heuristics theory to the study of gender role stereotyping. Seventy-five high school students viewed magazine advertisements with stereotypical images of women, while fifty others viewed nonstereotypical images. Both groups then responded to statements concerning a woman in a “neutral” photograph. Differences in gender role expectations were found for six of the twelve questionnaire statements, although differences were not consistently related to either gender or experimental treatment. While the effects documented in this experiment were not dramatic, the results provide further evidence that even brief exposure to stereotypical advertisements plays a role in reinforcing stereotypes about gender roles and that what Sandra Bem has described as the lenses of gender lead to differences in the ways males and females cognitively process visual advertising images.

Work roles and news selection in local TV: Examining the business‐journalism dialectic

Local television news is frequently shaped by tradeoffs between journalistic judgment and the imperatives from the business side of a media organization. This study, based on a survey of local television journalists at 12 stations, offers a test of a common assumption: that work roles are a major influence on journalistic values and orientations. Data suggest that work roles have some relationship to values and orientations, but socialization and professionalism produce much more striking contrasts in the views of local TV journalists.

A cross-cultural look at serving the public interest: American and Israeli journalists consider ethical scenarios

This study explores how the social dimensions of a reporter’s world shape ethical decisions through parallel surveys of daily newspaper reporters in Israel and one Midwestern US state. Through regression analysis, we found that personal factors (gender, years of education) were not related to ethical decisions nor were professional factors (professional experience, professional membership, having studied journalism). In contrast, the social context element (country of practice) was relevant for two of three ethical situations. We also found that personal, professional and social dimensions varied in their utility to ethical decision-making from situation to situation. Considering a reporter’s ethical predisposition, this study found that personal value systems may be more important for ethical decision-making than formal written codes. This study suggests that ethical foundations shared across nations can create cultural bridges – but that diverging ethical perspectives also may create journalistic barriers.

Political Knowledge and Communication Resources

b Mass media are an important source of political information in social systems, but they are not the only source. For example, when Robert Park called communication the driving force of social evolution, he was referring not only to communication in the form of news, but also to communication through publicaffairs discussion.’ Several of the early studies of public opinion and voting realized this and considered not only the role of the mass media, but also the role of interpersonal communication.2 The range of influences on people’s political information holding, however, is likely to be broader than newspapers, television, and other people. Accordingly, research that attempts to evaluate the role of communication in the development of political cognitions ideally should look at a larger scope of what might be called “communication resources”-sources that people can turn to

TELLING ''OUR'' STORY THROUGH NEWS OF TERRORISM Mythical newswork as journalistic practice in crisis

The central point of this article is that journalists accomplish their work through a narrative duality. During everyday news, journalists apply a professional narrative that represents a balance between their core journalistic values and the social pressures from their working world. When societys core values are under threat—such as with physical or political violence or terrorist attacks—journalists switch to a cultural narrative that moves the public mind back toward the dominant cultural order. US and Israeli newspaper coverage of two terrorist events in Israel was analyzed to explore this idea. The analysis suggests that when news about terrorism is culturally proximate, the professional narrative tends to lead. When terrorism is culturally remote, however, cultural narratives must be relied on more heavily to assist journalists’ sense-making, and the news is more mythically-laden. Findings show that cultural affinity affects the choice of myth used, with distant events more tied to cultural references.