Monday, October 27, 2008
Agenda Setting (ch. 28)
Having worked with the media myself, I do agree that it is the editors that are the agenda setters for society. They are ultimately the ones who tell society what to think about. I have pitched ideas to many editors and in the end, it doesn't matter if your pitch is amazing, if it doesn't interest the editors, then the story won't get told. Even though editors primarily get most of their information given to them from public relations professionals, they can still pick and choose what they want to print. I can kind of see this from both sides. As an editor, I understand the pressure they are in and realize that they get hundreds of story pitches each day. However, what if they are missing a story that is actually something society needs to know about? We do rely on the media to tell us what's important, so what if they miss a story that could actually benefit us to know?
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5 comments:
Today, when we watch TV, we need to decide that the stories are real and truth. Sometimes, some stories are made by editors; and they are not real stories. We hear that some news`s pictures totally are fixed by computers and they are not original pictures.Being an audience wants to know the truth of the news.Now, people read newspaper, they need to think that the news is truth or created by the editors. Being parents today are more difficult than other days because the parents have to teach their children to think about the news. Therefore, media is important for the society.
I find your posting very interesting because I, never having had the opportunity to work in the media, don’t know how the whole thing works. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? The whole movie is based on a writer that went through all of this extensive schooling to become a writer about economically valuable things and in order to get to a job position where she can do that she has to create a name for herself but she finds herself creating an entirely different name than she’d hoped for. She goes to her editor, at a leading women’s magazine, to request a topic for her next article that isn’t related to women’s cosmetic issues. Her editor turns her down. I think it’s interesting that her editor wouldn’t take this opportunity to reach out to women and to educate them on things that are really important in our world. I know this is a farfetched example of what you’re explaining but it’s the idea that as long as it’s not important to the editor, it’s not important to the public…or so the editor thinks.
This blog is interesting, because you are looking at this material from the point of an honest newspaper with no corporate sponsors who need certain things to happen in this country to continue making ridiculous sums of money off other's suffering.
I'm sure editors of smaller papers tend to try and find the most important information, but with visual media I feel most of this is filtered through huge corporations with agendas that differ from what is actually most important.
I agree with your post. It reminds me about the movies like 27 dresses and how to lose a guy in ten days. Both of the writers in these movies want to write about politics and issues that are important to them. Instead, they are forced to write what thier bosses want them to. Like make up and wedding articles. We, as consumers, are forced to hear what they would like us too.
That is a good point. I am sure it is hard, with so much information coming through each day, to narrow it down to a few headlines for that day or week. Competition also adds pressure to their agenda, because they want to have stories that will sell and get high viewer ratings. Griffin noted that the press does not tell us what to think, rather they tell us what to think about. They focus our attention on specific things. That filtered system of information and news is kind of frightening; to think about how much gets sifted through and filtered out. What aren't they telling us? Or rather what aren't they focusing our attention on? That is power, intentional or not.
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