Example Media Essay

Does popular journalism reach out or dumb down?

The news media has aresponsibility to be objective, a responsibility it is often criticised foroverlooking. Likewise the mass the media, with its huge audience, has an opportunityto educate - this is not to say that commercial television should fill itsschedules with GCSE Bitesize revision programmes, but that there is much tolearn through great writing, great acting and great comedy, that these arepopular art-forms. Most mass media products do not seize this opportunity. Instead,a trend of pandering to the (perceived) base pleasures of certain mass marketsis, more often than not, apparent, a trend that can be seen to reinforcestereotypes - an idea I will explore in this essay.

The real question then is: does the mediareach out by dumbing down, or does it pander and condescend to it'saudience? In answering this question I intend to examine the ascendance ofreality television since the late 1990s and question why such programmes cameto prominence, and to analyse the differing approaches of various news productsin their selection and presentation of the news and how this can relate to thenotion of dumbing down.

The often criticised emergence of realitytelevision came about in the late 1990s as a way of cutting down productioncosts whilst increasing output. With its stylistic roots in the documentaryformat but based on the concept of reality TV, the docu-soap came toprominence, and notoriety, with the unexpected successes of shows such asDriving School, Airport and Fairground, which followed members of the public asthey went about their jobs and their everyday lives. The 'stars' of the showsoften went on to enjoy minor, short-lived celebrity status, releasing poprecords and guesting on other shows.

The unexpected success of the programmesopened the door to mass production, and a spate of copycat shows flooded bothterrestrial and subscription channels - Sky One was notable for it's successfulIbiza Uncovered series, following holiday-makers in the hugely popularclub-based Ibiza night-life, which spawned countless Uncovered sequels. Thiswas a dream come true for broadcasters, who had stumbled upon the scheduler'sholy grail - a format that was cheap, popular, and quick to produce. The useof 'real people' cut out the roles - and the fees - of writer and actor, aswell as the valuable production time taken up by the writing and rehearsingprocess. They also cut equipment costs by the use of natural lighting anddocumentary style single camera format. Therefore high volumes of programmescould be churned out for little money, in little time.

The criticism which arose against thedocu-soap phenomenon centred upon the flimsy content of the shows, thecanonisation of trivial incidents, the lack of narrative, and the lack of anydocumentary-style insight into the lives of the protagonists. Many of theshows tended to make unwitting fools of its stars. Others would take the mosttrivial elements of its stars' jobs - say, a routine check of an aeroplanetoilet by a member of flight staff - and make it a central narrative of theshow.

However what was perhaps particularlygalling was that all of the terrestrial channels would pounce so fervently uponthe fad. Of course any broadcaster has a lower end of entertainment, cheapershows with lower production values than its flagship products, made quickly andcheaply to bulk out the schedule - but the docu-soap managed to find itselfstraddled across the channels in prime-time slots, as well as bulking outdaytime schedules. For the BBC in particular, who have such a proud history ofincendiary documentary film-making and social realism - this is the channelthat screened Cathy Come Home (Ken Loach, 1966) - this seemed to reflectfar to great a willing to sacrifice standards of content.

But in their presentation of real peoplein their real lives, were the docu-soaps 'reaching out' to the viewing public?It could be argued that the shows reflected their audience, that they madestars out of the viewing public, turned everyday events into prime-timeviewing, took genuine events from genuine lives and put on screen, and thusreflected the social realities of its audiences to a greater degree than everbefore.

However the stars of these shows were notcomic characters penned for a cheap sitcom, they were human beings, with pasts,and families, tragedies, hopes, futures - but that's not how they werepresented. To the viewer, they were clowns and stooges, caricatures. Thetools of the programmes may have been founded in reality, but the sum of theparts was as stripped down and simplistic as journalism can get. The plot ofan episode of Airport: a member of staff going about his job. The point: mildamusement at his expense. And with the elimination of the creative process,the value of cheap, mild amusement at the expense of an unwitting stooge ishard to quantify. In truth, the shows had little more than stylistics incommon with documentary.

And yet their effect is great. Whilst thedocu-soap fad may have petered out, their influence can still be seen in themore recent popularity of reality antique and property make-over shows, andthrough its canonisation of members of the public, can even be seen to havepaved the way for shows such as Big Brother and The X Factor, the new royalty of reality television.

This is a reality of the digitalrevolution. Products such as Freeview, Sky and ITV digital compete partly onthe promise of more channels with greater choice than their rivals. More channelsmeans more shows must be put in production, and unless the company wishes to gobankrupt, that means lower production values, less experienced talent both onand off screen, and more copycat shows - antique shows, reality shows, re-runs,and repeat showings. This leads to less experienced people making cheapershows, and spreading them over a wider array of channels.

So we can see that the dumbing down ofcommercial television in the wake of the digital revolution is rooted not inthe value system of the entertainment industry but in the economic reality ofit. Writing talent, acting talent, directing talent, production values - allthese elements cost both money and time, and when cheaply and quickly producedproducts are just as popular, the talent becomes expendable.

So what about the broadcast news, has italso undergone a process of dumbing down? Firstly, it is important to rememberthe role of humanity in news reportage. For example, what constitutes a news'event'? Is a motorway pile-up the event of the crash or the aftermath of it?Is the 'event' of a political speech the content of the speech or the reactionto it? Journalism relies on journalists, who rely on their own skills ofinterpretation, and it is generally accepted that every potential news story isjudged on a certain set of 'news values'. One of the most recognisedinterpretations of these values was made by Johan Galtung and Marie HolmboeRuge in 1965. They identified eleven distinct values:

This process is merely a reality of newsreportage: not every event that happens in the world can be covered, and soevents must be judged on their 'importance'. However problems can arise whenthis intangible 'importance' becomes linked not to theoretical values, but tothe perceived values of a generalised target audience. In a Newsnightinvestigation into the process of selecting stories for news coverage (screenedin October 1999, BBC 2), a journalist from the News Of The World told the filmcrew that a story about white youths dying from drugs sold to them by a blackman was more likely to be reported by their newspaper than a story about blackyouths dying from drugs sold to them by a white man.

This is based on the assumption by thenewspaper that their audience is not interested in the problems of drug cultureaffecting the black community, whereas the representation of non-whites sellingdrugs to white youths reinforces racial stereotypes, and as such are moreappealing, less challenging, and provide a greater sales guarantee. This isnot just dumbing down, it is systemised media bias; it is a news service thatbases its reportage on reinforcing stereotypical values of a massivelygeneralised target audience in order to maintain circulation, and hence, profit.Even if the News Of The World have judged their audience correctly, it speaksof a worrying cycle of ignorance - if their audience members characterise non-whitesas detrimental to whites, and their news reinforces this, how can they beexpected to change their views?

So we can see that journalistic practiceruns into serious problems when it considers its target audience in its methodsof reportage. This is a particular problem for commercial television stations,who garner almost all their profits from advertising sales - sales which relyon the selling of a target market, one which is shared by the channel and itspotential advertisers. What then happens if a certain news story does notappeal to a news product's target market - is it tailored to be moreattractive? Is it left out altogether? If the news product does not suit itstarget market, ratings drop, and advertisers pull out. ITV is a channel whichsurvives on accessibility, so if its news is not accessible, does not reflectthe tone and style of the rest of its programming, it risks losing viewers.

Let us examine the coverage of the first annualMay Day protests in London. In May 2000 Trafalgar Square was occupied bymembers of the anti-globalisation protest group Reclaim The Streets, in protestagainst the practices of multinational corporations and the climate of brandpower. As the demonstrations went on, a smallminority of vandals along for the ride embarked on a low-scale wave of pettyviolence, which was denounced by RTS as contrary to their values.

RTS are a young political group, tappinginto the youth culture trends of anti-capitalism and the deification of counterculture. Looking at the scenes of the protestors, they were young men andwomen, almost to a head in the 18-25 age group. The only terrestrial newschannel to give any air-time to a member of Reclaim The Streets, or to evenmention their name, was Channel 4 - the channel whose programming is aimed atthe youth market to a greater degree than the others - in fact a channel who iscontractorially required to be 'alternative'. The BBC news focused on thegraffiti tagging of the Cenotaph, and ITV news focused on the small-scalevandalism and violence incited by a small minority of "protestors"who had crashed the party. Both news products characterised the protestors as'anarchists' and 'rioters' (true of just a tiny minority). In this case, it isnot hard to see how each news product's target audience affected the reportingof the event. On the other hand, 'Select', an alternative music magazine, rana 12 page special on the inspiration behind the protests, the base of theissues at the heart of Reclaim The Streets, and interviewed popularprotagonists of the anti-capitalist sub-culture - comedian Mark Thomas andtheorist Naomi Klein.

This does not necessarily suggest agreater moral credibility on the part of 'Select', but simply that they were ina position to make such a report. The style and tone fitted in perfectly withtheir target market, and the piece also ran interviews with various alternativemusicians, such as Zack De La Rocha of politically outspoken anti-capitalistfunk-rock group Rage Against The Machine. So whilst all of the terrestrialtelevision news programmes can be seen to be dumbing down the event, it wouldbe more accurate to say that they were catering their product to the perceivedexpectations of their target market, and 'Select' did exactly the same. It ishard to see the BBC devoting 10 minutes of a 30 minutes broadcast to a historyof anti-capitalist theory and demonstration, but on the other hand this is achannel that recently gave prime-time half-hour debates to the leaders of thethree major political parties in the run-up to the general election. 'Select'gave comprehensive coverage to the history of RTS and the theory behind thedemonstration, but they may not have given so many column inches to, forinstance, a pro-hunting group. Their coverage may have been more in depth andcomprehensive on the May Day protests, but in the same way as the BBC andChannel 4, they covered what would sell.

So then we can see that 'dumbing down',within news reporting at least, perhaps has less to do with appealing to thelowest common denominator and more to do with appealing to a target audience.This can be seen to be a rather exclusive approach - appealing to a particular,and generalised, target audience excludes audience members who do not ascribeto the values of the target audience, and in this way we can see how popularnews reinforces social stereotypes. It is, for instance, a rather gallingassumption that a viewer of the BBC news is less interested in the motivationsbehind a political demonstration from a peaceful political group (who denouncedthe small-scale vandalism of a small minority as being contrary to theirprotest - at least they did when given air-time), than a stereotypedrepresentation of anarchic youths run amok.