Schudson, M. (2003) The Sociology of News

Schudson, M. (2003). The Sociology of News. New York City: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Reviewed by Greg Perreault

Philosophical school: Advocacy–American Cultural Studies

The general gist: Journalism doesn’t reflect reality but it creates it (2). News is product developed out of a complex set of relationships between journalists, parajournalists and public officials that presents some of the occurrences in a day (4). The news media has the autonomy and authority to craft the perceived world in the image of its choosing (18).

Parajournalists– Those who supplement that work of journalists as well as steer it. At times Schudson refers to them as “sources.” These are “experts” at think tanks, public relations officials, and government press officers. Often they work to steer the news in the direction of those who already have power (3). They are also behind the creation of “pseudo-events”–events created solely to gather media coverage and perpetuate their message. Statistically, the majority of news comes from pseudo-events (6).

Parajournalists help enforce commercial interests on the mass media.

Definition of Journalism: “Journalism is the business or practice of producing and dissemination information about contemporary affairs of general public interest and importance. It is the business of a set of institutions that publicizes periodically information and commentary on contemporary affairs, normally presented as true and sincere to a dispersed and anonymous audience so as to publicly include the audience in a discourse taken to be publicly important” (11).

Journalism is designed to communicate through use of “shared symbols and meanings” among a “social coordination of individuals” (11). News exists where democracy does not (197). But does journalism? According to Schudson, yes, it does.

Exaggeration of Media Effects: People tend exaggerate the use of media effects for two reasons; (1) media are the visible tip of the iceberg in terms of social influences on human behavior and (2) people do not distinguish the media’s power from the power of the people and the events that people cover (20). In general, media effects is difficult to substantiate because we use of overly simplistic models in trying to conceptualize the effects (23).

Media Bias: Schudson notes the five most common types of media distortion cited:

1-Event-centered, action-centered and person centered–news tends to simplify complex social phenomena in ways that increase melodrama by focusing on a specific person or event (48).

2-Negative–news tends to be bad news(49).

3-Detached–journalists take a distanced, ironic view of political life (51).

4-Technical–emphasis on strategy and tactics, political technique rather than policy outcome.

5-Official–Journalists seek out experts and authorities of title they rely on accordingly. This is a result of what Janet Steele calls an “operational bias” of the press.

Relation to other theories:

-Gatekeeping Theory- Journalists work with the people and materials available to them in order to distribute a version of reality. This work consists of “selecting, highlighting, framing, shading and shaping in reportage, they create an impression that real people–readers and viewers–then take to be real and to which they respond in their lives” (2).

–Third-Person Effect- We tend to think of the media as having more power than it actually does (19-21). Thus we tend to think of people as being more effected by the media than they actually are.