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Business-Managed Democracy » Culture » Media » News Content |
The "news focuses on powerful people and institutions and generally reflects established interests". Economic news, for example, focuses on the stock market and business interests.
The need to attract audiences for advertisers, even in news and current affairs programmes, affects the sorts of stories that are covered and the way they are covered. News editors are reluctant to deal with controversial political and social issues that might alienate potential consumers. Broad questions of who has power, how and where they exercise it, and what the consequences of this are, are not covered in the news.
As a result news has become bland and neutral and ignores issues that concern large portions of the population who are not considered to have or exercise much buying power.
Yet bland news can be boring so the lack of controversy and social significance is made up for by making the news entertaining and interesting. Intellectual and political interest is replaced by ‘human interest’, conflict, novelty, emotion and drama or as one feature writer put it “currency, celebrity, proximity, impact and oddity”—the elements of newsworthiness.
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