5 articles needed *due*24 hours
daavbhat
week4_newespapersonline.pdf
do newspapers report the news or make the news?
fake New York Times printed and distributed on november 12, 2008 (dated july 4, 2009). the prank was designed and organized by artist Steven Lambert and the political activist prank group the Yes Men. they explained that the prank was timed to coincide with the election of Barack Obama to urge him to keep his campaign promises.
other Yes Men projects
Coal Cares, 2011
Survivaball, 2009
other Yes Men projects
Coal Cares, 2011
Survivaball, 2009
the Yes Men’s pranks rely on the idea that lies can expose truth.
first issue of the paper that would become the New York Times (1851)
Citizen Kane, dir. Orson Wells (1941) -considered by many critics to be the greatest American film. -the film is loosely based on the life and career of newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst.
William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951)
-descendent of a wealth mining family.
-got his first newspaper publishing job when his father handed over The San Francisco Examiner to him in 1887
(hired Mark Twain as one of his journalists).
-started his career advocating for progressive populist policies (it’s always easier to advocate for the working
man before the labor movement got in full swing in the 1930s).
-ran for NYC mayor twice and governor once. eventually became a U.S. congressman from 1903-1907.
-took over the New York Journal in 1895. eventually created a chain of newspapers across the country that
reached 20 million readers by the early 1930s.
-most remembered for his yellow journalism campaign advocating for U.S. military involvement in the
Cuban War of Independence (1895-1889).
-Hearst’s newspaper empire wasn’t effective in making money—he continued his family’s legacy of wealth with
other business interests.
-the newspapers and magazines are better understood as a vanity project that portrayed Hearst’s vision of the
world to his readers.
-the newspapers were a tool to smear his political and business enemies.
-the term “yellow journalism” is derived from the papers that were dyed yellow in order to grab the
attention of people at the newsstand.
-the term “yellow journalism” is derived from the papers that were dyed yellow in order to grab the
attention of people at the newsstand.
-media historian Frank Luther Mott outlined a set of defining characteristics of yellow journalism:
-prominent headlines that “screamed excitement, often about comparatively unimportant news.”
-the term “yellow journalism” is derived from the papers that were dyed yellow in order to grab the
attention of people at the newsstand.
-media historian Frank Luther Mott outlined a set of defining characteristics of yellow journalism:
-prominent headlines that “screamed excitement, often about comparatively unimportant news.”
-“lavish use of pictures, many of them without significance.”
-the term “yellow journalism” is derived from the papers that were dyed yellow in order to grab the
attention of people at the newsstand.
-media historian Frank Luther Mott outlined a set of defining characteristics of yellow journalism:
-prominent headlines that “screamed excitement, often about comparatively unimportant news.”
-“lavish use of pictures, many of them without significance.”
-“imposters and frauds of various kinds,” including “faked interviews and stories.”
clip from Citizen Kane. dir. Orson Wells. 1941: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15jCvBBn4Fo9YXtp6Op0YFsAU4lgGUJaS/view?usp=sharing
-the term “yellow journalism” is derived from the papers that were dyed yellow in order to grab the
attention of people at the newsstand.
-media historian Frank Luther Mott outlined a set of defining characteristics of yellow journalism:
-prominent headlines that “screamed excitement, often about comparatively unimportant news.”
-“lavish use of pictures, many of them without significance.”
-“imposters and frauds of various kinds,” including “faked interviews and stories.”
-a Sunday supplement and color comics.
-“more or less ostentatious sympathy with the underdog’s with campaigns against abuses suffered by
the common people.”
Hearst: publisher of the New York Journal Joseph Pulitzer: publisher of the New York World
the main players in New York City’s Yellow Journalism Wars
Cuban War of Independence, 1895-1898
-Cuba fighting for its independence from Spanish colonial rule.
-José Martí: a poet, writer, and nationalist leader who went to Florida seeking American support for the revolution.
-was viewed as a type of exciting working-class struggle that Hearst was eager to support for the sake of selling papers.
“Richard Harding Davis and Fredric Remington in Cuba for the Journal.”
“Richard Harding Davis and Fredric Remington in Cuba for the Journal.”
unverified, yet iconic quote attributed to Hearst.
Evangelina Cisneros
-father was imprisoned as for conspiring against the Spanish government.
-when pleading for her father’s release the governor mistook her testimony for a romantic gesture.
-the governor sexually assaulted Cisneros at her home.
-as a result, she was charged with attempted murder and rebellion.
-she was sent to a women’s prison in Havana for over a year.
-Hearst was eager to use the young and pretty Cisneros sage into a relatable damsel-in-distress story.
New York Journal reporter Karl Decker. sent to Cuba to rescue Cisneros in 1887.
New York Journal reporter Karl Decker. sent to Cuba to rescue Cisneros in 1887.
Evangelina Cisneros
“melodrama is the fundamental mode of popular American moving pictures. it is not a specific genre like the western or horror film' it is not a ‘deviation’ of the
classical realist narrative; it cannot be located primarily in woman's films, ‘weepies,’ or family melodramas-
though it includes them. rather, melodrama is a peculiarly democratic and American form that seeks
dramatic revelation of moral and emotional truths through a dialectic of pathos and action. it is the foundation of the classical Hollywood movie.”
—Linda Williams, “Melodrama Revised”
USS Maine: sent to Cuba in 1889 to protect US interests and was destroyed upon its arrival.
-261 men died.
-Spanish were blamed in the press for bombing the ship.
-multiple subsequent investigations have concluded that the explosion was most likely caused by a fire originating from the ship.
-Thomas Edison joined the yellow journalism campaign as well.
-he commissioned the film Shooting Captured Insurgents in 1898 to show the world the horrors of the Spanish colonialists.
Shooting Captured Insurgents. dir. Thomas Edison Company. 1898: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Y_TB4URx1oehS__3Ucszccnd6xUgbep/view?usp=sharing
Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders
-first US volunteer cavalry.
-President William McKinley was able to gather 125,000 men for the effort.
-got its name from “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World” (1893).
-Edison’s company filmed them in Tampa Florida before their mission to Cuba.
F.M. Prescott, exhibitor agent for Edison’s “War Films”: “in these superior films can be seen the dead and wounded and the dismantled cannon lying on the field of battle. the men are seen struggling for their lives, and the American flag proudly waves over them and can be plainly seen through the dense smoke. the brave American and Cuban soldiers show their valor and superiority in fighting the hated Spaniards. you think you can hear the huge cannon belch forth their death-dealing missels, and can really imagine yourself on the field witnessing the actual battle.”
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. American Mutoscope Company. 1903: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zts5yUML00ubn9QSjXH2YWstmMpt8f-W/view?usp=sharing
U.S. Infantry Supported by Rough Riders at El Caney. Thomas Edison Company. 1899: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rlWp4hdbldleMWHSV1froILBG2sNafEK/view?usp=sharing
“News Values and News Production” by Peter Golding and Philip Elliot
-news values derive from unstated or implicit assumptions or judgements about three things:
“News Values and News Production” by Peter Golding and Philip Elliot
-news values derive from unstated or implicit assumptions or judgements about three things:
1) the audience. is important to the audience or will it be understood, enjoyed, registered, perceived as relevant?
“News Values and News Production” by Peter Golding and Philip Elliot
-news values derive from unstated or implicit assumptions or judgements about three things:
1) the audience. is important to the audience or will it be understood, enjoyed, registered, perceived as relevant?
2) accessibility—in two senses, prominence and ease of capture. prominence: to what extant is the event known to the news organization how obvious is it, has it made itself apparent? ease of capture: how available to journalists is
the event, is it physically accessible, manageable technically, in a form amenable to journalism, is it ready-
prepared for easy coverage, will it require great resources to obtain?
“News Values and News Production” by Peter Golding and Philip Elliot
-news values derive from unstated or implicit assumptions or judgements about three things:
1) the audience. is important to the audience or will it be understood, enjoyed, registered, perceived as relevant?
2) accessibility—in two senses, prominence and ease of capture. prominence: to what extant is the event known to the news organization how obvious is it, has it made itself apparent? ease of capture: how available to journalists is
the event, is it physically accessible, manageable technically, in a form amenable to journalism, is it ready-
prepared for easy coverage, will it require great resources to obtain?
3) fit. is the item consonant with the pragmatics of production routines, is it commensurate with technical and
organizational possibilities, is it homologous with the exigencies and constraints in programme making and the
limitations of the medium? does it make sense in terms of what is already known about the subject?
DRAMA: “dramatic structure is often achieved by the presentation of conflict, most commonly by the
matching of opposed viewpoints drawn from spokesmen of ‘both sides of the question.’ the
audience is here felt to be served by being given the full picture as well as an interesting
confrontation.”
VISUAL ATTRACTIVNESS: “the temptation to screen visually arresting material and to reject
stories unadorned with good film is ever present and sometimes irresistible. in turn, judgements
about newsworthiness will be shaped by aesthetic judgements about film.”
ENTERTAINMENT: “news programs seek, and usually find, large audiences. to do so they must
take account of entertainment values in the literal sense of providing captivating, humorous,
titillating, amusing or generally diverting material. the ‘human interest story’ was invented for this
this purpose.”
BREVITY: “partly this related to the journalistic role of informing rather than explaining, partly to
concerns for what are seen as audience requirements and limitations.”
NEGATIVTY: “bad news is good news.”
PERSONALITES: “news is about people, and mostly about individuals. this news value
emphasizes the need to make stories comprehensible by reducing complex processes
and institutions to the actions of individuals…brief, and especially visual, journalism cannot deal with
abstractions and has to narrate in the concrete. thus it becomes a news value to ‘seek the personal
angle’ or to ‘personalize’ the news. the effect of this is to treat institutional and international
relations either as the interactions of individuals, or as being analogous to inter-personal relations.”
David Brinkley: “news is what i say it is. it’s something worth knowing by my standards” (1964).
news media “bombshell” montage!: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y27YkKSaePfDPQ-doI18CqdHmZQhrhaQ/view?usp=sharing
POWER: “is absent from news by virtue of this severance of politics from economics; power is
located in authority not in control, in the office-holder not the property owner. news thus provides a
particular and truncated view of power, and in this sense power is a dimension that is effectively missing
from news. with these two missing dimensions—social process or
history, and power—news indeed provides a world view. the question remains to what extant this is a
coherent ideology.”
“the key elements of any ruling ideology are the undesirability of change, and its impossibility;
all is for the best and change would do more harm than good even if it were possible. broadcast
news substantiates this philosophy…”
Stuart Hall: “what debate there is tends to take place almost exclusively within the terms of reference of the controllers. and this tends to repress any play between dominant and alternative definitions; by ‘rendering all potential alternatives invisible,’ it pushes the treatment of the crime in question sharply on the terrain of the pragmatic—given that there is a problem with about crime, what can we do about it? in the absence of an alternative definition, powerfully and articulately proposed, the scope for any reinterpretation of crime by the public is an issue of public concern is extremely limited.”
Trump after dropping 59 Tomahawk missiles in Syria after a reported gas attack by the president: “my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much…you’re now talking about a whole different level… [this] crossed a lot of lines for me…when you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal—people were shocked to hear what gas it was. that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines.”
Brian Williams in awe of America’s killing machines: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lKOqrghcV_KTaF4Wo3DTcQJGCEKoEumz/view?usp=sharing
YELLOW JOURNALISM in 2019
Cuba is Starving, 1889
BBC
“Why Venezuela Matters to the U.S…and Vice Versa.” BBC News. 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjGmRJNee-w
“Maduro is Losing Ground with Venezuela’s Poor.” New York Times. 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VKgwEiWsg
Cuba is Starving, 1889
“The Yankee Plot to Overthrow Nicolás Maduro and Steal Venezuela’s Oil.” The Intercept. 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQn_DdkYlU
Noam Chomsky: political philosopher. co-author of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
Trump praising U.S. coup puppet Juan Guido: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fhumNB0fL-w8V_onVKp5FSG5v9DdEjNU/view?usp=sharing
U.S. puppet Juan Guido being “welcomed” when arriving in Venezuela after the State of the Union: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1txMP_0MYL-0drPfBpDw2DdpnSOA9hxsB/view?usp=sharing
Bill Moyers: journalist, former press secretary for Lyndon Johnson, 1965-1967.
Buying the War: How Big Media Failed Us. Bill Moyers Journal. 2007: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pDfGm93RpRuKMX22xhMx5ojyZoMNK1ib/view?usp=sharing
