According to Prof. Avecilla, Filipinos have a seeming fascination with bad news. Violence in crimes never fails to arouse the curiosity of people. Also, David Berry adds, in reference to Wilbur Schramm, that people seek for immediate gratification – they find delight in small talks and scandals. There is little worry about differentiating news from entertainment. Tabloid newspapers sell so well because the types of stories it prints are the types of stories that generate a lot of interest among readers, but not really considered as public importance. News and current affairs programs are packaged in the same way, with the same kinds of stories that are guaranteed to rate and that are sure to attract advertisers and in turn, guarantee profit for the station. Prof. Elizabeth Enriquez from the Broadcast Communication department of UP College of Mass Communication says that the truth is that “the media is a business”. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if the story is important to the community or the public discourse because as long as it sells, it goes into the newscast. This goes with the long-standing debate in the field of communication on the definition of news because in the end, behind the cameras, the news is what the editor says it is. The increasing tabloidization of the news media is not just an issue of ethics, but also an issue of social responsibility. Anita Biressi in The Tabloid Culture Reader argues that the public sphere that the media should be building is a discourse of political, economic and social issues. In the dawn of commercialized media, the public sphere is transformed into something where citizens become consumers to whom the news is sold to. Berry emphasizes that this becomes a struggle to understand the meaning of journalism and the value of news. As tabloid journalism thrives, especially in the news programs to which people turn to primarily for news, the social function and true purpose of journalism is blurred as well. Marlon Jovianne such throwback po. Naalala ko pa noong wala pa tayong nagagawa tas Show and Tell na, sabi ni Marlon, Paano kaya pag naka uno pa tayo dito?. The rest, they say, is history.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 06:53:42 +0000
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