Tabloidization
The term “tabloidization” is rooted from the word “tabloid,” which is commonly referred to as a newspaper smaller than the broadsheet. However, in its context, it concerns the style and presentation of news. The “tabloid style” is consistently seen by critics as inferior, appealing to basic instincts and consumer demand for sensationalism (Bird, 2009). ‘Tabloidization’ is the direct result of commercialized media, most often seen to be the pressures of advertisers to reach large audiences. It began to appear approximately one hundred years ago, when newspapers began adding sections emphasizing sports and entertainment, illustrations and sensations that appealed to wider audiences (Esser, 1999).
Although, there is no exact definition …show more content…
It has deeper roots, and is not merely the result of tabloidization” (Cesar 2011 cited in Alotaibi, 2013).
Towards Television
Is television news siding towards tabloidization? According to Winston (2002), in the case of UK television news there were some tendencies. The original study conducted by the Glasgow Media Group in 1975 claimed that television news was a cultural product manufactured according to an overt hegemonic political agenda and that the requirements of “objectivity” were not being and could not be met.
In the case of Swedish news bulletins, “the empirical evidence lends very little support to the suggestion that there is a linear and continuous trend from serious informative coverage of society towards a more light weight journalism geared to maximum ratings” (Djerf-Pierre 2000 cited in Winston, …show more content…
According to Brants, (as cited in Petrs & Boersma, 2013) distrust of journalism can be seen as a subjective feeling. “Mainstream media are neither credible nor reliable, are not fair and objective in their reports and that they do now always tell the whole story, and they would sacrifice accuracy and precision for personal and commercial gains” (Tsfati & Capella 2003 as cited in Petrs & Boersma 2013, p.17). In a poll by Gallup in 2014, they found out that American’s trust in news media remain low. For conservatives, 19% trust TV news, while only 15% for liberals. Müller (2013) states that the loss of trust can be explained either by a market failure where the market fails to give the requested information or by an audience failure wherein the audience is unable to recognize its contained interest. Coleman et al., (2005) further explains that people have several expectations from the news, including the giving of useful information that supports them in their personal lives and civic lives, reliable information that serves ontological assurance in an unsure world and amusing information that offers guilty distraction from anxieties of the serious world. News is valued to an extent that it meets some or all of these expectations. The news fails when it devalues these expectations. According to the normative theories of the public sphere, news media should convey 'true' and
The term “tabloidization” is rooted from the word “tabloid,” which is commonly referred to as a newspaper smaller than the broadsheet. However, in its context, it concerns the style and presentation of news. The “tabloid style” is consistently seen by critics as inferior, appealing to basic instincts and consumer demand for sensationalism (Bird, 2009). ‘Tabloidization’ is the direct result of commercialized media, most often seen to be the pressures of advertisers to reach large audiences. It began to appear approximately one hundred years ago, when newspapers began adding sections emphasizing sports and entertainment, illustrations and sensations that appealed to wider audiences (Esser, 1999).
Although, there is no exact definition …show more content…
It has deeper roots, and is not merely the result of tabloidization” (Cesar 2011 cited in Alotaibi, 2013).
Towards Television
Is television news siding towards tabloidization? According to Winston (2002), in the case of UK television news there were some tendencies. The original study conducted by the Glasgow Media Group in 1975 claimed that television news was a cultural product manufactured according to an overt hegemonic political agenda and that the requirements of “objectivity” were not being and could not be met.
In the case of Swedish news bulletins, “the empirical evidence lends very little support to the suggestion that there is a linear and continuous trend from serious informative coverage of society towards a more light weight journalism geared to maximum ratings” (Djerf-Pierre 2000 cited in Winston, …show more content…
According to Brants, (as cited in Petrs & Boersma, 2013) distrust of journalism can be seen as a subjective feeling. “Mainstream media are neither credible nor reliable, are not fair and objective in their reports and that they do now always tell the whole story, and they would sacrifice accuracy and precision for personal and commercial gains” (Tsfati & Capella 2003 as cited in Petrs & Boersma 2013, p.17). In a poll by Gallup in 2014, they found out that American’s trust in news media remain low. For conservatives, 19% trust TV news, while only 15% for liberals. Müller (2013) states that the loss of trust can be explained either by a market failure where the market fails to give the requested information or by an audience failure wherein the audience is unable to recognize its contained interest. Coleman et al., (2005) further explains that people have several expectations from the news, including the giving of useful information that supports them in their personal lives and civic lives, reliable information that serves ontological assurance in an unsure world and amusing information that offers guilty distraction from anxieties of the serious world. News is valued to an extent that it meets some or all of these expectations. The news fails when it devalues these expectations. According to the normative theories of the public sphere, news media should convey 'true' and