Week of January 26th: Summary of Class

The week we focused on many parts of the flow of information from the source to how it reaches the general public. The idea of framing includes selecting important aspects of the entire story and making connections between the substantive and procedural elements in an effort to craft a story that the general public can understand. Substantive elements are the event itself, or the remedy and procedural elements are the chain of events themselves, or how such an event was executed. Those who ultimately craft the way in which these variables are ordered and woven into stories have an enormous amount of power. They are able to change a reader or viewer's sense of how they perceive a certain event to be including what actually happened to produce a certain outcome. I am not all that sure if journalists are completely cognizant of the power of their pens that they hold. The particular salience of a story is, in my opinion, the essence of it. Thus far, class has opened my eyes even further to things I feel like I already had somewhat of a grasp on. I believe I already knew that depending on the messenger, the message would be change, but not to what extent.

Questions of the Week:

• How does a journalist determine which aspects of a story to include? How does he/she sort through the large amounts of information (or sometimes lack thereof) and decide what should be revealed to the public?
• According to Entman, “the farther an idea travels between the levels on the cascade activation model, the fainter the traces of a ‘real’ situation are”, then how do we, the public, ever get “real” news? (12) Do we ever get totally authentic stories or is that nonexistent as a member of the general public? How do we achieve getting “real” news? (climbing the cascade?)
  
• What makes media coverage different if news outlets cover the same stories?

Response to Question: What makes media coverage different if news outlets cover the same stories?
Different media outlets are different firstly because of their personal biases and opinions. These beliefs color each story they cover. But let us view this in terms of framing. The aspects that a particular outlet will determine is necessary in communicating a particular event are different from ones that another will choose. For example, CNN may decide that it is necessary to include that three individuals who were killed in Iraq were of Palestinian descent while MSNBC may think that the ethnicity of the killers of the three Palestianians is more important. The aspects a source chooses to present will lead to different connections made. Also, not only will the connections themselves be different, but they will be made in response to the actual event or in regards to how the event took place. In sum, the salience of the "same story" will be different depending ont he news outlet and even further from individual to individual.