Comparative Analysis C.A

My final C.A for my Media, Discourse and Analysis module. I will be comparing two video broadcasts of the same story and analysing their content against each other. The two videos I will be comparing are those of RTE and TV3’s broadcast of the story of the jailed Gardai who robbed an elderly woman and colleagues. The story was covered on the 17^th of May by both news broadcasters, one being a private broadcaster (TV3) and the other being a public service broadcaster (RTE). Link to each video:

RTE - http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0517/garda-who-robbed-elderly-woman-colleagues-jailed.html#video

TV3 - http://www.tv3.ie/news.php?request=&tv3_preview=&video=48696

Video titled “Former Garda given three year sentence”

As we know from learning about the media this semester, is that publishers and broadcasters control the content that is showed to the public audience. They are the ones who create a narrative from the raw event and influence our meaning of the mediated news broadcast. News broadcasters can be biased in their reports on news events, for political reasons or to maintain the hegemony within society. Therefore it is my job as a media analyst to discover if a broadcaster is biased in a report or if they hold ideological values and report the broad aspect and don’t stand on either side of the fence when it comes to producing a meaning in their reports. My goal in this comparison is to discover if public and private broadcasters can remain impartial when it comes to constructing and delivering a news story.

We will start with the RTE report. When analyzing a news report we must always keep in mind the “circuit of culture”, and question the representation, identity, production, consumption, and regulation of the broadcast. Who has created the broadcast, and who it is aimed at? What creative techniques are used to attract attention to the broadcast and what values, lifestyles and points of view are rejected, omitted or represented in the message? This means that certain choices have been made while constructing this text and reflect the attitudes and viewpoints of those who doing the construction. How might different people understand this message differently than me, this is based on our similarities and differences, each receiver of content has a unique life experience, which creates unique interpretations.

This is a media event, it has been “constructed” for an audience for them to understand what is happening within a 2 minute time period. Like and constructed video, choices have been made by authorities in RTE as to what they can and what they cannot or should not show within the broadcast. The broadcast opens in the studio with a brief overview of what has happened, then leads into the report by “Orla O Donnell” to give a more in depth review of the story. The report was produced as-live, as to provide a window as to allow the audience to feel as if they are actually witnessing the event then and there. The video was produced by showing footage of the garda walking into court, there were no interviews or “live” clips within the report, only short clips of various buildings, Criminal justice court, gard’s barracks and a bar. The only other footage was of the reporter talking outside the courts. A report of this nature has to especially remain impartial, due to ongoing trials. The language (however vague) used by the reporter suggests a condemning nature towards the suspect, reporting on the serious aspect, and how even though there was no violence involved, it is still a very serious case, “violating the safety of an elderly woman” and a breach of trust from elderly people towards members of the gardai. The possible zeitgeist being the lack of trust within society towards our own government. I believe the reporter remained impartial to the story, it was only her that was speaking, no additional creative components such as video footage, statistics, illustrations or audio was used to create meaning. It was a standard reported video, with no hidden media message. We have to understand that when a report like this is broadcast, the broadcasters must be aware of the discourse and meaning of the video. People will see it differently than others, for example, I would have viewed the video differently than the gardai in suspect, and even the judge doing the ruling. With this in mind, certain language must be used by the broadcasters, chosen carefully and constructed in an unbiased and impartial manner, based on the target audiences differences and similarities.

As an audience, we will never see the choices that have been made, of the text and footage that was not selected. This story strives to create fairness and balance. We expect this from a public service broadcaster. The story has been targeted at the elderly, there is a sense of an underlying theme of vigilance and safety running through the report. There is no point of view given prominence.

If we look at the second video, reported by TV3, we may have a different situation. TV3 is a private broadcaster. This means that they were set up with one concern in mind, money. Being more conscious of their ratings, there is more of a possibility that a report may be more one sided coming from a private broadcaster than a public broadcaster.

Keeping in mind the “circuit of culture”, we see that straight away this story is presented in a completely different manner. It is produced live, “on the spot”. Since being live, there is a chance that the report may not have been as polished as the other broadcast, and it is obvious that it is not. The broadcaster/editor of the other video had time in a studio to chose what words and images to use depending on the audience that it was most likely to appeal to, this is not the case in TV3’s report. There were no static images or voice overs used in this video, only short footage of the suspect walking to the courts. The broadcaster opted for a live reading of the information and details of the story, outside the criminal court of justice. Broadcasters must keep in mind different rules and conventions of broadcasting, socio-linguistics, the language used in the broadcast, who the story is aimed at, is the story even news worthy? Although the journalist reported the story, there was times when she did stumble and mix up words that made the report slightly more colloquial. This is no fault of the journalists, but is to be expected from a live broadcast. For example when she described what the suspect stole the money for, she finished with saying, “... all these things” which doesn’t seem very professional at a national level. It is important to know what language to use when mediating text to an audience. Different styles are used when addressing higher and lower class families, or office and trade jobs. Each audience member has a different discourse and understanding of the same text that was broadcast, just because of their upbringing and social background, the life they live. The video is quite similar to RTE’s broadcast, but an important aspect to this text is who is being represented, and their identity. The conversationalisation of the text is crucial to a story of this manner, considering that it is a member of the gardai who is in question and the fact that it is being broadcast from the Criminal Court of Justice. An event like this is most certainly associated with private life, encompassing political, business, educational or governmental institutions. Broadcasters keep this in mind whilst choosing what language to use, what local or regional accents and pronunciations to use, and what sector of society the text is aimed at. There is no use of colloquial language (slang terms) in either broadcasts.

This story is aimed at an Irish audience, first and foremost, as is at a regional level, and wouldn’t affect people from outside out the general locality where the crime took place (Cork) or even Ireland for that matter, certain terms used in both reports like “Gardai”, is culturally specific to this country. We rely on the news to help break the cultural boundaries and language barriers to further help us understand what is happening in the story. I believe that this story is worth broadcasting because it is very current in Irish times, with a lack of trust and concern from the public towards the government. The story ties into the social zeitgeist. Broadcasts have control over what they mediate, and in a time where public confidence in the government is at a serious low, the feeling from both broadcasts is that trust has been broken towards authority, but reassuring the public that this is a rare case, and not to believe that all authority is criminal. RTE quoted judge “Mary Ellen Ring”, saying that she “hoped the trust elderly people had in the gardai could be restored after this case”. One could see this as a back handed effort to maintain or restore confidence in not just the gardai, but to higher authority, namely the government.

I don’t believe that RTE or TV3 are coercing the public into thinking one side or the other in this story. My goal in comparing these two video’s is to question whether the news can continue to act as producers of meaning whilst remaining within the structures of formal rules about impartiality. Both Public broadcaster and private broadcaster were impartial on the matter. Both broadcasters had approached the raw story, each in different manners. Both came off well as to describing the story and used very similar language to each other, so much so as would lead you to believe that one had taken the report from the others website etc. There are certain ideological values in place by our government at the moment, such as restoring confidence to the Celtic tiger times. As an analyst, I have learned that it is the broadcaster’s job to construct and mediate text to an audience and to translate it into common sense terms for the audience to understand. In modern democracy, the media serve as a vital function in the public forum. To publish without fear or favour, and in keeping to the overall question posed by this comparative analysis, I believe that the media, no matter if they serve as a public or private service broadcaster, can still produce meaningful content and retain impartiality towards a “constructed” piece of text.

Week 13 - News Report C.A

We had officially finished the module by week 13, but since we had missed a full week back in week 10. The class had been given a C.A to complete before week 13, and we still had to present it. The C.A consisted of a news report, in which we had to create a mock television broadcast on a particular "controversial story in the media recently, but we had to put our own biased slant on on the broadcast.

This was a group C.A, and I had the privilege of working with Siobhan Gallagher and Eamonn Cahill for the project. We chose to report on the recent household and water charges. Combining both of the taxes into one story. Our slant was that we were create a fear campaign and trying to scare people into paying the charges. We interviewed students young and old around the college campus. Some people had different opinions to the ones we were trying to portray in the broadcast but we had to convince them to change their opinion for the sake of our news story.

Siobhan and Eamonn worked hard on the video, audio and editing side of the broadcast, while I worked behind the scenes, researching, gathering information, quotes and statistics to use within to broadcast. Only certain statistics were chosen in order to get our preferred meaning across to viewers. We all chipped in and worked on the technical report that was to be handed in. In the end, We came out with a relatively believable and very professionally presented 3 minute news report and video.

We gathered many vox pops from many people around the college and acquired media footage from the rte.ie website. Statistics were gathered from newspapers websites, the Irish Times and Irish Independent. The continuous report from the project can be found from the blog of the project. The voice over was done by scripted and recorded by Eamonn.

Blog - http://begrandlike.wordpress.com/

Week 12 - Regulation vs. Economics

This week we looked at Public service broadcasting vs. Private broadcasting in Ireland, from their point of view and how they broadcast according to their own agenda, in regards to television news.

Public Service Broadcaster - Educate, Inform, Entertain. (RTE, BBC etc.)
Private Broadcaster - Entertain, Commercial gain, Monetary reward. (TV3, 3e, UTV, Channel 4 etc.)

When broadcasting the news, primarily this meant a commitment to due impartiality so that no particular political bias or point of view is given prominence. But now, broadcasters are more and more conscious of their ratings. There is a growing pressure to reschedule the news to make way for more "popular" programmes. If you were to apply a newspaper analogy, the television is moving from a broadsheet to tabloid news agenda, where there is an emphasis on the entertainment side of news. Rather than actual important news. News that literally affects our everyday living in a country, pressing issues and debates being reported and discussed in a broadsheet newspaper. Rather than which footballer has slept with who's wife now, something you would see on a regular basis in a tabloid newspaper like "the Sun". We see a "dumbing down" process happening in television broadcasting.

Broadsheet - Political, Economic, Social Affairs.
Tabloid - Entertainment, Personalities/Celebrities.

While most events that happen around the world in raw form are not interesting to an audience and wouldn't hold the attention of the majority of the public. There is a need to package a raw event and deliver it as a narrative using different storytelling and literature techniques. By using different elements in a news story, such as, spoken word, video footage, illustrations, and photographs, creates a sense that the story contains "windows", which allow an audience to see directly into an event as if they were witnessing it then and there, but from the viewers own home.

Like the narration, these elements are abstracted from the stream of events, cropped and cut; and as with the narrative element, they can be given a different meaning. Delivering a preferred meaning, telling people what they should be seeing or noticing, leading people to believe in one side of the story, while not directly telling the audience what side to be on. Therefore, influencing their meaning.

News stories allow us to understand stories that would otherwise be separated to us by culture and languages, they help us to understand. In terms of the news story, we are on the outside, looking in. Coming in for a sample so we can appreciate the larger view.

We should note that news stories don't just bring together all these elements merely by putting them together in a single story or sequence. They are put together in a specific (narrative) way. To create a meaning. They are collected by people, who also have their own personal views and opinions, which may shift into their work, even if they are to remain unbiased on a story. There is always two sides to a story, but broadcasters want to point out what sides you should be "looking at" and give their own slant on a story but not forcing it on you. Its kind of like an underhand tactic for you to see what they want you to see, and believe what they want you to believe.