Chapter 4 mainly deals with the capitalist structure that exists within todays news organisations. The media seems to look very different to its past conterparts. According to Bob Franklin we are an ear where the news focus's heavily on the
1. Shifting balance to entertainment
2. Disappearance of foreign and political news in some media
3. Trend towards infotainment.
He belives that most of this is due to the "softer or lighter" stories that media companies are covering as apposed to the more traditional harder breaking news storys. It is not so much in the publics intrest anymore but what the public "would" be interested in. He calls this "newszak" and belives we have all moved into the infotainment era. Everything is based on entertaining the public.
Yes I do agree with what Franklin is saying, as most news coverages these days heavily rely on ratings and survey results to keep the stations or papers runnning and most believe that entertaining the audience is the best way at keeping this at bay. But I d feel that if we still maintain the traditional role of producing a news story to an audience and giving accurate and valuable news issues audiences will stay attached because most of us don't know whether or not to belive what we are hearing anymore anyways. I think if I ever put myself infront of the Today Tonight television timeslot I would have to get up and leave.
I think it was on the Hamish and Andy show on the Austereo drive show where they interviewed Anna Coren of the Today tonight (TT) show and had a quiz to guess which story they covered or which one was made up. I remember one of the questions being: did TT cover a story where a dog swam from Tasmania to Melbourne in one day and she actually said yes they covered it when they really didnt. After she got it wrong, she admitted in an embrarressed cover up that the program is based on entertaining and covering ludicrious news stories in order to keep the public interested. But really do we want to see another story where neighbours are at war with each other.
This leads me on to chapter 5.
Basically if you have read the chapter you will see how it bridges the gap between the commercial, economic and political hold on journalism to date. After reading the previous chapter I agree with most this chapter has to say. News agencies are based on commercial success. If they wern't then what good would they be in the commercial world we live in. There only following suit tot he other norms that surround us..
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