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Sensationalism
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Sensationalism
In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotionally loaded impressions of events rather than neutrality, and may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story.[better source needed] Sensationalism may rely on reports about generally insignificant matters and portray them as a major influence on society, or biased presentations of newsworthy topics, in a trivial, or tabloid manner, contrary to general assumptions of professional journalistic standards.
Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions,[better source needed] being controversial, intentionally omitting facts,[better source needed] being loud and self-centered, and acting to obtain attention.[better source needed] Trivial information and events are sometimes misrepresented and exaggerated as important or significant, and often include stories about the actions of individuals and small groups of people,[better source needed] the content of which is often insignificant and irrelevant to the macro-level day-to-day events occurring globally.
In A History of News, Mitchell Stephens notes sensationalism can be found in the Ancient Roman gazette Acta Diurna, where official notices and announcements were presented daily on public message boards, the perceived content of which spread with enthusiasm in illiterate societies. Sensationalism was used in books of the 16th and 17th century, to teach moral lessons. According to Stephens, sensationalism brought the news to a new audience when it became aimed at the lower class, who had less of a need to accurately understand politics and the economy, to occupy them in other matters. Through sensationalism, he claims, the audience was further educated and encouraged to take more interest in the news.
The more modern forms of sensationalism developed in the course of the nineteenth century in parallel with the expansion of print culture in industrialized nations. A genre of British literature, "sensation novels," became in the 1860s an example of how the publishing industry could capitalize on surprising narrative to market serialized fiction in periodicals.[citation needed] The attention-grasping rhetorical techniques found in sensation fiction were also employed in articles on science, modern technology, finance, and in historical accounts of contemporary events. Sensationalism in nineteenth century could be found in popular culture, literature, performance, art history, theory, pre-cinema, and early cinema.
In the Soviet Union, strong censorship resulted in only "positive occurrences" being reported on, with the news looking significantly different than in the West.[additional citation(s) needed]
In the United States, modern sensationalism in the news increased after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by the Federal Communications Commission which required broadcasters when showing one partisan view to show another[page needed] and in order to be a broadcaster one needed a license. In Western Europe sensationalism in the news also increased after the liberalization of television networks in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the late 1800s, falling costs in paper production and rising revenues in advertising in the U.S. led to a drastic rise in newspaper's circulation, which attracted the growing audiences that advertisers desired. One presumed goal of sensational reporting is to increase or sustain viewership or readership, from which media outlets can price their advertising higher to increase their profits based on higher numbers of viewers and/or readers.[better source needed] Sometimes this can lead to a lesser focus on objective journalism in favor of a profit motive, in which editorial choices are based upon sensational stories and presentations to increase advertising revenue. Additionally, advertisers tend to have a preference for their products or services to be reported positively in mass media, which can contribute to bias in news reporting in favor of media outlets protecting their profits and revenues, rather than reporting objectively about stated products and services.[better source needed] The more dependent news organizations are on advertising revenue a greater number of sensationalist news stories are produced is argued by Paul Hendriks Vettehen and Mariska Kleemans in Proving the Obvious? What Sensationalism Contributes to the Time Spent on News Video.
The Watergate scandal has been credited by some with creating distrust in government and opening the door for a new business tactic for the media that resulted in the spread of negative, dishonest and misleading news coverage of American politics; such examples include the labeling of a large number of political scandals, regardless of their importance, with the suffix "-gate".
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Sensationalism
In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotionally loaded impressions of events rather than neutrality, and may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story.[better source needed] Sensationalism may rely on reports about generally insignificant matters and portray them as a major influence on society, or biased presentations of newsworthy topics, in a trivial, or tabloid manner, contrary to general assumptions of professional journalistic standards.
Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions,[better source needed] being controversial, intentionally omitting facts,[better source needed] being loud and self-centered, and acting to obtain attention.[better source needed] Trivial information and events are sometimes misrepresented and exaggerated as important or significant, and often include stories about the actions of individuals and small groups of people,[better source needed] the content of which is often insignificant and irrelevant to the macro-level day-to-day events occurring globally.
In A History of News, Mitchell Stephens notes sensationalism can be found in the Ancient Roman gazette Acta Diurna, where official notices and announcements were presented daily on public message boards, the perceived content of which spread with enthusiasm in illiterate societies. Sensationalism was used in books of the 16th and 17th century, to teach moral lessons. According to Stephens, sensationalism brought the news to a new audience when it became aimed at the lower class, who had less of a need to accurately understand politics and the economy, to occupy them in other matters. Through sensationalism, he claims, the audience was further educated and encouraged to take more interest in the news.
The more modern forms of sensationalism developed in the course of the nineteenth century in parallel with the expansion of print culture in industrialized nations. A genre of British literature, "sensation novels," became in the 1860s an example of how the publishing industry could capitalize on surprising narrative to market serialized fiction in periodicals.[citation needed] The attention-grasping rhetorical techniques found in sensation fiction were also employed in articles on science, modern technology, finance, and in historical accounts of contemporary events. Sensationalism in nineteenth century could be found in popular culture, literature, performance, art history, theory, pre-cinema, and early cinema.
In the Soviet Union, strong censorship resulted in only "positive occurrences" being reported on, with the news looking significantly different than in the West.[additional citation(s) needed]
In the United States, modern sensationalism in the news increased after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by the Federal Communications Commission which required broadcasters when showing one partisan view to show another[page needed] and in order to be a broadcaster one needed a license. In Western Europe sensationalism in the news also increased after the liberalization of television networks in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the late 1800s, falling costs in paper production and rising revenues in advertising in the U.S. led to a drastic rise in newspaper's circulation, which attracted the growing audiences that advertisers desired. One presumed goal of sensational reporting is to increase or sustain viewership or readership, from which media outlets can price their advertising higher to increase their profits based on higher numbers of viewers and/or readers.[better source needed] Sometimes this can lead to a lesser focus on objective journalism in favor of a profit motive, in which editorial choices are based upon sensational stories and presentations to increase advertising revenue. Additionally, advertisers tend to have a preference for their products or services to be reported positively in mass media, which can contribute to bias in news reporting in favor of media outlets protecting their profits and revenues, rather than reporting objectively about stated products and services.[better source needed] The more dependent news organizations are on advertising revenue a greater number of sensationalist news stories are produced is argued by Paul Hendriks Vettehen and Mariska Kleemans in Proving the Obvious? What Sensationalism Contributes to the Time Spent on News Video.
The Watergate scandal has been credited by some with creating distrust in government and opening the door for a new business tactic for the media that resulted in the spread of negative, dishonest and misleading news coverage of American politics; such examples include the labeling of a large number of political scandals, regardless of their importance, with the suffix "-gate".
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