News Outlets Spin the
News to Help Ratings

Presenting the News

Commentary for Thursday 09/07/2007 Shaping the News

Lesson 1: The news is not necessarily packaged to inform.

The News You See and Hear: Whether the news is presented on television, over the radio, or what you read in the newspaper, the decision as to what you read or hear is not decided by 'The News' but rather what the editors think you should or want to see and hear.

Agenda Driven? Not necessarily from a political perspective, but certainly from a ratings perspective. It is the ratings perspective that yields Anna Nichole Smith and Paris Hilton ad-nauseam.

Editors Decide: Editors making the choices of what you see and hear are certainly making those decisions based on their opinion of what their audiences want. There are only two conclusions that can be drawn or inferred from what the editors present to their audience. The first conclusion is that the editors choices are a reflection of their opinion of the interests of their audience. So if you get Paris Hilton or Anna Nichole all day you can bet that the editors don't feel as though they have an obligation to inform you of the day's events, only to have high ratings. To make matters worse, as long as the ratings are good, you justify the decisions made by the editors. When the main topic of the day is whether Britney Spears had her baby strapped in while driving, or that Lindsay Lohan went into another rehab center, the editors are banking that you are not interested in the more important events of the day.

Shaping Opinion: News cast can also shape opinion. For illustration purposes lets assume that X and Y had a race and that Y won. The News in Y town would read "We Won" while the news in X town would read "X comes in second while Y was next to last". Both are truthful, but the implication in X town is that they did better than Y. If you didn't know that Y won the race you would have to assume that Y really screwed up. This illustration shows how news can be manipulated. No matter what has actually happened, truthful viewpoints can be written to yield different impressions.

Multiple Sources: Because news is 'shaped', a well informed person must use multiple sources for information. Context is extremely important. To present the context to a subject that suits their ideas, editors often use omissions. The term "spin the news" is often used to describe how parties with a vested interest in a particular issue will shape the subject.

Daylite Sun: Here at Daylite Sun, we feel strongly about getting multiple sources on all issues that we write about. We don't claim to be unbiased, but we won't omit pertinant facts to aid our point of view. When we are wrong, we will write a retraction and admit our error. We also would like to see more of the news consuming public to look at issues from multiple sources. If your only source is talk radio, then your going to get a skewed and possibly inaccurate viewpoint. The same goes for the reliance on the major network news outlets. When a particular subject interests you, then try and get all sides of the issue before forming an opinion. The reward for your research gaines you respect, and will put you in a better position to defend your opinion.

Robert welcomes your comment to this or any other of my commentaries.

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