The Issues arising from the focus of news coverage on elite persons or elite countries – A Critical Review of the Daily Telegraph Newspaper Publications

Introduction:

There are a number of issues that continually arise from the focus of news reporting on elite persons and countries, as well as calls for an overall analysis of the British newspaper’s liaising with the powerful elites of the society. Negrine, spoke about “...the press’s eternal fascination with those who wield political power”, (Negrine, 1994, p. 43) a practice which may have been somewhat prejudicial to ordinary people and developing nations access in news. Perhaps, it has created obsession on journalists who, customarily, find it interesting selling the lives of a certain class of people in the society on the pages of their newspapers. McNair recently explained that “there was always celebrity…even in the late eighteenth century, there was a form of celebrity journalist active in London, obsessively and often irreverently reporting the doings of aristocrats and other famous people”. (McNair, 2010, p. 146)  I don’t know whether it is the society, the journalists or the elites that instituted this bias tradition, but I deduce that there is a notion everywhere of the continual media creation that surrounds celebrities, for both public and cultural consumption. Adorno once said that “cultural entities typical of the culture industry are no longer also commodities; they are commodities through and through...” (Adorno, 1975, p.13). All this simply implies is that celebrity culture has been deep-rooted in our society with the complicity of the newspaper media.

Similarly, an elite country’s dominant choice in news reporting, and in particular by UK newspapers, may unveil levels of bias, censorship as well as a contemptuous approach to news from other parts of the world. Noam Chomsky once sustained that “in countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media...makes it clear that the media serve the ends of dominant elites”. (Chomsky, 1988, p. 1)  In the UK, the connection between the governments, the elites and the media allows for the challenges that surround the resourcefulness of news from other parts of the world. This allows for, and brings a liberal insight to the answer of the essay question using a conservative newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. 

I will use Galtung and Ruge news value assessment to analyze the contents of the DT publication while indicating their links to the essay question. Main focus will be on the essay question´s link to news value; how other news sources and materials are undermined, the cultural attachment to celebrity news in Britain and other excesses of the media such as privacy issue. These will be used to explain the effects of news concentration on a particular geographical area and interest.

Frederic Miller recently indicated that “the Daily Telegraph (DT) is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally”. (Frederic P. Miller, 2010) It is clearly a succinct definition which says very little about the prominence of the DT in the practice of serious journalism. Its news content and geographical location impels every element of news focus on ‘elite people and nations’. Nel Ruigrok asserted that “Western media tend to focus primarily on powerful and important countries and persons...and the stories are presented, preferably, in a personalized way”. (Ruigrok, 2005, p. 23)  This clearly denotes the DT´s practice of exclusive reporting which sidelines ordinary people in both Britain and the developing countries. A DT front page picture which showed Michael Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones is newsworthy because of their elitist personality in the movie industry. The health concerns of Ms Zeta-Jones with the headline “my battle with depression...” (Spillius, 2011, p. 1) secured them immediate access to the news. McNair asserted that “they went on to map out ‘structure of dominance’ within which the representatives of power elites tend to enjoy privileged access to the media...”. (McNair, 2003, p. 66) This includes image based articles and the sharing of their life events in the media.

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones news report and the relevance given to the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in the DT publications depict the trend of running celebrity news in the British media and society. Even “...the pain of choosing a bridal gown” (Walden, 2011, p. 24) was given a half page coverage undermining issues such as University cuts and other social issues in Britain. The Galtung and Ruge news value analysis, according to John Hartley, sustains that “...the social activities of elite people can serve as representative actions – their weddings, opinions, night out and domestic habits are taken to be of interest to us all, since we too engage in these things”. (Hartley, 1982, p. 78) The DT headlines such as “come on, Harry, it’s time to speak up”, (Hollingshead, 2011, p. 23) in allusion to the much anticipated wedding best-man speech; “Prince invites brothers and sisters in arms to the Abbey”, (Rayner, 2011, p. 4) being an analysis of those who made the wedding guest list and another headline titled “Royal wedding – How to avoid last minute meltdown” (Lambert, 2011, p. 22) show simple references to the disparity between the attention given to the elites and ordinary citizens in the news. According to John Hartley “...who cares how I wipe my nose, if I can watch Rod Stewart doing it”? (Hartley, 1982, p. 78) No one cares. Celebrities and ordinary citizens may share the same cultural attributes but they are not valued equally within the media circle because, according to McNair, “...journalists construct celebrity as a commercial instrument for selling newspapers…paying no regard to the attributes held by a person which might justify their elevation”. (McNair, 2010, p. 146) The extensive coverage of Royal Wedding in previous editions of DT, a typical news material that has provided the media with one of its most valued ingredient which is continuity, is symbolic of celebrity cultural production. Articles such as “Why we are all falling in love with Kate” (Gordon, 2011, p. 27) which is a personal account on the Duchess of Cambridge’s abrupt attraction in the media and “the Princess and her playmate”, (Grice, 2011, p. 25) a documentary report on the life of the British Royal family are both part of the continued coverage of the royal wedding in the DT. John Hartley’s held that “…events don’t get into the news simply by happening...they too must fit in with what is already there”. (Hartley, 1982, p. 75) All the news related reports about the royal wedding are journalistic mastery in the DT’s pages. The question that must, however, come about from this is what happens when there is a twist in event and the public demand more about the lives of these public individuals? What happens when “…situations arise where something happens that does not conform to ‘the script’ the media use to describe that situation…”? (Louw, 2010, p. 125)

There was an interesting article in the DT that seemed to, somehow, relates with the discussion about rights to privacy by the privileged persons’ and was titled “MP: gagging orders just give rich men more power”. (Beckford, 2011, p. 9) The style of this report appears to have conservative undertone because of the critical approach it took over the use of court injunctions and the suppression of journalistic reports on the private lives of the elite persons. One of these cases was the BBC’s Andrew Marr, who, according to DT report “...won a High Court order in January 2008 to silence the press following his extra-marital affair with another national newspaper reporter”. (Collins, 2011) It is scandalous for a journalist to exploit “…the courts...flexible approach towards the use of Article 8 ECHR to refashion the breach of confidence remedy...into a more effective mechanism to privacy rights”, (Feintuck, 1999, p. 194) as other celebrities do to gag the media; citing right to privacy. It seems like celebrity cynicism, just because they are also able to use the media to foster their interests and their personal agendas. Most of them are like freeloaders who do nothing more than crappy entertainment for the press.  McNair said that “People with real talent have been squeezed out of celebrity culture by the media’s fascination with ordinariness”, (McNair, 2010, p. 146) meaning that the media personalities predictability and availability to fill newspaper pages are preferred. If what transcends in their lives does affect us and that an article such as “Carla pregnancy rumour...” (Allen, 2011, p. 13) is published in DT pages - it is therefore unacceptable for them to claim a right to privacy. They simply don’t have it.

The concentration of British newspaper reports on elite countries has similar value attachments to celebrity news focus; the only difference being for the politics which includes both cultural and institutional interests.  It leads to concerns over “the reliance of the media on information provided by government…”, and general issue about “…inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices”. (Noam Chomsky, 1988, p. 2) It may, perhaps, explain the media inclination that is on the news from particular parts of the world, especially given their very influential, political powers with which they are able to override news reports from other parts of the world. Alex Spillius’ article, titled “Obama braced for battle with Republicans over tax rises for rich” (Spilllius, 2011, p. 18) was probably in the DTs news because of cultural proximity. However, news from developing countries is barely mentioned - unless an ‘elite country’ is involved. An article such as “Gbagbo could face charges over claim of mass murder” (Nelson, 2011) was drawn to the news because of the French involvement in the crisis; supporting the notion that “stories about wars...involving the USA,USSR or forces explicitly allied to one or the other, will be reported whereas others go virtually unnoticed...”. (Hartley, 1982, p. 78) For instance, President Hugo Chavez’s squabble with the US government had kept Venezuela in the media spotlight for a considerable period of time, but since criticism of the US reduced, Venezuela seemed to disappear from the news. Ivory Coast could also, pretty soon, disappear from the news as soon as France pull’s all of its forces from the country.

Some of these reports on elite countries are sometimes printed to set a particular agenda, thus creating issues to sway a large percentage within members of the public. McQuail spoke about “...the order of importance given in the media to issues and the order of significance attached to the same issues by politicians and the public” (McQuail, 2010, pp. 512-3) which can be envisaged in some DT articles such as the Wiki leaks report on the treatment of Al-Qaida terrorists by the US government titled “leaked files reveal the secret of Guantanamo terrorist” (Christopher Hope, 2011, p. 1) and the departure of former Libya’s intelligence chief, who was suspected as being the brains behind the terrorist attack over Lockerbie with title “Lockerbie families fury as Koussa leaves UK”. (Waterfield, 2011, p. 1) They are all news because of the intention given – that led to an awakening of public outrage and also, the US’s and the UK’s (two elite nations) involvement. Now, with “Osama bin Laden shot dead...” (Harnden, 2011), the interest of the elite nations goes on to dominate the news headlines once again.

 Conclusion:

In the DT, there is absolute monopoly of Western interests in the news-headlines which end up overriding other important news stories from across the globe. I had argued that the British media news solely focuses on elite people and nations seem to have a cultural undertone and set-values within this sustainability. As such, there maintains a successive chain of events and activities that are very much embedded in Western cultural values.

Although the DT is not a tabloid newspaper, there are points where it gives that feeling, especially in the way in which it still reports the celebrity news events within society and culture pages. I previously mentioned the royal wedding as part of media creation and idolatry of personalities, and I said that everything regarding the royal wedding ended up becoming news because of the cultural attachment to things like the wedding gown, the designer and even, the best man’s speech. These issues that continually arise from such media focus are, therefore, the undermining of events in the lives of the ordinary people in the UK society and elsewhere.

The right to privacy was also briefly discussed in order to unveil a level of hypocrisy that is around some of these celebrities and simultaneously, discuss the question about public interest in their private lives. I sustained that for public figures, the right to privacy should be inexistent because they are of public interest. Unfortunately, the deeper the public become interested in the events of their lives, the more prominent the issue of asymmetrical representation of ordinary people in the media comes about.

 I, also, indicated the absolute irrelevance of most news materials that are reported - due to the high involvement of a media’s personality. Using Galtung and Ruge, I analysed the DT news contents, explaining factors that lead to their ‘newsworthiness’. This gave rise to the possibility that there was the ability to come up with a bid, in the hope to establish what the actual issues that arose from the given focus of news coverage on elite persons or countries and its relation to it being of news value in the British media.

Finally, I also argued that another concern over the focus of news coverage on the elite countries is the continual government domination of the press’s agenda. We have seen, throughout, how the US government is gradually releasing information related to bin Laden’s killing, thus dictating the news agenda for as long as they could. It is all then possible because journalists fail to truly explore other leads that may be out there, and that are ready to make them news.

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