Question:

Establish and discuss four major changes that have occurred in journalism within the UK in recent decades. Support your analysis with cogent illustrations. 

Answer:

Journalism in the UK

Table of Contents

Introduction. 2

Globalization of journalism.. 2

The emergence of citizen journalism.. 5

Popularization of scandal and celebrity reporting. 6

Increase in influence of journalism on government 8

Conclusion. 9

References. 10

Introduction

The practice of journalism in the UK boasts of a very rich heritage. Major changes have occurred since the rise of the television. In recent times, globalization and internet have revolutionized the world of news and journalism (Lewis, & Williams, 2008). Prior to the emergence of the internet, cable and satellite TV used to be the main frontiers of development in journalism (Hackett, 2005). Today, the blogosphere has opened new horizons in news gathering as well as access to information.

This paper establishes and discusses the major changes that have occurred in journalism within the UK in recent decades. The paper focuses on four main areas: globalization of journalism, citizen journalism, scandal and celebrity reporting, and influence of journalism on the UK government.

Globalization of journalism

One of the most significant changes that have occurred within the UK in recent decades is the globalization of journalism. This globalization process may be said to have started during the early 1980s. During this time, only a few newspaper titles needed to be put into consideration by news media students in their efforts to make empirically substantiated statements regarding news content in the country (McNair, 2005). For instance, only ten dailies were in circulation in the country (McNair, 2005). A similar number of newspaper titles operated as Sunday publications. Moreover, only three television channels provided news bulletins; namely ITV, BBC1 and BBC2 (McNair, 2005). UK radio stations provided hourly bulletins and some analysis of current affairs.

By 2001, the number of television stations on which British viewers could watch news had increased. They could do so on five terrestrial television channels. Alternatively, they could watch the news on three twenty-four news TV services that were dedicated to producing news indigenously. These TV services included ITV News, Sky News, and BBC News 24 (McNair, 2005). Additionally, British views could access the output provided by subscription-based TV services such as CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg. The BBC had also set up a radio station, Radio Five Live, which was exclusive for news and sport.

Most important, at the turn of the century, the internet had become accessible to millions of people across the UK. Hundreds of millions of news-seekers around the world could access online news coverage from established news sources such as the New York Times and the Guardian round the clock. Additionally, they could get additional information from thousands of independent news websites. Later on, the trend towards reliance on independent news websites ushered in era of blogosphere.

The internet brought about the most remarkable changes to the practice of journalism in the UK because the amount of information it made available is simply mind-boggling. To put this into perspective, McNair (2005) estimates that as of 2002, the information contained in internet was equivalent to the one contained in the entire Library of Congress. Since McNair made this estimate, the information contained in the internet continues to increase in size. Furthermore, this increase will continue to occur in the foreseeable future.

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The emergence of the internet as a source of news is one of the greatest, if not the main, contributor of globalization. Globalization has affected all aspects of human life and not just journalism (Aldridge, 2003). However, aspects of globalization in the practice of journalism deserve special attention because they relate to the way people share news and information. This information greatly influences the choices that people make in their daily lives. When all people in the world have the same level of access to information, an environment of cultural contiguity emerges. People get numerous opportunities to interact, thereby promoting the trend of globalization.

Technological developments have greatly contributed to the globalization of journalism. Today, people across the UK have access to numerous sources of information. People have access to news and information without having to watch TV news or listen to radio bulletins (Stuart, 2005). The internet provides them with the social media where people can interact and share information round the clock. This demonstrates the far-reaching progress that has been made since 1980. During the early 1980s, people in the UK had access to total journalistic information, only that it tended to come at a low and steady rate (McNair, 2009). This information tended to be available in both broadcast and print forms provided by national media outlets.

With the emergence of satellite transnational TV stations in the early 2000s, the availability of news could be said to have reached a point of saturation (Franklin, 2008). Today, people not only have access to more news, but it circulates around the world at a much greater speed. This acceleration of speed and coverage is attributed to the combined effects of satellite, cable, and computer technologies. Moreover, it has also occurred because people live in a highly networked global media environment. Whenever one online journalist posts an article, it instantly becomes an integral component of a global system. Such a journalist is able to index the post, signpost it for others, and link it with other articles, thereby creating a common conversation that brings together millions of participants.

The emergence of citizen journalism

The emergence of citizen journalism has been facilitated by technological developments and accessibility to the internet. It growth in popularity has also been contributed to by the widespread acceptability of the internet as a source of news (Allan & Thorsen, 2009). This phenomenon applies not only in the UK but in other parts of the world. With these tools of technology at this disposal, ordinary people who are caught up in various extraordinary events feel compelled to take up the roles that were traditionally the reserve of a news reporter.

The emergence of citizen journalism in the UK has revolutionized the way news and information are gathered and disseminated to audiences around the country and across the globe. In many cases, mainstream media houses in the UK are forced to rely on amateur eyewitness footages provided by citizens who happened to be at the exact location where the news was unfolding. These footages are normally made using mobile phones, tablet computers, and digital video cameras (Allan & Thorsen, 2009). In a way, this trend seems to pose a threat to the future of factual filmmaking. Many news outlets increasingly rely on these emerging “immediate” technologies in efforts to deliver breaking news as soon as it happens.

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In the UK, there are many illustrations demonstrating how citizen journalism has added a new dimension to the practice of gathering and disseminating news and information on mainstream media. For example, in early 2012, the Guardian, a mainstream UK newspaper, announced plans to rely on citizen journalism to secure its digital future (Kellner, 2012). The publication’s top executives announced plans to have the news outlet operate in the future as a stand-alone digital-only publication. To achieve this goal, the top executives embarked on a plan to mix its workforce of traditional journalists with laypeople and assign them roles as citizen journalists.

Many print media outlets in the UK made massive losses because of relying on the traditional approach to journalism (Allan & Thorsen, 2009). In recent years, many people in the UK have stopped buying these newspapers because they consider them too old-fashioned (Allan & Thorsen, 2009). McNair (2005) uses the “cultural chaos” theory to explain these changing media dynamics in today’s increasingly globalized world. Away from the theoretical perspective, the negative perception of traditional newspapers has made the print-edition business to be unsustainable. This has forced most of the affected print media outlets to embrace citizen journalism as well as transformation into digital-only publications.

Popularization of scandal and celebrity reporting

Over the last few decades, scandal and celebrity reporting has become very popular. Journalists have been focusing too much on scandals affecting celebrities and government officials. During the 1990s, this type of reporting was responsible for the bringing down John Major’s Conservative government (Stuart, 2005). This turn of events raised debate on ethical issues in reporting. Many people felt the need to address the issue of the extent to which journalism should interfere with the operations of governments, particularly in the UK.

Political scandal news turned out to be a new trend not only in John Major’s government but also in Tony Blair’s (Stuart, 2005). This type of reporting focused on both sexual and financial scandals. It seems that the media had resorted to this kind of reporting as an audience-building strategy. At the same time, the media tended to accommodate dissenting news, perhaps as a response to the need for it to legitimize this emerging trend. However, this has not stopped scandal reporting from undermining institutions in the mind of the public. In many cases, authorities in the UK had to respond by setting up parliamentary and government committees to look investigate the scandals.

One of the benefits of scandal reporting in the UK is that it has led to the regulation of certain activities relating to public affairs. In many cases, this regulation occurred at a time when the governments and prime ministers of the day became unpopular with the masses (Stuart, 2005). This loss of popularity has tended to raise concerns regarding the likelihood that these governments would influence the way various aspects of policy were formulated in order to prevent themselves from future media backlash (Tumber, 2004).

An example of scandal reporting is that of photographs of Princess Diana that surfaced in November 1993. These photographs, which were published in the Mirror and the Sunday Mirror, showed the Princess working out in her private gym. This media incident reignited the privacy debate across the UK, with the media being accused of abusing its freedom. In 1994, Sunday Times published a story involving two conservative members of parliament (MPs) who allegedly received financial handouts from a journalist in order to ask questions in the British Parliament. The same year, the Guardian reported a related incident, in which Conservative MPs were exposing for receiving cash handouts from lobbyists who wanted them to ask parliamentary questions.

As these scandals unfolded in the British media, the debate on newspaper ethics continued to intensify. This was contributed to by the fact that a high number of  ministers had resigned as an aftermath of sleaze reporting since the election of John Major in 1992 as British Prime Minister. This media onslaught on government forced John Major to start a moral crusade dubbed “Back to Basics” (Keeble, 2006). By 1997, the British media had suffered a major dent on its reputation. The biggest blow, however, occurred following the death of Princess Diana (Keeble, 2006). Allegations emerged that paparazzi were involved in her death in a grisly car accident (Keeble, 2006).

As the reputation of journalists continued to worsen, many media practitioners were worried that privacy legislation would soon be introduced into Britain through unorthodox means. The journalists who expressed this concern were aware that the data protection directive of the European Commission had just been incorporated in Britain. In recent years, the British government has reiterated that it does not intend to introduce any privacy legislation.

Increase in influence of journalism on government

In recent decades, journalism in the UK has been exerting greater influence on the UK government than at any other time in the country’s history. The large media empires that have emerged in recent times have been playing a critical role in influence the policies of government (Stuart, 2005). In some instances, these media empires played a central role in determine who would be elected the British Prime Minister.  For example, the Rupert Murdoch media empire played a critical role in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (Kellner, 2012).

The Rupert Murdoch media has continued to influence government operations not just in the UK but across the English-speaking world. However, in 2011, this media empire was at the center of a scandal that many people insistent was only comparable to the Watergate Scandal that led to the impeachment of US president Richard Nixon in the 1970s (Kellner, 2012). In this scandal, dramatic revelations were made regarding a series of media crimes committed by journalists working in the Murdoch media. These revelations continued to cause outrage in 2012, a situation that may continue in the foreseeable future, thereby undermining his media empire and power (Kellner, 2012). The scandals are a demonstration of a trend in which the actions of journalists from large media companies greatly influence government actions and political outcomes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the journalism in the UK has changed a great deal in recent times. The advent of globalization in the 1980s revolutionized the way reporting is done. This led to the globalization of journalism. Many cable and satellite TV stations were introduced during the 1990s and early 2000s. More importantly, the emergence of the internet created more sources of news. Today, there are so many internet-oriented news sources that people no longer have to watch TV all the time to stay up-to-date. The blogosphere has become a major factor in the practice of journalism. The internet has also led to the emergence of citizen journalism. Moreover, scandal and celebrity reporting has been popularized in the UK. Finally, the influence of journalism on government has increased.

References

Aldridge, M. (2003). Rethinking the concept of professionalism: The case of journalism. The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 547–564.

Allan, S. & Thorsen, E. (2009). Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives. Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York.

Franklin, B. (2008). Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analyzing print journalism. Macmillan Publishers, New York.

Hackett, R. (2005). Is there a democratic deficit in US and UK journalism? Columbia University Press, New York.

Keeble, R. (2006). The Politics of Sleaze Reporting: A Critical Overview Of The Ethical Debate In The British Press Of The 1990s. Heinemann, London.

Kellner, D. (2012). The Murdoch Media Empire and the Spectacle of Scandal. International Journal of Communication, Vol. 6, No. 28, pp. 1169–1200.

Lewis, J. & Williams, A. (2008). A compromised fourth estate? UK news journalism, public relations and news sources. Journalism Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1-20.

McNair, B. (2005). Cultural Chaos: Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. Routledge, Oxford.

McNair, B. (2009). News and Journalism in the UK. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Stuart, A. (2005). Journalism Critical Issues. Open University Press, London.

Tumber, H. (2004). Scandal and Media in the United Kingdom: From Major to Blair. American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 47, No. 8, pp. 1122-1137.