LEARNING OUTCOME 3:

ANALYSING DIFFERENT
WAYS OF PRESENTING NEWS
FOR INVESTIGATIVE
JOURNALISM
UNDERSTANDIN PUBLIC OPINION MANAGEMENT
• Public opinion consists of the desires, wants and thinking of the majority
of the people.
• It is the collective opinion of the people of a society or state on an issue
or problem.
• Attitudes and opinions of a large group of people on particular issues.
• The word comes from two root words, public and opinion.
HOW OPINIONS ARE SHAPED
• Primary Socializing Agents
• Family:
• School:
• Religion:
• Secondary Socializing Agents
• Peers
• Media: influence indirectly, through images and themes.
• Leaders:
PUBLIC OPINION MANAGEMENT
• This describes efforts by organizations and political leaders to
ensure that their activities are aligned to the expectations of the
general public, both in information and the services offered.
• It involves influencing the public opinions to align the your
agenda
• Public opinion, when unambiguous, impacts policy decisions,
Supreme Court opinions AND NEWS PRESENTATION BY THE
MEDIA
• Thus public op[inion management also involves efforts by the
media to effectively present news independent of the public
media
WAYS FOR INFLUENCING THE PUBLIC OPINIONS
• 1. Public Service Announcements
• 2. Image Advertisements
• 3. Protecting the Public through Government Regulation
• 4. Crisis management
• 5. Media training of employees
 ASSIGNMENT
Discuss ways how journalists can avoid
being influenced by public opinion in
their news presentation
B. UNDERSTANDING PROPAGANDA
THE DEFINITIONS OF PROPAGANDA
• Propaganda is the expression of opinions or actions carried out
deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the
opinions and actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined
ends through psychological manipulations (Ellul, 1973).
• is the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of
representations, using spoken, written, pictorial or musical form.
• The goal of propagandists is to change the way people believe and act.—
Baran et al
• It is a form of persuasion that is often used in media to further some sort
of agenda, such as a personal, political, or business agenda.
TYPES OF PROPAGANDA
• 1. Black propaganda: Deliberate and strategic transmission of
lies.
• 2. White propaganda: Intentional suppression of potentially
harmful information and ideas, combined with deliberate
promotion of positive information or ideas to distract attention
from problematic events.
• 3. Gray propaganda: Transmission of information or ideas that
might or might not be false. No effort is made to determine
their validity if the information serves the propagandist’s
purposes.
PROPAGANDA DEVICES
• 1. Name calling. Uses negative labels and a bad name to create
distrust towards subjects.
• Giving an idea a bad label. Used to persuade people to
reject/condemn an idea without examining evidence. Used in
politics/other areas common. Eg terrorism
• 2. Glittering generality. Use of vague, sweeping statements without
offering supporting evidence.
• Associating something with a virtue word to make people accept and
approve the thing without examining the evidence.
• Eg Mr President, Superior Hotel, Snow White Laundry etc.
PROPAGANDA AND IJ
• To explain the close associations between media and propaganda,
Richard Alan Nelson observed propaganda as a form of persuasion with
intention, with the aid of controlled transmission of single-sided
information through mass media.
• Mass media and propaganda are inseparable.
• Propaganda has no place in investigative journalism. This is because in
general propaganda is concerned with a controlled transimission of a
message, with the general intention of influencing a group of people
regardless of whether this benefit the group or not.
• Centrally investigative journalism involves uncovering truths behind
the hidden motives with the intention of serving the betterment of
the public
REASONS WHY PROGANDA SHOULD NOT BE USED IN
INVERSTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
On top of politicians, Journalists too use propaganda for reasons which are
contrary to the intentions of investigative journalism, which are as follows
• 1. Propaganda is used to manipulate the storry facts to serve the purpose
of the individual or organization
• 2. Propaganda is used when writing biased stories intended to manipulate
the public to favour a particular subject which may not even be for their
good
• 3. Propaganda is also used when journalists are hired to promote the
products or services or ideologies of a particular group of people
• 4. Misinform the public about something, usually due to certain influence
on them such as power or media ownership
C. PUBLIC RELATIONS INDUSTRY AND ITS
INFLUENCE ON PRESENTAION OF NEWS
WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS
• Public Relations is a general process of cultivating a positive
reputation with the public through various unpaid or earned
communications, including traditional media, social media, and in-
person engagements.
• They also help clients defend their reputation during a crisis that
threatens their credibility
• At its core, public relations is about influencing, engaging and
building a relationship with key stakeholders across numerous
platforms in order to shape and frame the public perception of a
political figure or organization.
THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF PR INDUSTRIES
• The main objective of public relations is to maintain a
positive reputation of the brand and maintain a strategic
relationship with the public, prospective customers,
partners, investors, employees and other stakeholders
Most PR programs are designed to:
• Persuade people to change their opinion.
• Crystallize uninformed opinions.
• Reinforce zexisting opinions.
Below are some of the disciplines/types within PR:
According to the functions of the public relations department/agencies,
public relations can be divided into 7 types. These are:
• 1. Media Relations: Establishing a good relationship with the media
organisations and acting as their content source.
• 2. Investor Relations: Handling investors events, releasing financial
reports and regulatory filings, and handling investors, analysts and
media queries and complaints.
• 3. Government Relations: Representing the brand to the government
with regard to the fulfilment of policies like corporate social
responsibility, fair competition, consumer protection, employee
protection, etc.
IMPORTANCE OF PR THAT INFLUENCES NEWS WRITING
With over 63% of the value of most companies dependent on their public
image, public relations has become a very important topic today for
numerous reasons:
• 1. Builds up the brand image
• The brand image gets a boost when the target customers get to know
about it through a third party media outlet.
• A good public relations strategy help the brand builds up its image in a
way it wants to.
Cont…

• 2. It’s Opportunistic
• Public relations strategies make the brand capitalise on the opportunities.
• Google was in the news for donating to Ebola. Facebook promoted LGBTQ
rights. Coca-Cola did a PR stunt against obesity.
• These opportunities even attract many influencers to share the brand story
to their followers.
• 3. Promote Brand Values
• PR is used to send out positive messages which are in line with the brand’s
value and its image.
• This builds up the brand’s reputation.
• 4. Strengthen Community Relations
• PR strategies are used to convey that the brand is as much part of the
society as the target audience.
• This builds up a strong relationship of the brand with the public.
Cont..

• 4. Community Relations: Handling the social aspect of the brand and

establishing a positive reputation in the social niche like environment
protection, education, etc.
• 5. Internal Relations: Counselling the employees of the organisation with
regard to policies, course of action, organisation’s responsibility and their
responsibility.
• Cooperating with them during special product launches and events.
• 6. Customer Relations: Handling relationships with the target market and
lead consumers.
• Conducting market research to know more about interests, attitudes,
and priorities of the customers and crafting strategies to influence the
same using earned media.
• 7. Marketing Communications: Supporting marketing efforts relating to
product launch, special campaigns, brand awareness, image, and
positioning.
NOTE: PR can be differentiated from advertising, and marketing. The
phrases below illustrate the differences
• Public relations deals in communicating expertly drafted messages using
non-paid/earned media to build mutually beneficial relationships with the
public.
• Advertising, on the other hand, is a paid communication message
intended to inform people about something or to influence them to buy
or try something.
• Marketing is the umbrella under which all the divisions dealing with
creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging dwells. That is, PR is
the subset of marketing. Everything a PR department does is determined
by the marketing goals set by the organiz…ation
 D. THE MEANING OF SPIN IN DIFFERENT SOCIETIES.
• In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda achieved
through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or
campaigning in order to influence the public opinion about some
organization or public figure
• In PR, marketing and journalism, spin is the selective assembly of facts,
and the shaping of nuance to support a particular view of a story. Spin
is intentionally misleading and can in fact give the opposite impression
to what would naturally occur.
• Companies for example may use spin to create the appearance of the
company in a certain unique way than it actually is.
• Within the field of PR spin is seen as a derogatory term, defined by
professionals to mean blatant deceit and manipulation.
• The skilled practitioners of spin are known as spin doctors
Examples of spin include
• Burying potentially negative new information by releasing it
at the end of the workday, on the last day before a long
weekend
• Selectively cherry picking (using/picking selective facts to
present to the public, or picking only ripe cherries) quotes
from the previous speech of their employer or an opposition
politician to give the impression that they advocate a certain
position
• Purposely leaking misinformation about an opposition
politician or candidate that casts them in a negative light
HOW DOES THE TRADITIONAL PR DIFFERS FROM SPIN
• Traditional PR and advertising focus on managing the
presentation of facts, spin often implies the use of deceptive
disingenuous, and manipulative tactics towards influencing
the public opinion.
• NB: Spin is often used for corporate reputation
management and has long been used to market products
E. DANGERS FACING THE INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS
• The criminals, corrupt corporations and crooked politicians all
share a common element, which is fear of investigative
journalists whose job is to expose their wrongdoing and
hypocrisy.
• Thus investigative reporters experience threats from multiple
sources with the shared aim of stopping information that is in
the public interest
• The myriad of dangers that investigative journalists face vary
depending on the country they work in or are reporting on.
• In the United States, journalists are not routinely murdered, but
can face both government pressure and civilian threats.
 SOME OF THE DANGERS INCLUDE
• 1. In the United States journalists have been targeted by the government in
campaigns to discredit them. Gary Webb is a good example of this. During the
Nixon years, journalists found themselves on enemy lists put together by the
White House. These enemy lists were then used by government agencies, such as
the IRS, to launch campaigns of harassment through unnecessary audits and
investigations.
• 2. Investigative journalists in the United States face death threats, harassment,
• 3. Attacks on their family and even murder by private interests/individuals.
• 4. Sometimes investigative journalists can have their properties attacked, for
instance nails put in their car tires,
• 5. In other parts of the world, investigative journalists are routinely kidnapped,
imprisoned, tortured and murdered.
• 6. Blocked access to places
• 7. Sometimes investigative journalists have been charged with criminal casess
F. TYPES OF MEDIA USED FOR NEWS PRESENTATION
• Media simply refers to a vehicle or means of message delivery
system to carry an ad message to a targeted audience.
• The main task of media planners is to select the most
appropriate media channels that can effectively communicate
the advertising message to a targeted audience.
• Hence, it is essential for media planners to:
• Keep up with latest media trends
• Keep up with New technological developments
• Determine long and short term effects of different media
• Analyse Strengths and Weaknesses of different media
Types of Media / Media Classification
Media can be classified into a number of types, the major
ones include:
• Print Media (Newspapers, Magazines)
• Broadcast Media (TV, Radio)
• Cinema and Video Advertising
• Internet
• Games
1. Print Media
• The oldest media forms are newspapers, magazines,
journals, newsletters, and other printed material.
• These publications are collectively known as the Print
Media.
• Although print media readership has declined in the last few
decades
• The print media is responsible for more reporting than other
news sources.
• Many news reports on television, for example, are merely
follow-up stories about news that first appeared in
newspapers.
2. Broadcast Media
• The main sources of the broadcast are television and radio.
We can watch all types of events which are happening on
earth.
• Usually, people are interested to watch the news regarding
spiritual, politics, sports and so on.
• Radio is also the source of broadcasting we can hear all kinds
of news on it and also enjoy the music on it through
changing the channels.
(i) Television Advertising
• TV is a principal source of information and entertainment for people
exposed to mass media.
• It is believed to be the most authoritative, influential, exciting medium
for reaching very large audience.
• It combines visual images, sound, motion and colour to achieve
viewer’s empathy.
• It allows development of creative and imaginative ad messages in a
unique way.
• It is considered intrusive in nature as the audience have no control
over the nature and pace of advertisements.
Advantages of Television
• Powerful audio-visual media
• Wide coverage with effective cost
• Attention – intrusive in nature
• High selectivity and flexibility
Disadvantages of Television
• High cost
• Short lived message
• Limited attention by viewers
• Zapping – changing channels
• Zipping – fast-forwarding commercial to avoid commercials
• Intrusive in nature
(ii) Radio
• Radio is a premier mass medium for users and advertisers.
• It has a wide spread reach.
• It delivers the ad message to a large number of people across the
length and breadth of a country.
• Commercial broadcasting is undertaken in major cities even rural
areas.
• It is one of the most personal medium and offers selectivity, cost
efficiency and flexibility advantages over other media.
• Efficiency of a radio ad depends upon the precision of script,
accompanying sounds and level of distortion
Advantages of Radio
• Wide coverage
• Helps to reach lower income people, illiterate people
• Mental imagery – encourages audience to use imagination
• Offers high selectivity
• Cost efficient
• Flexible
Disadvantages of Radio
• Lack of visual elements
• Short lived message
• Audience fragmentation
• Limited research data
• Clutter – Too many ad messages
3. Cinema and Video Advertising
• Cinema is a popular source of entertainment comprising of
audience from all classes and socio-economic groups of
society.
• Films are watched by a significant number of people
everyday.
• It involves use of cinema halls and video tapes to deliver the
ad message
• Advertisement can also be displayed by cable operators.
4. Internet
• Internet is a worldwide medium that provides means of
exchanging information through a series of interconnected
computers.
• The Internet is one of the newest sources of media.
• The majority of the users prefer the internet to watch news
quickly. It is more fast and capable in compare to any other
source of media.
• Internet changes the world and connects the people also
deliver the users to keep in touch with the latest inventions
and news.
 cont

• The Internet also gives you a chance to express your ideas all over
the globe.
• Advertising through internet involves email marketing, social
media marketing, online ads and mobile marketing.
• It is accessible to anyone with a computer and broadband
connection
• 5). Games
It is only grown in youth with high dimensions and more graphics.
• Games are the form of electronic media devices. Now games are
also available on mobile phones and people are easily accessible
to them.
G. NEW MEDIA
• New media is used to describe content made available using
different forms of electronic communication made possible
through the use of computer technology.
• Generally, the phrase new media describes content available
on-demand through the Internet.
• This content can be viewed on any device and provides way
for people to interact with the content in real-time with the
inclusion of user comments and making it easy for people
to share the content online and in social with friends and
co-workers.
Examples of New Media
• The phrase new media is in relation to "old" media forms,
such as print newspapers and magazines, that are static
representations of text and graphics.
New media includes:
• websites and blogs
• streaming audio and video
• chat rooms
• email
• online communities
cont

• social media and sharing platforms

• mobile apps
• Web advertising
• DVD and CD-ROM media
• virtual reality environments
• integration of digital data with the telephone, such
as Internet telephony
• digital cameras
H. CURRENT MEDIA LANDSCAPE
• A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its
landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-
made features.
• Iit describes different characteristics portrayed by the new
media, to suit the current social and environmental changes
• The Contemporary Media Landscape is:
1. Innovative
• We are the midst of a period of prolonged and profound
technological change.
• New media are created, dispersed, adopted, adapted, and
absorbed into the culture at dramatic rates.
• The shift from orality to literacy, the rise of print culture, and
the emergence of modern mass media in the late 19th and
early 20th century each represent important paradigm shifts
in the way we communicated our ideas
2. Convergent
• Every major idea, image, sound, story, brand, and relationship will play
itself out across the broadest possible range of media channels.
• As Henry Jenkins (2006) argues in Convergence Culture:
• Where Old and New Media Collide, convergence is being shaped top-
down by the decisions being made by massive media conglomerates
who have controlling interest across all possible media systems and who
enjoy the power to insure that their content circulates globally.
• It is in their economic interest to move any successful media content
from one delivery system to another in order to maximize profit and
broaden market potential
 3. Appropriative
• New technologies make it easy for people to sample and repurpose media
images.
• We can now quote and recontextualize recorded sounds and images (both
still and moving) almost as easily as we can quote and recontextualize
words.
• Increasingly, our culture communicates through snippets of borrowed
media content.
• Young people construct a mix tape to share how they feel with each other.
They create a collage of images to express how they see themselves.
• Their webpages function as the digital equivalent of the old commonplace
books, a heady mixture of personal expressions and borrowed materials
4. Networked
• Media technologies are interconnected so that messages flow easily
from one place to another and from one person to another.
• Communication occurs at a variety of levels, from intimate and
personal to public and large-scale.
• The capacity to "network" has emerged as an important social and
professional skill.
• Young people become adept at calculating the advantages and
disadvantages of deploying different communications systems for
different purposes -- trying to decide how to communicate their ideas
only to those people they want to see them while maintaining privacy
from unwanted observation.
5. Global
• Media content flows fluidly across national borders; people deploy the
new communication networks to interact with others around the world.
• The global scale of this new media landscape changes the way we think
about ourselves and our place in the world.
• We might imagine a progression from nations sending single diplomats
to interact with each other over a distance to the modern era of
international flight where many have the experience of directly visiting
other parts of the world to the present moment when an increasing
number of people interact daily, if not hourly, with people living on the
other side of the planet.
• The long-term consequences of this experiment in global cultural
exchange are still being discovered.
6. Generational
• Historically, cultural traditions and norms were passed from one
generation to another: these kinds of transfer constituted a primary
focus of educational practices in these traditional societies.
• Throughout the 20th century, however, as the rate of technological and
cultural change accelerated, young people adopted cultural styles and
values radically different and often fundamentally at odds with their
parent's generation.
• Recent research suggests that young people and adults live in
fundamentally different media environments, using communications
technologies in different ways and forming contradictory interpretations
of their experiences
7. Unequal
• Some have suggested that this new media culture should be described
as "elective," suggesting that people can opt in and out of different
levels of participation.
• Roles are adopted and shed easily at least by those who have the
access and skills needed to adjust quickly to new communities.
• Yet, in another sense, it would be wrong to describe these cultures as
"elective."
• In so far as participation within them represents a new source of power,
wealth, and knowledge, it also represents a new site of privilege and
inequality
 Learning Outcome 4:
Evaluate the importance of detailed
and thorough research that is
required for investigative
journalism