This is crucial area of understanding for you because it relates to media ownership, news values and media synergy. The British TV critic, Charlie Brooker said in his book Screen Burn, that the last 9 years since Big Brother have seen an increase in the banality of news journalism so as fantasy, gossip, sex and 'trash' values associated with celebrity TV have become the norm, as opposed to the 90s when TV programmes like Eurotrash (with the same conventions) were the exception rather than the norm. Brooker is a writer for the Guardian newspaper and associated with an acidic, merciless wit.



Take the example of Richard Desmond. Desmond is the owner of The Daily Star (red Top Tabloid), one of Britain's sleaziest tabloid newspapers. As part of the media synergy surrounding this institution, Desmond also owns The Express (Black Top, Middle Market Tabloid) as well as OK! magazine and News! magazine and the soft porn channels, Fantasy Channel & Red Hot TV. Clearly, the news values associated with sleaze, sex appeal, scandal, gossip and sensationalism synergise throughout most of these institutions and represent a change in journalistic/broadcasting standards.

Check out my diigo annotations here which are associated with the world recession and the waning power of newspapers in the United States. Note the importance of content marketing, whereby a brand (like Adorama- 'a brand that wants to sell cameras') buys the magazine JPG so as to convert the content into an advertising opportunity.


News Corporation
Fox News

Big Pictures Photo Agency

Press Complaints Commission

BBC

Reuters

Voice of America

Case Study- Media Publicist- Max Clifford

Different online services and institutions are also changing the way audiences receive and think about news. Take Twitter as an example:



Also, think about the DISADVANTAGES of digitisation. Deprofessionalisation is a huge worry. Try to work out the serious point being made in this (largely fictional!) account of what might happen if Google and Amazon were to merge into one conglomerate.



Jon Stewart 'explains' Fox News...