Tejas Harad reviewed Making news by Gaye Tuchman
A great account of newswork and professionalization of journalism
4 stars
Tuchman’s book is a sociological study of journalism and is based on ethnographic work at multiple sites spanning a decade. She primarily focuses on analyzing newswork as a practice. She argues that American journalism has developed notions of facticity, professionalization and spatial-temporal understandings, which guide the daily work of news organizations.
She forcefully states that journalism is storytelling and not a veridical account of reality. She uses the Goffmanian concept of framing to make this argument, writing that journalists have figured out a set of rules and news story format that allows them to write interesting stories while shielding them from libel and accusations of bias.
She further elaborates the reliance of news organizations on other institutions such as the police, legislature and courts. I really liked her point about how time and space organizes newswork: certain stories (especially hard news) have to be broadcast as soon as …
Tuchman’s book is a sociological study of journalism and is based on ethnographic work at multiple sites spanning a decade. She primarily focuses on analyzing newswork as a practice. She argues that American journalism has developed notions of facticity, professionalization and spatial-temporal understandings, which guide the daily work of news organizations.
She forcefully states that journalism is storytelling and not a veridical account of reality. She uses the Goffmanian concept of framing to make this argument, writing that journalists have figured out a set of rules and news story format that allows them to write interesting stories while shielding them from libel and accusations of bias.
She further elaborates the reliance of news organizations on other institutions such as the police, legislature and courts. I really liked her point about how time and space organizes newswork: certain stories (especially hard news) have to be broadcast as soon as possible while lifestyle/feature stories do not have to be published so urgently.
As far as space is concerned, journalists have identified certain sites as places that reliably generate news — White House, city hall, police stations, courts and therefore they tend to frequent these places to gather news.
Similarly, journalists prioritize institutions of power as legitimate sources of news. The things that happen to the individuals associated with these institutions or the things these institutional actors do, are more likely to make news than stories about common people.
When all the aforementioned things are combined, it results in what Tuchman calls the news net, and this net tends to catch a particular kind of stories while many others slip away.
Journalists are going to miss many stories because of their social class, which primes them into thinking what stories are worth writing about and what aren’t, or the simple fact that they never heard a particular story.