Abstract
This article investigates the role of journalists in the media construction of a socially excluded and stigmatized local authority housing estate. We seek to identify the ways in which the production context of ‘newsmaking’ is reflected in such content. Having outlined the problematic ways in which the estate in question is portrayed, we argue that an increasingly competitive commercial environment – best evidenced in the marketization of news – is increasing pressures on journalists to prioritize circulation figures and audience ratings over journalistic balance. Our analysis of this issue is guided by two interconnected and over-arching theoretical approaches, namely social exclusion and political economy. Our analysis is situated squarely in the context of recent debates concerning the social and political implications of the increased marketization of news. In reasserting the importance of a critical sociology of journalism, our case raises fundamental questions about the practice of journalism and how complex issues such as social exclusion and poverty are represented in a media setting.
Keywords
Introduction
Using a production research approach we investigate the role of journalists in the media construction (and stigmatization) of a socially excluded Irish local authority 1 housing estate. In exploring the forces which shape how journalists construct and represent Moyross, we seek to identify the specific ways in which the production context of ‘newsmaking’ is reflected in content. Having outlined the problematic ways in which the estate in question is portrayed, we argue that an increasingly competitive commercial environment – best evidenced in the marketization of news – is increasing pressures on journalists to prioritize circulation figures and audience ratings over journalistic balance (Ryfe, 2009). Our analysis of this issue is guided by two interconnected and overarching theoretical approaches, namely social exclusion and political economy (Byrne, 1999; Fenton, 2007; Levitas, 2000; Mosco and Wasko, 1988). Our analysis is situated squarely in the context of recent debates concerning the social and political implications of the increased marketization of news (Guyot, 2009; McManus, 2009, 1992, 1994). In reasserting the importance of a critical sociology of journalism, our case raises fundamental questions about the practice of journalism and how complex issues such as social exclusion and poverty are represented in a media setting.
Stigmatizing places
This research was undertaken at a time of significant change in the ownership structure and orientations of both local and national media in Ireland. Conglomeration, rationalization, tabloidization and an increasingly competitive media marketplace are all key features of both the Irish and Limerick contexts. A further striking characteristic is the reduced presence of the national media in Limerick. None of the national titles have a newsroom or a news bureau in the city. 2
Our work takes place in the context of a wider debate about the ways in which mass media can contribute towards the stigmatizing of the socially excluded and the places in which they live (Bullock et al., 2001: 229–30; Devereux et al., 2011; Golding and Middleton, 1982; Hayward and Yar, 2006: 11–12; Lens, 2002: 144). Previous research on these themes has examined how mass media and other social forces contribute to the creation of negative stereotypes, which damage the reputations of the places in which the underclass or poor reside (Bauder, 2002; Blokland, 2008; Greer and Jewkes, 2005; Hastings, 2004). Negative and sensationalist media coverage of poor neighbourhoods is consistently referred to in studies which attempt to explain how neighbourhoods come to suffer from endogenous stigmatization (Aalbers and Rancati, 2008; Gourlay, 2007; Oresjo et al., 2004; Palmer et al., 2000; Warr, 2006; Wassenberg, 2004). The existing research literature demonstrates that negative reputations of such places can, in themselves, have a profound effect on the life chances, experiences and self-image of those who live in neighbourhoods which carry a stigma (Permentier et al., 2007, 2008, 2009). The perspectives and experiences of journalists are largely absent from this otherwise important body of research work. As a counterpoint, this article privileges the perspectives and experiences of journalists who write about one socially excluded housing estate. We hold that understandings of journalism and of the media’s role in the stigmatization of people and places have much to gain from a concentration on the production context of media texts. Such an approach is key to understanding the tensions between a commitment to socially responsible journalism and the market forces that ultimately shape these work practices.
The location of our study
Our article draws on data from a more extensive study of the production, content, and reception of media coverage of Moyross – an estate on the edge of Limerick city in the Southwest of Ireland. Moyross consists of 12 distinct housing ‘parks’ and over 1000 households. Since 2007 it has been the focus of a major regeneration effort by the Irish state. With the majority of housing in local authority ownership, the estate is one of the most deprived, not only in the city of Limerick, but also on the island of Ireland. Levels of unemployment and early school leaving are high compared to city and national averages. Moyross has been the site of a number of national and European projects which have attempted to combat social exclusion and marginalization. In the public mind, the estate has a distinctly negative reputation. Barnes (2010), for example, found that teenage boys in a middle-class school, elsewhere in Limerick, associated Moyross with crime, disorder and social unrest, thus reflecting the dominant themes in evidence within media coverage of the estate (Fitzgerald, 2007: 7).
A widely reported arson attack on two young children in 2006 was the final catalyst for major state intervention in Moyross. In September of that year Millie Murray and her five-year-old brother Gavin were severely burned in an arson attack on their mother’s car in Moyross. Three teenagers from Moyross were subsequently convicted of the petrol bomb attack on the children. The Irish cabinet asked a former Dublin City Manager (John Fitzgerald) to carry out an immediate assessment of the issues prevailing in the estate. Fitzgerald reported back on the scale of social exclusion in March 2007 and the Cabinet’s Committee on Social Inclusion agreed to the creation of two regeneration companies to oversee the redevelopment of four estates in Limerick city, including Moyross. While there has been a major focus in the plans (and in their reception) on the moves to physically regenerate these estates through a major demolition and rebuilding programme, there is also a focus on how social regeneration might take place.
As sociologists, we have a particular interest in the prospect of social regeneration and more specifically on the ways in which Moyross and its inhabitants are explained by the mass media and perceived by the public generally. While we recognize the obvious importance of analyses of content and reception, we hold that the production research approach is of key importance in reaching a more critical understanding of the initial making and shaping of media texts. Our primary focus in this article is on the perspectives and experiences of print and broadcast journalists who regularly report on Moyross, but we also draw on the views of the community as a useful point of contrast.
Media-making: The production research paradigm
Although media studies has been dominated in recent years by analyses of content (discourse) and audience reception, there is a long-standing tradition within media sociology of examining the world of the media professional and of the activities of news journalists in particular (Cottle, 2007; Grossberg et al., 2006; Hesmondhalgh, 2006: 49–90; Tuchman, 1991). Historically, sociologists such as Weber and Park recognized the pivotal role played by journalists and editors in shaping our understanding and perceptions of the social world (Devereux, 1995). What has come to be known as the production research paradigm places the spotlight on the initial ‘making’ of media texts or messages. Drawing on a range of ethnographic research methods including interviews and participant observation, it investigates the culture of media organizations, the dynamics involved in ‘gate-keeping’ and the activities, experiences and ideologies of journalists and other media professionals (Gitlin, 1994; Philo, 2008). The paradigm seeks to explain how and why particular discourses, ideologies, templates or frames come to predominate within media coverage. Influenced, in the main, by organizational sociology and by theories of political economy (Fenton, 2007; Mosco and Wasko, 1988) in particular, the production research paradigm carries with it the promise of revealing more about the realities of doing media work, the constraints within which journalists and other media professionals operate, and the intended meanings that are encoded into media texts (Hall, 1974). The production research paradigm acknowledges that the creativity or agency of media professionals such as journalists and reporters is constrained by a wide range of factors internal and external to their respective media organizations. Internal constraints might include the routines of production, ownership structure, editorial line, culture, or ethos of a particular media organization. External constraints might include the economic power of advertisers or sponsors, the laws and regulations imposed by the state concerning libel or defamation, the willingness (or not) of the politically and economically powerful to cooperate in the production of certain kinds of media texts, and the potential for negative reaction from audience members (Devereux, 2008; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). Ryfe (2009) notes that in spite of a decline over time in the number of studies on journalistic practice, a new wave of ethnographic work has begun to consider the radically altered environment in which journalists operate (e.g. Benson, 2001; Boczkowski, 2004; Boyer and Hannerz, 2006; Klinenberg and Benzecry, 2005). Given the focus of this article, it is worthwhile noting that the production research paradigm has been used to good effect in attempting to understand how certain kinds of hegemonic understandings of poverty and social exclusion have come to predominate within media discourse (e.g. Devereux, 1998; Iyengar, 1991). The production research paradigm underlines for us the importance of understanding the conscious and unconscious practices that shape media work and by extension how an insight into media practices has an importance in terms of how we ultimately understand the content and reception of media texts.
Methods
The data which inform our analysis in this article were generated as part of a larger study which seeks to understand mass media representations of Moyross. The overall study was undertaken using a tripartite methodology combining analyses of production, content and reception (Deacon et al., 1999; Holliman, 2004; Philo, 1990, 1993). We began our analysis by engaging in a qualitative content analysis (Krippendorf, 2004) of a complete sample of 420 articles drawn from four newspapers, which were chosen for their diversity of audiences and styles. Specifically, we selected our sample from a national broadsheet, two national tabloids and a local imprint. The time period within which we selected articles was 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2007. We have also engaged in analyses of broadcast content, specifically a radio documentary, which summarizes a local radio station’s coverage of a key story occurring in Moyross during the period of our study. The documentary, broadcast in November 2006, was based on a composite of radio broadcasts concerning a major national media story located in Moyross – an arson attack on two resident children. Our analysis of content extends to television broadcasts, which were selected from the national public television station’s Radio Telifis Éireann’s (RTÉ) prime-time news programmes (Six One News and the 9 O’Clock News) broadcast between 1 September 2006 and 31 December 2006. 3 Having established the nature of media content across these three formats, we proceeded to gather primary data from both journalists and audience members.
Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with five journalists 4 who work in the print and broadcast media sectors. The interviewees in question were responsible for the bulk of the radio and television coverage analysed and for 92 (22%) of the 420 print media articles examined.
To complete our tripartite methodology, two focus groups were conducted in Moyross following preliminary analysis of the print and broadcast media content. Each involved six participants, most of whom were residents of Moyross. 5 In each focus group, one non-resident community activist also participated. The adoption of a tripartite approach facilitated a more holistic understanding of the processes which shape journalists’ decision-making with regard to the construction of media content. Furthermore, it permitted a degree of triangulation which enhances the credibility (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) of our interpretation.
Stigmatizing Moyross
As a prelude to examining journalists’ viewpoints on reporting on Moyross we summarize the findings from our detailed content analysis of print and broadcast media coverage of the estate in 2006 and 2007 (Table 1).
Key findings from content analysis of media coverage of Moyross
Our analysis of media content pertaining to Moyross concluded that coverage was highly problematic and in fact could be seen as contributing to the further stigmatization and pathologizing of the people and the place. Coverage of the area is overwhelmingly negative. In our sample of print media articles, for example, 70 per cent (298) had crime as their primary theme. Even allowing for the fact that 84 of these articles were concerned with the Millie and Gavin Murray story and its aftermath, crime remains the most common context by which the public hear about Moyross. The premium which media professionals place on crime and deviance in terms of their newsworthinesss explains the estate’s prominence in the national media (Greer, 2009). The second most common theme in print media reporting at this time was that of regeneration. This was the primary theme in only 10 per cent of all articles examined. Even in covering a process that might ultimately reshape Moyross in a positive way, journalists and sub-editors resort to negative frames. A number of the headlines concerning regeneration use stigmatizing language; for example, Moyross is variously referred to as a ‘troubled city suburb’, a ‘feud estate’, a ‘crime-ridden housing estate’ and a ‘gangland estate’. A much smaller number of articles were concerned with more positive stories about the efforts of the Moyross community in the face of the challenges posed by social exclusion. In our total sample of 420 articles we identified only 10 that were primarily focused on community spirit in Moyross. Our content analysis found that national print media are more likely to be sensationalist than their local counterparts and less likely to carry stories about positive community events. It is important to note, however, that our content analysis does not depict an entirely clear-cut distinction between the national and local media. While national media included fewer positive stories than local media, the majority of local content was still negative and even positive stories often incorporated reference to the estate’s stigmatized image.
While Moyross is regarded as being newsworthy (Shoemaker et al., 2007) – mainly in negative terms – it is noticeable that media coverage of the area, as a rule, does not provide much by the way of explanation as to why social exclusion and marginalization exist in Moyross in the first place. In both print and broadcast media, stories are more likely to be episodic than thematic (Iyengar, 1991). With some notable exceptions, we found that media coverage is focused on the factual reporting of episodic events, rather than providing any analysis, context or critique which are reserved in the main for editorials and features. Structural explanations are largely confined to brief excerpts from sources whose comments are regularly presented as lists of causal factors. For example, in the articles that are primarily about regeneration only three can be regarded as engaging in any meaningful way with the structural causes of Moyross’s problems. A Limerick Leader editorial (29 May 2006), a feature from the same newspaper (26 May 2007) and an editorial from the Irish Independent (30 October 2006) offer readers an analysis of the causes of the area’s difficulties. While the Limerick Leader focuses on political neglect, the Irish Independent focuses on the impact of illegal drugs.
As further evidence of the pathologizing discourses evident within media coverage of Moyross, we argue that the language regularly and routinely used by journalists is problematic. For example, a number of articles employ the metaphor of a war zone to describe the estate. Moyross is described as ‘troubled’, ‘notorious’, ‘a blackspot’, a site of endemic problems or a ‘time-bomb’. Thirty-eight newspaper articles define Moyross as troubled (‘troubled estate’, ‘troubled Limerick suburb’ and ‘troubled area’ being the most common descriptions) and sometimes in doing this grouped Moyross and Southill 6 together. The term ‘troubled’ is routinely used by journalists but not by their sources, which leads us to conclude that it is a powerful media construct. In our sample of television news stories during September–December 2006 we found the convention of constructing Moyross as a ‘troubled estate’ extends beyond the reporting styles of individual journalists. The epithet is used by newscasters in introducing reports about Moyross and even as a descriptor within RTÉ’s news archive itself. By contrast, however, a discussion broadcast by RTÉ Television’s current affairs programme Prime Time on 12 September 2006 managed to convey the complexities of the many issues facing the residents of Moyross from contrasting ideological positions without once using this phrase.
However, it is noteworthy that it is not inevitable that the media use the appellations ‘troubled’ or ‘troubled estate’ when referring to Moyross. Live 95fm’s radio documentary on Millie and Gavin Murray successfully managed to narrate the story of the arson attack and its aftermath without once pathologizing Moyross or its residents. Based on an amalgamation of archive news coverage and interviews, the documentary is exemplary in that it seeks to balance the viewpoints of those most affected by this horrific attack with the perspectives of community and national leaders. Unusually, normalizing discourses are to the fore in this documentary. Moyross is portrayed as being no different to the rest of the country. In stark contrast to the stigmatizing discourses evident within much of the print media coverage, the radio documentary narrates the story of the September 2006 arson attack and its aftermath in a sensitive way. The programme – 20 minutes in duration – interviews the children’s mother and father, their godmother, and the children themselves. It also draws on the views of a community activist and a senior police officer as well as elite figures such as the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Aherne and the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. Moyross emerges as a place united in its anger and grief. There are no references at all to the ‘troubled’ estate. Replete with unifying discourses which reflected the widespread outrage to the arson attack, the Millie and Gavin radio documentary is exemplary in that it seeks to balance the viewpoints of those most affected by this horrific attack with the perspectives of community and national leaders. In this instance it is clear that the medium (radio), the genre (a human interest documentary) and its duration allowed for a more balanced and nuanced approach towards explaining this event and resulted in a more balanced portrayal of the Moyross estate. It is also noteworthy that this balanced coverage emanated from a media organization which had made a conscious editorial decision to eschew the repetition of stereotypes of Moyross. In the words of the station’s spokesperson:
We’ve made a conscious decision to do that … we are conscious of an imbalance over the years and we at some point maybe in the last five years made a decision and said, okay, let’s try where possible to give an overall picture on an ongoing basis so that when crime happens – and we must cover it – it is within the context of saying but there’s another story here and there are lots of people and events taking place that are worth covering …
The ‘troubled’ estate: Journalists and media stigmatization
Our analysis of print media coverage confirmed that Moyross was frequently labelled as ‘a troubled estate’, reinforcing a stigmatized and homogenizing identity. A number of the journalists to whom we spoke themselves used this term in their coverage of the area. When we put this practice to them, they acknowledged it as problematic, but were nonetheless unapologetic about its use:
I suppose I have called it troubled estate depending on the story. It is problematic, of course it is, that it suffers from a label, those type of labels. I suppose troubled estate is what it is at times so that’s why that phrase is used you know. (Journalist participant, hereafter JP)
Residents are acutely aware of this kind of labelling:
… no matter what story that comes up you will find the ‘troubled estate’, ‘the ghetto’, it is categorized, it is stigmatized, and no matter what story, if they are giving a story about something that happened, if it’s from Moyross they will always make sure that it is known that this is a stigmatized area. (Community participant, hereafter CP)
As we have already discussed in our account of the Live95fm radio documentary concerning Millie and Gavin Murray, only one of the journalists interviewed had taken a conscious decision not to use the term ‘troubled estate’ in their work. They summarize succinctly the reasons for eschewing the use of this kind of label:
The obvious danger is that you never get away from it. I mean can you ever see a situation where someone replaces constant reference to the trouble with the joyous, the joyous estate of Moyross, that’s never going to happen. So, that very shorthand is dangerous. (JP)
It may be that the ubiquity of this label in both broadcast and print media coverage reflects its unconscious use. There was, however, a sense among our journalist participants that there was some truth behind the negative stereotyping of Moyross. Although the journalists to whom we spoke seem more attuned to the negative aspects of life in Moyross than to the everyday banality of most residents’ lives, most did recognize that the focus of media attention was overwhelmingly on the negative at the expense of a balanced depiction of the area. The term Moyross acts as a cognitive trigger (or template) (Edelman, 1998; Lens, 2002) for audience members, providing them with familiar storylines about the area and its residents, which serve to reinforce commonly held beliefs about the people and place. Both community participants and journalists recognized the template:
Moyross is the rock star of deprivation [laughter from others], you know crime and gangs. (CP) I think there has been, in the past, some truth to caricatures, there often is, but I think the caricature has suited the media and … when a particular image is in the public mind and it will sell newspapers or, alternatively, it will bring in viewers or listeners, they have a tendency to feed into that stereotype … (JP)
The journalists to whom we spoke recognized this phenomenon and, indeed, many suggested that Moyross’s stigmatized reputation is equally extended to Limerick city in the national consciousness:
I think it certainly, it does tarnish the whole area but it’s like the bigger picture then how Moyross then tarnishes what happens to the whole of Limerick like. (JP)
One of the journalists holds that stories about Limerick are framed in terms of an association with a history of criminality. While crime occurring in other provincial cities is commonly depicted as an aberration, crime occurring in Limerick is normalized. He asserts:
I genuinely believe that every country needs a waste paper bin, in media terms, and I think, unfortunately, Limerick has become the waste paper bin and, because it has a simple image in the minds of people outside of Limerick, it is one that a lot of people, perhaps even subconsciously, like to reinforce in their coverage. (JP)
The community participants reject the idea that the behaviour of residents as a group exceeds the limits of expected deviance or differentiates them from residents of other areas. They suggest that there are worse places in Cork and Galway, but these cities are represented less sensationally because they are tourist attractions, a point of view shared with the journalist quoted above.
The preponderance of negative media coverage has a powerful impact on the residents’ interactions with external actors:
… I know there’s a lot of people who won’t go into Moyross because they are probably nervous. But it’s like us if we read a paper and see something in Dublin … Do you know what I mean? It’s all down to the papers like. (CP)
Residents also cited examples of how Moyross’s stigmatized identity impacted on their interactions with external actors, resulting in prejudice and differential treatment. These participants cited a number of services, in relation to which they perceive that they have been denied equal access, including taxis, insurance cover and costs, and mortgages.
However, our journalist participants saw little opportunity to resolve the issue of Moyross’s stigmatized identity. They explained that Moyross is a geographical identifier to which the audience can relate:
I suppose well at this stage I suppose it’s because a lot of listeners and readers know where Moyross is but that’s because there’s a reason for that I suppose. (JP)
Moreover, providing an increased level of detail was not seen to be of interest to national audiences:
… the splitting up of Moyross into its constituent elements or of Southill into its constituent elements isn’t something that … trying to imagine myself living in Wexford, that I’d be particularly interested in. (JP)
The failure to report on Limerick generally in an even and detailed way may also be as a result of the relatively low level of presence of the national media in the city. National (and increasingly local) coverage of the estate is undertaken from a distance, which has significant implications for the way in which Moyross is reported on. We examine these implications next.
Forces shaping content
While many of our journalist interviewees demonstrated a commitment to covering stories from Moyross in a sensitive, balanced and responsible way, we found that market forces prevailed in determining the overall coverage of the estate. We argue that the constrictions and limitations of working for highly commercial news media organizations provide a framework for understanding the negativity of media representations of Moyross. Our findings are in agreement with those scholars who argue that commodification or marketization has adversely affected the practice of journalism (Bagdikian, 2004; Guyot, 2009; McChesney, 1999; Picard, 1989). From this perspective news is now primarily defined as a commodity. McManus sees the marketization of news as ‘any action intended to boost profit that interferes with a journalist’s or news organizations best effort to maximise public understanding of those issues and events that the shape the community they claim to serve’ (2009: 219). From this point of view the increased marketization of news has radically reduced the possibility that the mass media can function as a public sphere informing all citizens about important social, economic and political issues that may affect their lives. The practice of journalism is intrinsically ideological in that the net result is that existing power structures are rarely questioned (Deuze, 2005). In our case we see evidence of the commodification and marketization of news in the following: 1) understandings of newsworthiness that place a premium on crime and deviance; and 2) the greater likelihood of local print and broadcast media to cover positive news stories for commercial reasons. The impact of market forces is also apparent in changing work practices in everyday journalism (including the routine usage of archive materials).
Moyross and newsworthiness
The concept of newsworthiness is pivotal to understanding the practice of journalism (Clayman and Reisner, 1998; Shoemaker et al., 2007). The estate’s newsworthiness is defined primarily in terms of crime. Our journalist interviewees explained this in terms of the expectations of their editors and in terms of changing audience tastes.
We were repeatedly told that stories about criminality were more likely to be accepted by editors and sub-editors than positive news stories. Our participant-journalists acknowledged the newsworthiness of negative stories. There was general agreement that bad news is perceived as more commercially viable and thus that negative stories are more likely to be published and to receive prominent coverage:
When it bleeds it leads. If something negative happens in Moyross it’s on the nationals … if it’s a negative story it is closer to getting to the front page than a happy clappy story in relation to Moyross … but I think that’s across the board in the local media. (JP)
One of our journalist participants noted that it is not good news about Moyross that receives little coverage, but good news in general. In fact, all but one of our journalist participants (a broadcast journalist) agreed that it is more difficult to gain coverage for positive than negative events. The journalists to whom we spoke talked about having to ‘push’ good news stories. One cited an example of the resistance they experienced from their editors:
… and I said [in an email to her editors], ‘Look if something bad happened in Moyross we would put it on the front page. This wasn’t just positive [referring to a community concert] this was outstanding.’ (JP)
In the end this journalist managed to get her story on to the newspaper’s front page but only after exercising agency in the face of a constraining editorial practice.
In our analysis of media content, we found that many good news stories about Moyross, unrelated to criminality or anti-social behaviour, still made reference to these issues, thus diluting the positivity of the overall report. One of our journalist participants makes specific reference to the underlying news values that explain this phenomenon; it is the very juxtaposition between the stigmatized image of the area and the positive event that makes the story newsworthy:
… it has been newsworthy for even the smallest little things that the estate does. Now perhaps it got that attention because the wider picture was one that wasn’t a great picture … (JP)
The negative media depiction of Moyross, which all our participants agree has had such an influence on its public reputation, is not so much the consequence of inaccurate as of unbalanced reporting. As our journalist participants incisively noted, it may not be that other areas in Limerick receive significantly more positive coverage, but that they manage to stay below the radar of media organizations whose profit motivations are orienting them to prioritize bad news (and news about crime and deviance in particular).
There is a sense here that media organizations tend to imagine the audience as being located outside of Moyross, and the media as providing a window into this place from which the audience themselves are socially distant:
… people have a kind of a morbid interest in this family feud, the gang feud that goes on in Limerick. I think because it’s almost like something out of the Sopranos. So from that point of view it is interesting, I mean, people are watching CSI, watching programmes like the Wire and so they see a lot of that happening in Moyross. And it’s true up like, up till very recently that definitely was the case. I think that Moyross does have that appeal. Unfortunately it’s a negative appeal … (JP)
One of our community focus group participants also suggested that residents are more likely to be approached as sources where their comments are negative:
… they don’t want to listen to the people like us that’s willing to say the positive side of Moyross. If I can say something bad I’ll have a reporter down to me and I’m great and I’ll be on the television, I’ll be on the radio and everything. And if they go to Mary and she has something good to say, well you’re not going to put Mary on you’re going to put me on, because I am the one that’s running the place down. (CP)
Although one of our journalist interviewees specifically cited their interest in Moyross as focused on educational developments, this is still framed as resistance to media organizations’ primary focus on the area’s association with criminality:
I’ve considered it [Moyross] newsworthy because I have in my time attempted to do other news stories in Moyross, apart from the ones that would oblige me to be there, in terms of crime and anti-social behaviour. (JP)
Changing work practices in journalism
Changes in work practices have had a significant impact on how journalism is now undertaken (Cottle and Ashton, 1999; Deuze and Marjoribanks, 2009; Preston, 2009; Saltzis and Dickinson, 2008). In the case of Moyross, while bigger stories will attract journalists to the locality, many stories are now researched remotely by phone and email. This applies not only to journalists working for national media organizations, but also those working for local media. One journalist told us:
The bigger the story I would be out there. If it was a smaller story I would be doing it over the phone and a photographer would just go out there separately. (JP)
While local journalists may cover a smaller geographical area, their remit may be so broad as to confine them to the office:
Sometimes it takes nearly a big story for us to nearly get out of the office, because of all the bits and pieces that we are covering. It’s a real pain. (JP)
Residents were critical of the way in which some journalists used a very limited range of sources and repeatedly used archive visuals to portray the area. The dangers of this increasingly ubiquitous news practice are of course a greater reliance on sources rather than first hand observation, on official sources (who are more readily identifiable and contactable) and, according to one of our journalist interviewees, on a smaller number of sources. In the context of such practices it may be more difficult to develop an alternative to the dominant or hegemonic interpretation of events.
Changes in work practices (and cost considerations) have resulted in a greater reliance on archived images of the estate. Images can have a significant impact on the meanings readers associate with an article (Andén-Papadopoulos, 2008). They are part of the text with which the audience engages. In the case of stigmatized neighbourhoods like Moyross, images are nearly always, in the words of Wassenberg (2004: 275), ‘externally set’. Residents have complained, in particular, about the use of images that are unrepresentative of the estate in its entirety. Although newspaper journalists held that archival images are used only occasionally, there was a recognition that this practice does occur and can be particularly problematic in terms of unrepresentative depictions. Our analysis of television content also identified repeated use of a limited range of depictions of Moyross in this medium, including images of burnt-out houses and wandering horses. An interviewee working in the area of broadcast journalism held that television journalists do not commonly use archival footage. They stated that periodic issues with access to the estate can increase reliance on archival footage. 7 In addition (the stories in our broadcast sample related to the arson attack on Gavin and Millie), participant-journalists noted that archival images will be employed when referring back to a past event.
In our content analysis we noted that local media are likely to give additional space to positive events. Our interviews with local reporters suggest that while some of the more positive (local) reporting may be as a result of reporter’s exercising agency, commercial realities are never too far away in determining whether such coverage is to be included or not. The victories of the community, in terms of sports, or educational developments, were often constructed as local, not national news, and therefore more appropriate to local media:
… I think at a local level people feel … if something positive is happening we try to put that out there as well and to let people know about the good stories because at the end of the day they are our readers or they are our listeners. (JP)
However, while newspaper journalists spoke of their own support for the coverage of positive events in terms of a principled stance, they spoke of their media organizations’ coverage of positive events in terms of profit motivation as well as remit. It was their perception that local media give more space to positive events in Moyross in publications that are seen to have a bigger market in the area: ‘… they are also looking at audience and readers’ and loyalty …’ (JP).
Conclusions
The role of the mass media in demonizing the excluded and the places in which they live is neither new nor surprising (e.g. Dean and Hastings, 2000; Skeggs, 2005; Wassenberg, 2004). Our case study contributes to this wider debate as follows: by adopting a tripartite model of analysis we have emphasized the importance of understanding the production context within which media representations of public housing estates and their inhabitants are constructed. We have demonstrated how the commercial pressures and commercial realities of contemporary media practices work to shape, in no small measure, the character of these representations. In particular, we have shown how they result in journalists and other media professionals (such as sub-editors) reproducing media discourses which are stigmatizing and pathologizing and which possess immense power in shaping public perceptions. Moreover, we have evidenced that this result is not an inevitability and that spaces for resistance can be created through active engagement in critical self-reflection, as part of organizational rather than individual practice.
Our overall findings prompt us to ask traditional but nevertheless important (and thorny) questions concerning journalistic practices. Eschewing any notion of journalistic neutrality or objectivity, we need to ask exactly whose interests are best served by this type of coverage. Our shared commitment to the political economy perspective forces us to conclude that the ideological orientations and work practices of the media professionals examined here determine the ways in which media content is produced and shaped. As a result, we hold that the content produced by journalists rarely challenges existing power structures and in fact serves to reproduce the hegemonic order. Our article suggests that current journalistic practices continue to rehearse discourses which result in the stigmatization of people and places, and that this stigmatization and lack of balanced reporting has, if anything, been accentuated by the increased marketization of news.