The Tendency To Focus On People Rather Than Processes Means That Some Important Questions May Go Una

By Author: Kahtleen
Total Articles: 56
Comment this article

The emphasis on individuals can create distortion. In finding a spokesperson, the news media generally will choose the more flamboyant, articulate, and theatrical characters who are willing to assume that role, not necessarily the most thoughtful or most central figures. During the health care reform debate of 1994, the media gravitated to-ward those opponents of the Clinton plan who phrased Omega Replica Watches their objections in the starkest terms. Newt Gingrich's comment that universal coverage was impossible without a police state was given coverage while more moderate statements by Bob Michel, then House speaker, were not. Indeed, one might argue that Gingrich's capacity to capture media attention paved his way to the House speakership.

Defining hard news as personal, as about individuals, means that it is not about processes or the exploration of ideas; it is the story of a group or a movement only to the extent that a group or movement can be personified by one member's testimony. The focus on individuals simplifies and clarifies. It creates audience identification; ...
... it reflects journalistic reliance on human sources and on the interview.

The tendency to focus on people rather than processes means that some important questions may go unanswered. Former Washington Post editor Ben Bagdikian recalls the experience in the 1980s of seeing for the first time the homeless begging for money. "Newspapers and television had lots of stories about the homeless," he notes. "But I kept waiting year after year for our best newspaper or broadcast journalists to ask [the] . . . right question and highlight the answers: 'Why, in the midst of this wonderful prosperity of the 1980s do we have for the first time since the Great Depression, growing numbers of men, women, and children living in the streets?'"

That pattern persisted in July 1995 when a tent city erected by the homeless in Philadelphia drew a front-page photo and story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Under banners reading "Philadelphia, House Your People," "We Want Houses," and "No Casas No Paz (No Houses No Peace)," the approximately thirty homeless persons— half of them children—had set up five donated tents in a vacant lot. When outdoor temperatures persisted in the 90-degree range, concerns about Omega Replica children living outside in the heat were raised by welfare workers. "Being homeless is not grounds for taking away anyone's children," a housing official is quoted as saying. "But the impact of the heat is something we're concerned about."

Those concerns are the stuff of which drama is made. At the center of the drama is a young mother, shown in the picture seated on a torn couch under a small tent with her three children. At the side of the tent, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union has placed a U.S. flag, a symbol inviting readers to see irony in the plight of the destitute family.