Pseudo-events A Pseudo-event Is An Arranged Event

By Author: Amandda
Total Articles: 59
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To make an impression on society with words is ... almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC [Freedom Club]), for example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it's more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a Thomas Sabo Charms sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of those readers would have soon for-gotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people.

Through a joint agreement between the Times and the Post, the Post published the terrorist's entire text in September 1995. The alleged Unabomer was apprehended when his brother read the text on the Internet and recognized the themes and the style.

Pseudo-Events ...
... A pseudo-event is an arranged event, not an occurrence that happens of its own accord. An example is a Kansas City antiabortion group appearing with tiny white caskets at a local hospital. A pseudo-event, which takes account of news gatherers' concepts of what is newsworthy, is arranged to exploit internal and external constraints on newsgathering and the conventions of news presentation. An ideal pseudo-event is therefore dramatic (in the example, the angry encounter between shocked hospital staff and the antiabortion group), personalized (abortion was reduced to individual fetuses symbolized by tiny white caskets), novel (this event got coverage because it was original; if many antiabortion groups imitated it, coverage would end), an event (there was a specific encounter between hospital staff and the antiabortion group), and part of an ongoing theme in the news (national efforts to have personhood defined as beginning at the moment of conception had been getting considerable news coverage).
In addition, the encounter took place at a convenient urban location, close to most local television stations, and at a convenient time (early afternoon) well before deadlines. The event was staged by a local group at a local setting (the hospital), making it attractive to local coverage. The event was visual (the encounter occurred just outside the hospital doors in good light and was easy to tape) and made use of highly charged, poignant symbols of sorrow and death. Taped Thomas Sabo Bracelets with brief statements from both sides (the antiabortion group and the hospital administrators) and with a reporter's wrap-up, the event fit neatly into a ninety-nine-second news segment. As a result, its appearance on the local evening news could have been predicted.

Pseudo-events are designed to transform an issue, process, person, or the like into a newsworthy event that will be covered by the mass media. Many news events are partially staged to surmount the problems described in Chapter 2--scheduling, deadlines, access, and so forth. In a letter to the networks evaluating charges that coverage of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago had involved "staged news," officials of the Federal Communications Commission wrote:

In a sense, every televised press conference may be said to be staged to some extent; depictions of scenes in a television documentary--on how the poor live on a typical day in the ghetto, for example--also necessarily involve camera directions, lights, action instructions, etc. The term "pseudo-event" describes a whole class of such activities that constitute much of what journalists treat as "news."