Media Coverage Essay

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Media coverage refers to the amount and quality of interest an event/issue gets on TV, radio, newspapers and the internet. The media is a ‘business of finding, constructing and selling “news”’, requiring ‘imme¬diacy and drama’ rather than precision (Kitzinger, 1996). Insight into media portrayal of issues requires study of this construction via a ‘highly interpretive and value-laden process’ based on ‘socially created collective universals and traditional understandings’ that frequently symbolize and strengthen stereotypes (Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad, 1998). It is thus essential for messages, in what is reported and commented, to incorporate not only what the reporter thinks should be incorporated, but also what others anticipate him to incorporate. It is significant hence, to comprehend the experience and situation on the other side of the fence, a nation in crisis, distressed and terrified. What is not reported is just as vital as what is reported (Ihediwa and Ishak, 2011).

Entman (1993) also explained that the media highlight a piece of information about a main topic of a news story, it raises the salience of the issue. The term salience means “making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audience” (Entman, 1993, p.53). An increase in salience improves the …show more content…

Bandyopadhyay (1988) also argued that the Western and Asian views of news are dissimilar because of their diverse roles assigned to the media in their own societies. (Natarajan and Xiaoming, 2003). Additionally, an analysis of Asian news in four of the main newspapers in the U.S newspapers by Ismail (1989) concluded that the “oft-heard complaint, that Western media focus on negative reporting that stresses crisis and conflict in Asia, was

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