Agenda setting in a very interesting
theory, though sometimes is can be a little scary. I agree with the idea that
in some ways, it is unavoidable. The events that occur in one day are endless;
it's too much to report on them all. The news outlets then have
to decide what should be reported on, and they do this using the news values
discussed in last weeks lecture (proximity, size, uniqueness etc.).
In doing this, the media tells the public what to think about. Some news outlets
take advantage of their position to create a public perception, thereby telling
the public how to think about certain
topics. This is how the media sets agendas within the public.
Agenda setting can lead to the misrepresentation of facts within a story, and may result in slandering. One example of this is the Augustine Miller case, where an eight year old girl and and thirty-eight year old man went missing in Western Australia. This case was simply a missing persons event, though exploitation of the older man's history made it appear to be an abduction of a young girl by a pedophile. The links below show examples of this happening:
These articles all express in the headlines that Mr. Miller is either a pedophile or a sex offender, and all insinuate that he was in some way directly responsible for the girl's death, when in reality she died of thirst when they were lost in the bush. Also all of the articles express in the first few sentences that the man in Aboriginal. If this man was a white Australian, his race wouldn't be of interest. The articles all use the same image, a close up of Miller's face without a smile, which looks frightening when coupled with the word 'pedophile'.
By portraying the event in this way news papers made the story much more interesting for their audience. They also partook in defamation of character, an act which is usually near impossible to get away with; though was not fought against in this case due to the financial position of the victim.
The fact is, a young girl and her stepfather going missing was not an exciting enough. It had to be beefed up with irrelevant claims and frightening images to be deemed 'newsworthy'. It's story's like this that ruin the reputation of journalists, and negatively alter the public's image of groups within our society.
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