Coventry Journalism Review 2008

Pulitzer said: “The news attracting people most is related to sports, scandal and crime news (Brian 2001)” .The Olympic Games as the international campaign is highlight to display in the world. The Olympic Game provides the perfect forum for cultural construction and presentation in that it is one of “modern society’s mega-event” (Roche 2000).Because the Olympic Games is “the largest and most important stage “(Tuggle, Hoffman and Rosengard 2002:361).Its potential scope and impact derive primarily from the mediated mature of the Olympics, particularly its coverage in television broadcasts. The 2008 Beijing Olympics has becomes the focus of attention all over the worldit is also widely reported by the global media who is responsible for helping people to select the matters that gain notice from the complicated world. The reinforced reports may arouse people’s interests．That shows the“ Agenda setting ”of the media for Beijing Olympic Games，the media will persist in the ideas of “ people’s Olympics” to set up agenda，advocates the culture of main seam, bears humane idea．(Xu 2007).Before the 2008 Olympic Games comes，it has been considered the function of agenda setting and walked out of the blindness. Currently, the global mainstream media were critical the Olympic Torch relay protests from Tetan as their coverage. And these was captured a great of attention in the world. At the same time, it was occurred strongly complaints in China, Chinese people protest the distorted reports attacked in the western press as part of a conspiracy to mount a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

In this article, I would like to provide a mass and communication theory of the media display that the constructed through the Western media and Chinese, It will focus on the pattern of beliefs that determine a group’s interpretation of some aspects of the world—beliefs that reflect a group’s “fundamental social, economic, political or culture interests”(Foss 2007:652).As the result of this articulation of the agenda setting embodied in the object, the critic is able to answer the question about the display such as :what does the reports ask the audience to believe, understand , feel, or thinking about? What arguments are being made in the products and for what? What are the particular characteristics, roles, actions, or ways of seeing being commended in the product? What values or general conceptions of what is and is not good are suggested? (Foss 2004:245)

To discover the agenda setting that characterizes these displays, I analyzed media coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics between Western and China. Both I believe, are media sources that China would want to target for its messages of development display leading up to the Olympic Games, and both are representative of the Western media’s construction of China.

An analysis of the above-mentioned case, I aim at the process with the certain agenda effective and whereby the media has been able gradually to influence the audiences of foci for societal energies.

2. Literature Review

When we observe the media reports after the World War II, generally speaking, it could be divided into four different periods: Antagonistic period, unfreezing period, honey-moon period and twist period. (Feng and Li 2008).All these period are directly related with the relationship between West and Chinese government.

In addition, an independent press emerged free of the legal and fiscal controls by which governments had sought to control it. This struggle was accompanied by a development which is generally held to be even greater significance for the emergence of a free press—the economic emancipation of the press from state control (Curran 2002:79).indeed, media clearly serve and perform important functions in politics, and the information and persuasion may lead to behavior or political.

Examinations of the agenda-setting influence of the mass media have been no exception (Mccombs 2004). According to agenda-setting theory, every social system must have an agenda if it is to prioritize the problems facing it, so that it can decide where to start work (Dearing and Rogersm 1996:1).Many mass communication scholars were initially attracted to agenda-setting research as an alternative to looking for individual-level directional media effects, which had often been found to be minimal. Essentially, public agenda –setting research investigates an indirect effect (“what to think about’) rather than a direct media effect (“what to think”). (Dearing and Rogersm 1996:14). In addition, people think about the information is not from receiving one or a few messages but it due to the agenda-setting effect, which has aggregated impact of a very large number of messages, each of which a different content has but all of which deal with the same general issue. Currently, once people understand the basic idea of agenda-setting; they are usually quick to ask which medium is more powerful in setting the public agenda, television or newspapers (Mccombs 2004).

Although western media has a long history of calling on the press freedom, it is also obeying the role of agenda-setting. As coverage of an issue, which is a social problem, often confliction, it can be reported totally different via different media. Agenda-setting can be a zero-sum game in that space on the agenda is a scarce resource, and so a new issue must push another issue down the agenda to come to attention. (Dearing and Rogersm 1996:22).We see agenda-setting as a political process in which the mass media play a crucial role in enabling social problems to become acknowledged as public issues. (Dearing and Rogersm 1996:22).

Hence, in history, no matter the west or east media, both played a good performance in reporting the issues, such as Saddam’s Tyranny, Iraq War, Georgia Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution .Meanwhile the Chinese media‘s media ‘s censorship system. All of them, they adopt a selective information of agenda setting report to meet the national ideology.

However, China is also presented as the one of the socialist big country, a long period time, as has been mentioned above, has been twist with the western media. Different political system, the media perform the different agenda setting, in this stage, as one falls, another rises.

3. Case Study

The celebrity news websites selected here are the top news website ranked by traffic in both China and UK. The CCTV (China Central Television) is the most important and essential broadcast media in China. It is considered as the propaganda department of the Communist Party of China in a long period of time. The CCTV-9 broadcast the international channel, which target at the English-speaking audience. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is the world’s largest broadcasting which has been found more than seventy years. It is owned high reputation of its quality of programming and the news value. I adopted two pieces of news from each news website. These two news were about the Chinese people were organized spontaneity to protest the Western media’s report of Tibetan rioters in the Olympic torch relay in the abroad route. These two pieces of news were reported on the same day, April 19th (China eight –hour ahead of UK).

I attempted to analyze them from their headline, lead, form and tone of comment between these two articles.

3.1 Headline of post:

Both of these two articles we could read from their internal news columns. In CCTV’s, it was reported that: “Overseas Chinese in Britain rally in protest against Western media distortion.” (Yang 2008 ) The BBC was said:” Hundreds gather in Tibet protest ” (BBC 2008 ).The CCTV’s headline used 11 words to gave all the details about: who (Overseas Chinese), where (in Britain rally), what (protest), how (against Western media distortion).In this headline, we can easily to comprehend that, this piece of internal news, was trying to report the overseas Chinese were in opposition to the British media’s distortion report, it related to the conflict between overseas Chinese and British media. Compare to the BBC’s, it only selected 5 words to explain: Who (Hundreds), What (protest),How (gather in Tibet protest).From this headline, we also to find out, this report was telling the audience about hundred people gathered to protest which was related with the Tibet issue. It was possibly concerning the reflection relationship between the “hundreds” and the” Tibet”.

3.2 Lead of Post:

In the light of their distinction, each report was coded as explain the main context. In CCTV’s:

” In Britain, Chinese expatriates and students have staged a silent demonstration in front of the British Parliament building. They gathered there on Saturday to protest distorted news coverage by some Western media organizations — including the BBC — relating to the March 14th riots in the Tibet Autonomous Region.”

The BBC’s:

“Hundreds of Chinese students have gathered in Manchester and London to protest at the Western media’s portrayal of the Free Tibet movement.”

In these two paragraphs, CCTV obviously spent much more words to explain more details, including the identity of protest (Chinese expatriates and students), the target of protests (Western media organizations), in the form of protest (a silent demonstration),the location of protest (British Parliament building) and the reasons of protest against (the March 14th riots in the Tibet Autonomous Region). At the same time, it was also referenced to one of the protest media: BBC.

On the contrary, observing the report from BBC, it only spent 22words, one sentence to report a campaign of Chinese students. From these 22 words, it selected a soft way to describe, and chose some words such as “Hundreds”, “gathered” and “portrayal”, all of them were not quite exact words. Moreover, the entire sentence‘s offensive was weakened, however, it also paid attention to using the adjectives as” Free”, seemed to highlight some facts.

3.3 Form of post:

Each post is also coded according to the way it presents the discussion topic. In CCTV’s, the report was using a typical narrative way with the inverted pyramid structure, which arranged the paragraphs in order of descending importance. This article had seven paragraphs. In the second paragraph, it was separated to report an exactly number of participants, (More than 3,000 people joined the demonstration); in the next two paragraphs, it was accessed to the interviews from the organizer and some people attended in this protest activities. Thus it explains the purpose of protest, as well as reasons and attitude. (They appealed to British media agencies to end their distortion and fabrication. At the time of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, they warmly welcome people from all over the world to come to China to see, to hear, to touch the real China and talk to the real Chinese people.).Through the interview that commented by participants in the following paragraphs, it also explain the protest ways, it attempted to give the details in various aspects.

Whereas, the BBC’s chose some kinds of the interviewers (Protest organizer Tian Yang, the BBC, director general Mark Thompson and protester Becky Qin).In this report, it seemed to show the two sides of the voice, through both the BBC itself and other officer gave the image to protect the BBC’s authority of truth.

3.4 Tone of comment:

Comments were also implied as supportive, neutral or dissenting to the broadcast .In a representative neutral comment the commenter either did not expressive directly his own attitude to the issue, or the comment is not related to the issue under consideration. Either CCTV’s or BBC’s report, although they had quite deference form to broadcast, they had chosen different length, different point of view to report, it was no doubt that both of them were reflecting their attitude of supportive or dissenting.

4 Possible Findings

As I have shown, these two articles of definition, equivocation, accumulation and anticipation that both China and Western media are presenting in its construction of themselves in the run-up to the broadcasting are organized by the agenda-setting.

These two reports, both are set up in the internal news column, hence they possibility to serve the audiences to read in domestic. When the media attempted to arrange the internal news, it is naturally to set the agenda which is benefit to their media. A better understanding of the agenda-setting process lies at the intersection of mass communication research and political science, agenda-setting can directly affect policy (Dearing and Rogersm 1996:4).Successful media advocacy essentially puts a specific problem, framed in a certain way, on the media agenda (Dearing and Rogersm 1996:4).Exposure through the mass media allows a social problem to be transformed into a public issue.

From the above, these two countries are extremely different in reporting a same issue. It doesn’t mean one of them not tell the truth or follow the news value, actually, it was the difference of their agenda-setting, displayed from the different ideology and culture, the different services of government, the different sprits of media communication and the different effects of spreading information they expected; However, the same thing is that both of them were seeking to perfect their agenda-setting, thus to be preformed a good gatekeeper , to achieve to decide what people will thinking.

In the same coverage of overseas Chinese students protested the western media’s distorted report. The BBC chose a way of reporting with ambiguous words, provided as little as possible information of fact, stressed the controversial of being complained the distorting broadcasting, therefore achieve the support from their audiences. When broadcasting news, it was not the fact that the BBC did not know how to give the accurate of truth to the audience, to the contrary, with his grasp of English langrage skills, basis to achieve the fact, to display a report which is given the weakening information would undermine itself, at the same time, setting the facts for their defense. Moreover, CCTV used nearly a detailed exposition of the whole process of protest. In this description, it displayed to us that the Western media was not perfect; we started to suspect the authority of the media, no longer fetishism believe the western media. On the other hand, it is benefit the audience became much closer to the Chinese media; and gives more tolerance.

5 Conclusion

The western and china’s report were portrayed visibly media agenda setting, Underscore the valuable contributions of news media in global event surrounding. In addition, they also show that the media did not adequately represent key media service roles necessary before, Actually, it was not only reporting the news but also on ensuring that the news informed and influenced key audiences, including policymakers. Clearly, the western and china’s media is primarily an issue requiring broad governmental involvement, The media helps advance the needs of vulnerable policy-based messages; by contrast, should strive to promote and communicate by each other.

Reference

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11. BBC News (2008 ) Hundreds gather in Tibet protest [online] Available from

< http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7356172.stm> [03 June 2008]

12. Yang, J (2008 ) Overseas Chinese in Britain rally in protest against Western media distortion [online] Available from < http://www.cctv.com/english/20080420/101471.shtml.cctv.com/english/20080420/101471.shtml> [03 June 2008]