Mondays lecture for JOUR1111 focussed on commercial media. We asked what is commercial media? what are it's forms and functions? who are the major players? what are the styles? and what are the challenges that face commercial media?
In answering these questions, certain points caught my attention:
As commercial media is profit driven (and survives mostly on the audience it can generate) the media it delivers is tailored for high consumer use. Much of the information communicated on commercial media platforms such as 'Today Tonight' seems to be dumbed town to please the public audience. It is also apparent that in this industry; 'Tabloidisation' is common practice.
Commercial media organisations function as commercial, propaganda, and social outlets, which means they have the right to advertise or propagate for whoever they please. The social factor also allows them to reach a more localised audiences (for example: Southern Cross Ten broadcasts in regional areas such as the North coast and Northern River areas of NSW) and therefore broadcast localised news. This localised news however, can also be presented in such a way that caters for a wide ranging audience, meaning the news is often of a questionable standard. The following clip is an example of a local Southern cross news update, which runs some morally and intellectually questionable articles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WcLS2GgFSU
I also though it was quite interesting that although commercial media organisations have the ability to present any kind of information they want, they must also present it in a way that gains their audiences trust. They must find a balance between gaining trust and making money.
In this lecture, we were instructed to check out The Global Mail which presents investigative journalism as opposed to quick commercial journalism. http://www.theglobalmail.org/ I think this site is going to be my next favourite.
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