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The Media, the Public and the Great Financial Crisis pp 229–269Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Production of GFC News

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Abstract

This chapter explores the factors that structured the reporting of GFC news. To do this the chapter draws on a series of telephone and face to face interviews conducted with leading print and broadcast journalists between 2015 and 2018. This research finds that a wide variety of factors structured the process of news gathering. These included issues that have consistently been identified in previous studies such as the ideological preferences of newspaper proprietors, elite sourcing, public relations, information subsidies and source strategies. Although the analysis suggests there are a number of general processes at work grounded in political economy and the routines of newswork, there are also other factors that are much more organisation, subject and time specific. Ultimately, this shows that a comprehensive understanding of how news is produced needs a granular analysis that recognises the myriad and shifting complexities grounded in news production at specific times and places.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Journalists who were contacted via Twitter or email who didn’t respond to requests for interviews were Edmund Conway (Telegraph), Philip Aldrick (Telegraph), Bendict Brogan (Daily Mail), Sam Fleming (Daily Mail), Steve Hawkes (Sun), Clinton Manning (Mirror), Peter Cunliffe (Express), Stephanie Flanders (BBC). Paul Mason (BBC) initially agreed to an interview but was later unobtainable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Mike Berry

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  1. Mike Berry
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Berry, M. (2019). The Production of GFC News. In: The Media, the Public and the Great Financial Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-49973-8_7

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