Mediation and Newsworthiness: What can we learn from the way this week's protests have been reported?

This piece is inspired by the recent Black Lives Matter protests that have taken place at home and abroad. I will discuss what we can learn from the way these protests are reported on, and what this means for how we process this information. Since this article doesn’t go into depth on the purpose and objectives of the Black Lives Matter movement, I would encourage you to take some time to learn about the cause and consider making a donation if you haven’t done so already.

Two protests, one week apart, in the same location, on opposite sides of a major societal issue. Aside from the historical and societal significance of the current moment, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in London on the 7th June and the subsequent right-wing counter-protests on the 14th June provide a textbook case study with which to illustrate two forms of media bias in action. So that’s what I want to explore in this post.

MEDIATION

Let’s start with a quick working definition of our first bias: mediation. This is the process by which media influences the message, adding meaning as a result of the method by which the message is communicated. I want to stress that ‘bias’ is used here in a neutral sense; it tends to conjure mental images of nefarious editors trying to brainwash the populace, but the reality is that mediation is usually much more subtle and implicit than this.

A camera necessarily has to be positioned somewhere and pointed at something. Naturally, we will always feel closer to the beholder and distanced from the subject matter. When a war correspondent reports on a conflict, they will almost always be escorted by friendly forces for their safety. This means that the images they capture will be from the perspective of one side of the conflict, and cast the opposing forces as the ‘other’. When these images are distributed to the wider public, the public will feel more able to empathise and support the plight of friendly forces than with the opposing forces.

With that in mind, let’s look at left-wing coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests that took place in London on 7th June, by looking at The Guardian’s reporting (accessed 14th June):

Note that the positioning of the camera places you very much within the protest; the upwards angle towards the Churchill statue creates a sense of difference and ‘otherness’ from him. If this all seems a little too subtle and open-to-interpretation, here is the Guardian’s coverage of the right-wing protests this weekend (accessed 14th June):

The mediation in this image is a bit more stark. We are sided with the police, with the right-wing protesters cast as the opposing, antagonistic force. Now finally, let’s look at how the right-wing protests in the same location are reported in right-wing press, this time looking at The Express:

In the first image, we are positioned facing the police, with the police facing us, casting them as the antagonising force in the conflict. In the second image, while there is a degree of antagonism in the protester’s body language, again the key factor here is where the photographer - and by extension the audience - is positioned. This distinction is defined further by the presence of a literal barrier, allowing us to see clearly where our perspective comes from.

To be clear, the point being made here is not as simple as media outlets literally taking sides on important issues and conflicts. Instead, the purpose of these examples is to bring to light the way in which these conflicts are framed, and point to the subtleties that might shape our understanding of them and might align with the bias (unconscious or otherwise) of the outlet that publishes them. 

Mediation isn’t an inherently good thing or an inherently bad thing, but it is inherently a thing. The key point is that you cannot remove this bias from media; but publishers can learn to downplay it and consumers can learn to recognise it. The general public are increasingly conscious of deliberate bias in reporting, but can be less receptive to more subtle forms of bias.

NEWSWORTHINESS

Which brings us onto our second bias, which is ‘newsworthiness’, a more abstract form of mediation. Again, I feel that recent events have revealed a general lack of understanding over the way the very concept of newsworthiness changes the way that we interpret the news itself. Newsworthiness is a catch-all term for the criteria that influence whether or not a news story is distributed to the wider public by the people who control that means of distribution. It gives rise to a form of survivorship bias; our view of the world is shaped by the stories that ‘survive’ and make it to distribution.

In the examples given further up, you are at least able to see both sides of the conflict, despite being sided with one or the other. Newsworthiness, by contrast and by definition, is a process of selection and filtration, meaning that we don’t typically get to see the stories that are not chosen for distribution. The invisibility of newsworthiness as a process of mediation is what gives it potency.

Newsworthiness is a complex web of contributing factors, and much academic debate has been dedicated to defining what these are, but the main drivers can be boiled down to some variation of the below four factors, in approximate order of priority:

• Continuity: Is it a new development on a specific story or scandal? E.g. ongoing developments in various public figures’ involvement in the Epstein scandal
• Topicality: Is the story indicative of a societal thing that's top of mind? e.g. new information about Brexit
• Fatality: Did anyone die? How many people died? Were they important? e.g. the death of a famous celebrity vs. a bus going off a cliff
• Proximity: Is the story 'close to home'? e.g. An incident on home soil will typically take precedence over the same kind of incident taking place abroad.

This is obviously a simplification, but for the most part most stories that get surfaced can be understood based on one or more of these criteria. There are always exceptions. There will always be counter-examples. But again, we're dealing with the broad strokes here. So let’s explore the mediation effect of newsworthiness in action.

On Sunday 10th May, Boris Johnson appeared on British television to outline a new set of updates to the government’s lockdown rules, detailing a new threat-level system and strategy for exiting lockdown. The following day, this story was the front page of all major UK newspapers. Well, almost all...

This story fulfils all four criteria - it's a continuation of an ongoing story, it's part of a bigger societal issue, lives are at stake and it affects the whole of the UK. So it's very clear that the story gets priority; it's very newsworthy.

Suppose that on that very same day, a police officer was assaulted by a citizen in London, who was trying to resist arrest. Statistically, this is extremely likely; on average, there are 82 assaults on police officers every day in the UK. Outside of the current political context, this story would not meet our criteria for newsworthiness: at that time, there were no prior stories being reported about the high frequency of police assaults, it's was not top-of-mind for the majority of people in the UK at that point, and two thirds of such assaults don’t result in an injury to the officer... proximity is the only real criteria being fulfilled.  

A month later, the world is a very different place; The killing of George Floyd on the 25th May and the protests that followed have propelled the issue of police brutality - and retaliation against the police - into the public eye. Topicality is now a major factor, and continuity will become more of a factor as things develop. So now stories about conflicts between police and the general public are suddenly much more newsworthy and more likely to be reported on. We know this, because this is exactly what happened.

On 11th June, Sky News reported an incident in which two police officers were assaulted while trying to arrest a suspect in London. The article omits the aforementioned statistic about the frequency of assaults on police officers. Even if the statistic had been mentioned, the designated newsworthiness of this particular story imbues it with a significance that sets it apart from the other 29,999 incidents of police assault that will happen in a typical year.

Whether a deliberate choice or an unintended side-effect, the timings and prominence of this story tie it into the narrative of rising tensions between police and the general public. To put a finer point on it, intended or not, the implication is that this incident occurred as a result of anti-police sentiment that has grown in recent weeks. 

When this incident is isolated from the statistical reality of how frequently incidents occur, and woven into the narrative of increased tension between police and citizens, it could seem only reasonable to conclude that this assault was motivated by said tensions. However, within the statistical context, you might at least consider the possibility that this incident was just one of thousands that happen every day, and was unmotivated by the current political climate.

In simpler terms… if this sort of thing happens all the time, and has been happening all along, how can we be sure that this particular incident is genuinely indicative of the current political mood? I do not wish to imply that this incident conclusively was not influenced by current events*. Just that the sudden newsworthiness of a story like this can create the illusion of an isolated incident, and from there it’s much easier to passively project cultural significance onto it. 

So, newsworthiness doesn’t just affect the stories we see; it affects the way we understand the stories themselves. The selective nature of newsworthiness often recontextualises news stories in drastic ways, to the extent that their true significance (or insignificance) can be lost. 

*At this point in time I cannot find any official statistics that might confirm or deny an increase in assaults on police officers in late-May / early-June. 

CONCLUSION

As I’ve outlined previously, both forms of bias are unavoidable consequences of news media. They occur as a natural side effect of the way stories are chosen and crafted; however, understanding the influence they can have on our understanding of news can have huge advantages for our ability to process current events. From that perspective, this essay is less about what we can learn from these biases and more how we can illustrate and recognise them.

The next time you are browsing the news, ask yourself two questions: “Why is this story being reported, and what perspective is inherent to the way it’s reported?” I believe that understanding these motivations will empower you to interrogate the broader scope of current events and give you a more balanced view of the world.