Sei que não terminei nenhuma das séries que comecei neste blog — a saber, a leitura crítica de Gender Trouble e o fichamento de A Passion for Friends. Mas acabei me empolgando com a leitura de um outro livro e resolvi trazer para cá o material transcrito do fichamento que tenho feito dele. Esse fichamento é especial porque estou usando o recurso de transcrição de voz do Android para fazer as transcrições do texto em inglês. Assim, ao mesmo tempo em que disponibilizo um conteúdo que não é facilmente acessível (o livro em questão foi publicado em 1978 e não tem muitas edições desde então), também estudo e melhoro a pronúncia do idioma. Obviamente que nem tudo são flores na hora em que uma nativa da Última Flor do Lácio precisa falar — e, principalmente, pronunciar — na língua inglesa, mas um dia talvez eu conte aqui dos meus percalços nesse sentido.
Making News: a study in the construction of reality, de autoria de Gaye Tuchman, é exatamente o que diz o título. A autora discute o jornalismo enquanto profissão, prática e ideologia. Não fiz aqui, como fiz na série sobre os livros de Butler e de Raymond, uma leitura comentada da obra, mas tentei manter a coerência entre os vários trechos que estou disponibilizando, de modo que quem os leia consiga mais ou menos captar a essência e as ideias principais de cada capítulo. Já li e fichei metade dos capítulos — o que significa que as chances de eu conseguir terminar essa série são mais altas que o normal para este blog — e vou publicá-los um por dia ao longo dos próximos dias. Vamo que vamo!
Referência Bibliográfica
TUCHMAN, Gaye. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. Nova York, Londres: The Free Press, 1978.
Prefácio
“This book is the product of my attempts, over the past 11 years, to learn about news as social construction of reality. It is a study of the constraints of newswork and of the resources available to newsworkers. It is a sturdy of newsworkers as professionals and of newspapers and television newsrooms as complex organizations. And it is a study of methods of inquiry — how newsworkers determine facts and frame events and debates pertinent to our shared civic life.” [P. ix]
“As well as presenting concrete descriptions, exemples, and analyses of newswork, this book addresses a theoretical debate about the role of consciousness in the construction of social meanings and the organization of experience.” [P. x]
Chapter 1: News as Frame
“News is a window on the world.” [P. 1]
“But, like any frame that delineates our world, the news frame maybe considered problematic. The view through a window depends upon whether the window is large or small, has many panes or few, whether the glass is opaque or clear, whether the window faces a street or a backyard. The unfolding scene also depends on where one stands, far or near, craning one’s neck to the side, or gazing straight ahead, eyes parallel to the wall in which the window is encased.” [P. 1]
“By seeking to disseminate information that people want, need, and should know, news organisations both circulate and shape knowledge. […] the priorities in the media’s ranked attention to topics may prompt the ranking given those same topics by news consumers. Additionally, the news media have the power to shape news for consumers’ opinions on topic about which they are ignorant.” [P. 2]
“By stressing news as knowledge, I do not mean to suggest that news reports are the only mass medium shaping understanding of the everyday world, particularly interpretations of novel phenomena. Communications researchers (see Klapper, 1960) have established that news may be of limited force in swaying public opinions and attitudes. Equally well accepted is that mass entertainment, particularly television, influences political and social attitudes. […] TV entertainment has also been shown to lower the educational and occupational aspirations of adolescent girls if they heavy viewers and the children of college-educated parents (Gross and Jeffries-Fox, 1978). […] Entertainment appears to have an awesome impact upon viewers’ attitudes and beliefs. [P. 3]”
“What I mean to suggest is that news imparts to occurrences their public character as it transforms mere happenings into publicly discussable events.” [P. 3]
“[…] news coordinates activities within a complex society by making otherwise inaccessible information available to all. […] It permits institutions to coordinate their activities. And it enables officials to anticipate reactions to proposals under consideration.” [P. 4]
“Because news imparts a public character to occurrences, news is first and foremost a social institution. First, news is an institutional method of making informations available to consumers. […] Second, news is an ally of legitimate institutions. […] Third, news is located, gathered, and disseminated by professionals working in organizations. Thus it is inevitably a product of newsworkers drawing upon institutional processes and conforming to institutional practices. Those practices necessarily include association with institutions whose news is [P. 4] routinely reported. Accordingly, news is the product of a social institution, and it is embedded in relationships with other institutions. It is a product of professionalism and it claims the right to interpret everyday occurrences to citizens and other professionals alike.” [P. 5]
“Sociologists generally holds that the interests of professionals and of organizations conflict: Employed professionals and managers or owners are said to battle one another for the right to control work — to define how work will be done. […] But more generally, I found, news professionalism has developed in conjunction with modern news organizations, and professional practices serve organizational needs. Both, in turn, serve to legitimate the status quo, complementing one another’s reinforcement of contemporary social arrangements, even as they occasionally compete for the control of work processes and the right to be identified with freedom of the press and freedom of speech.” [P. 5]
“”Once upon a time” announces that what follows is a myth and pretense, a flight of cultural fancy. The news lead proclaims that what follows is factual and hard-nosed, a veridical account of events in he world. But, ultimately, both the fairy tales and the news account are stories, to be passed on, commented upon, and recalled as individually appreciated public resources. Both have a public character in that both are available to all, part and parcel of our cultural equipment. Both draw on the culture for their derivation. […] Both take social and cultural resources and transform them into public property […] [P. 5] Drawing on cultural conventions, members of Western societies impose distinctions between stories about the two men that obscure their shared features of public character and social construction.” [P. 6]
“Just as it is possible to imagine alternate plots and endings to stories produced for and with children, so, too, we can imagine alternative ways for the professor to organize (frame) the strip of ongoing occurrences that constituted her day as events to be produced as news.” [P. 7]
“The theme that the act of making news is the act of constructing reality itself rather than a picture of reality runs throughout this book. Newswork transforms occurrences into news events. It draws on aspects of everyday life to tell stories, and it present us to ourselves. By accomplishing this second task, it serves as a basis for social action. But the process of making news is not accomplished in a void, and so the second theme is that professionalism serves organizational interests by reaffirming the institutional process in which the newswork is embedded.” [P. 12]
Obras citadas
GROSS, Larry; JEFFRIES-FOX, Suzanne. “What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up, Little Girl? Approaches to the Study of Media Effects”. In: TUCHMAN, Gaye; DANIELS, Arlene Kaplan; BENÉT, James (ed.). Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media. Nova York: Oxford University Press, 1978. P. 240-265.
KLAPPER, Joseph T. The Effects of Mass Comunication. Nova York: The Free Press, 1960.
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