Journalists should be decisive on fact inclusions and emphasis, sourcing and identification of the real issue (Gamson & Mordigliani, 1989) in writing a news story.
Chosen facts merge to create a frame that supports the news story structurally and determine what belongs inside it, thus articulates the focal point of the news story.
This is called news framing.
The News Framing Theory was proposed by Robert Entman in 1993, in which he defined news framing as “the angle of an event shown by a newsman to his audience (in angle he meant, the manner in which the newsman wanted to present the news according to his news judgment).”
It shows the journalist’s writing style and professional news judgment, and his focus on how he tells his story. There are two predominant kinds of framing are: Episodic and Thematic (Iyengar, 1993, p.369).
Episodic frames focus on the proximate event or incident and establish little or no context about embedded issues or context; while thematic frames, on the other hand, focus on the big picture by providing statistical information, analysis, critiques and other information to aid the public perspective in a broader context.
Episodic frames are usually found on breaking news and flash reports while thematic frames are commonly used in news features. However, the perception of the public can be manipulated through news framing and agenda-setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972).
To avoid this, the audience must compare the news on different media covering the same event. So, question is, how do we account different stories we read in newspapers covering the same event?
By content analyzing the coverage of the three mainstream broadsheets in the Philippines –Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Bulletin, and Philippine Star, regarding the rejection of the three impeachment complaints to President Benigno S. Aquino III yesterday, September 2, I have observed a few things.
First, they differ in the number of words. PDI has 410 words, MB has 198 words, PhilStar has 258 words where you can observe if it is a banner story or not. In terms of the title, it happened that both PDI and MB had the same title, which is a little bit questionable.
However, their huge differences are on how they arranged their lead, their main focus and their content themselves. Analyzing the manner each broadsheet presented the story, PDI has given the most contextual information of all, MB has presented the most direct one, and PhilStar gave the most clarity.
Knowing all of them covered the same event, one should know to verify the information they all gave and one must look for statements of parties involved to attain obejectivity. If the data they gave were the same, the probability of them saying the truth is high.
One should learn to recall previous events regarding the reported news, the people involved, and the issue accounted for because these were the key to properly comprehend the news.
Therefore, in accounting the stories for the same event, one must follow these advices.
The Chunky Stories 