N.B. – A student from UP Manila sent these questions through my Facebook account. I think my answers are worth sharing to those who are interested in reality TV and the concept of information dissemination and warfare.
Is broadcast news considered as reality TV since it covers real events as they happen?
“Reality TV” is a misnomer since real-time broadcast can only be achieved through live feed. So-called reality TV shows like Survivor (the one that started the trend) and our very own Pinoy Big Brother are called that because certain individuals agree to take part in social experiments wherein cameras will record their every move. Gatekeeping, however, is still observed as raw footage are edited for better presentation of the narrative. Even the Pinoy Big Brother channel (available on cable subscription) that shows what is happening inside the bahay ni Kuya 24/7 in real time is filtered by showing only the angles and parts of the house as decided by the assigned gatekeepers.
In this context, broadcast news as a whole is not considered reality TV but there are segments of it that depict certain aspects of reality in real time through the live feed of unfolding events.
Since we know that news reporters are limited with their scheduled time to submit their stories, it goes to show that they may not cover the entire truth. Does it not defeat the purpose of Journalism?
Journalism is NOT about giving ALL information to people, as it only seeks to provide the meaningful ones that can help shape public opinion. The defined professional and ethical standards of the profession guide journalists on how to go about their jobs. The different forms of mass media do not and cannot mirror social reality as they are inherently limited by various factors like time and space constraints.
There is also the issue about the extent of the coverage of news shows. How much is enough? How much is too much?
Meaningful coverage is defined by neither time nor space. It is defined along the lines of relevance of disseminated information to the people’s everyday lives and how information can be used to enlighten them and hopefully entice them to act.
What differentiates a news item from being informative and credible to being sensationalized or only for infotainment function?
One only needs to know the professional and ethical standards to differentiate between the relevant and the mundane. What is basic in making journalistic outputs informative and credible are, among others, objectivity, accuracy and fairness.
How do you define “information warfare” in the context of media studies?
Information warfare at a time of crisis is no different from propaganda war. As defined by Princeton University’s WordNet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu), information warfare refers to “the use of information or information technology during a time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries.”
Given that the Philippines is said to be in a chronic crisis, we witness this information warfare as we read, watch and listen to the news, especially in government-owned and sequestered broadcast networks where pro-government propaganda is euphemistically called “public information.”