Sensationalism In Journalism Essay

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
ABSTRACT

This chapter will discuss about the background of study, introduction on how sensationalism is adopted in the press, research questions, research objectives, the problem occurred regarding the topic, significant, scope and limitations of study.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Newspaper is a paper that is printed and distributed usually daily or weekly and that contains news, articles of opinion, features, and advertising. It is created to give information, to educate, to interpret the news, to provide services to the readers and to entertain. Newspapers provide facts that readers must have in order to be informed citizens and to make decisions. It also functions to provide information that helps readers solve their …show more content…

Sensationalism is often defined in terms of its capability to provoke attention or arousal responses in viewers. It may include reporting about generally insignificant matters and events that do not influence overall society and biased presentations of newsworthy topics in a trivial or tabloid manner contrary to the standards of professional journalism.

Prior to the 1980s, sensationalism in news was primarily conceived in terms of story content, referring to news coverage of ‘crime, violence, natural disasters, accidents, and fires, along with amusing, heartwarming, shocking, or curious vignettes about people in the area’ (Adams, 1978). Since the 1980s, stories dealing with celebrities, crime, sex, disasters, accidents, and public fears have been constantly labeled as sensational (Ehrlich, 1996). In essence, news stories that ‘violate a comfortable psychological distance between audience members and their perceptions of events in the physical world could be considered sensational news stories for their potential to provoke more sensory and emotional reactions than what society generally deems proper to experience (Grabe, Shuahua & Barnett, …show more content…

Taking Harian Metro, a local Malay language newspaper, as the subject, the research concerned itself with the capability of the headlines and news stories to attract both regular and non-regular readers to the newspaper. The objectives include whether Harian Metro could attract readers to the paper and examine whether sensationalized elements are capable of attracting non-regular readers to the newspaper. The results show that while most of the respondents for the survey are considered non-regular readers of Harian Metro, the majority of them agree that the sensationalized elements in the newspaper is the main reason they read Harian Metro. While other elements such as pictures or advertisements or advertorials do not play such a major role in drawing the readers to the newspaper, these elements do indeed complement the headlines and news stories thus creating a package that is successful enough to make it such a popular read. Lau Jian Hao

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