Pontifical and Royal

UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS

The Catholic University of the Philippines
Faculty of Arts and Letters
A.Y. 2020-2021

JRN3178 - Journalism Studies

Summative Paper

Summative Paper on
Metaphor for Journalism

Gomez, James Paul R.

2018110430

3JRN1
 Refraction of Reality: Journalism as an Optical Prism

Journalistic objectivity is a myth. Journalists’ role to present both sides of the stories or
what they call “the whole picture'' has been challenged by several scholars ​(cf. Entman,1990;
Taflinger, 1996; Zandberg & Neiger, 2005)​. Media commentators previously regarded journalists
as individuals who “report the news as it happened, like machines, without prejudice, color, or
style” ​(Steffens, 1931)​. They are also expected to be the eye to the “real world” as if all the
information must be objectively reflected, without any filtering activity — in short, a “mirror” to the
real world ​(Zelizer, 2005)​. However, journalists are also humans who can take sides and pick
what’s newsworthy ​(Galtung & Ruge, 1965)​. They can be biased to the truth as long as they
objectively get the information through different lenses and “verify the truth” ​(Tsfaty & Libio,
2003)​. As ​Zandberg and Neiger (2005) put it, “the national-cultural community calls upon the
journalist to take part in the conflict, to be its representative and its weapon, in the battle of
images and soundbites — to tell an unbalanced, unobjective story.” This paper argues that
journalism can be compared with an optical prism, where all the information will be filtered and
not all the information can be reported, thus arguing that journalists cannot possibly reflect the
“real world” because, in the first place, they have to abide to the news process of selecting what
is newsworthy and there are external factors that can affect their style of reporting.

An optical prism is a transparent piece of glass with one of its recognizable uses is to
disperse a beam of white light into its component colors. Journalism could be an optical prism
where the beam of white light is pieces of information in the real world and the component
colors are the possible beats or angles of a particular story. White signifies the absence of color.
When used as an analogy, the pieces of information (white light) are unfiltered and dull. It is the
journalists’ role to give the possible angles and colors to the story by making the information
story-wise. ​See the illustration below to understand the metaphor.

(Illustration of Journalism as Optical Prism)

 According to the editors of the Brooklyn Eagle, the work of newspapers in the 1870s was
the same as the mirror — ’’to reflect faithfully all the objects cast upon its surface,’’ and in the
process present pictures that are ‘‘potent teachers of morality,” ​(Brooklyn Eagle, 1876)​. It
presumes that journalists are merely recorders, observers, and scribes that take account of
events as they unfold ​(Zelizer, 2005)​. "We report about the world as it is, not as we want it to
be," said one journalist in the study of ​Yaqub, Beam, and John (2020)​. However, several
scholars defended the claim that the media cannot mirror society. ​Mindich (2000) ​contended
that the mirror metaphor left journalists as passive observers. ​Schudson (2003) puts it bluntly:
‘‘News is not a mirror of reality.’’ ​Schiller (1981) calls the mirror metaphor a ‘‘paradoxical notion.’’
Similarly, ​Entman (1990) argued that the metaphor is ultimately inconsistent with objectivity,
since objectivity also includes the concept of balance, and reality is never neatly balanced by
two competing truth claims.

For ​McQuail (2005)​, the idea that journalists intervene between the people and reality is
no more than a metaphor, although it does point to several roles played by the media in
connecting the people to other experiences. In addition, ​McQuail (2005) admitted that
journalism cannot faithfully reflect reality because of the possibility of inversion and distortion of
the image. He said that the “angle and direction of the mirror are decided by others, and we are
less free to see what we want,” implying that there are external factors that distort the reflection.
This is now where Noam Chomsky’s five filters of mass media play their role. According to
Chomsky and Herman (2003)​, media operate through five filters: ownership, advertising, the
media elite, flak, and the common enemy. With such filters, we can assume that the picture
reflected by the media is generally only a “part of reality”, and also only the reality the media
perceive ​(Van der Spuy, 2008)​.

Aside from comparing journalism as a mirror, ​McQuail (2005) also used other six
communication images through which media is perceived to connect the people with reality. The
other six are that of a window, a filter or gatekeeper, a signpost, a forum, a disseminator, and an
interlocutor, each with its own function. About journalism as a filter, ​McQuail (2005) said, “As a
filter, gatekeeper or portal, acting to select parts of the experience for special attention and
closing off other views and voices, whether deliberately or not.” This filtering is now being
accepted in its positive sense of selecting and interpreting what would otherwise be an
unmanageable and chaotic supply of information and impressions. This idea was proven by
Wasserman (2007) as he pointed out that selecting information — that is constructed following a
selection-recipe using typical news values — influences society’s understanding of the world for
them to make an informed decision ​(Brown, 2018)​.

Journalism as an optical prism is related to the profession’s role as gatekeepers.

Shoemaker, Vos, and Reese (2009) said that journalists are bombarded with pieces of
information from the internet, newspapers, television and radio news, news magazines, and
their sources. It is impossible for them to relay it all at once, that is why there is a process of
selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating, and otherwise messaging
information which is called gatekeeping. In addition, they argued that journalists as gatekeepers
provide a picture of the world for the rest of us. It is important to note that a picture is a still
image — one cannot determine what happened before and what will happen after the picture
was taken. Framing the news is also part of the gatekeeping process. As journalists, we can
frame the story to make it newsworthy ​(Entman, 1993)​. However, there is a possibility that the
story filled with information will be re-framed after being edited. ​Tandoc Jr. (2015) explained that
serving as gatekeepers, journalists and editors do not only open or close the gates for pieces of
information that come along. “It is their job to ensure that at least some information will make it
through the gates.”

Journalism as an optical prism goes against the idea that journalists can objectively
report everything, even the other side of the story. Remember the game ‘telephone-telephone’
that children used to play? Where a phrase or a sentence is whispered by one child to another.
By the time the message reaches the last child, the message he or she recites is dramatically
different from the original phrase. This is just a simple analogy of journalism as a prism where
the reality that is translated by the media to the society does not actually correspond to the
‘reality’ known by society.

As a concluding statement, journalism does not reflect the reality of the world, it refracts
it. Compared with a prism, journalism gives color to a dull, empty world of information where
chaos is inevitable.
References:
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