Maletzke: the Communicator

Maletzke: the Communicator's self-image

As Maletzke is dealing with the mass media here, he is most probably concerned with, say, a reporter,
though he could also be concerned with a recording artist, a film director and so on. If we stick with
the example of the news reporter, then does she see herself as a fearless investigative reporter a la
Bernstein and Woodward? Does she see herself as a mirror of events, trying merely to reflect what's
going on in the world? Does she see herself as committed to a particular political line? Does she
interpret events for her readers? Can she frame her report within her own value system? Is she just
doing a job to pay the mortgage? Does she see herself as a perfectionist? Quoting from Wiebe's 1955
article on mass communication, Maletzke asks if the communicator sees himself as

leader, snooper, unmasker, crusader or as conscientiously mirroring dominant facts and opinions? As authorized
spokesperson for a sub-group, as average citizen carrying out the tasks his employer has given him? As explainer or
as husband earning his daily bread? As symbol in which the ideals and dreams of the public are embodied, as an
undiscovered talent surrounded by enemies, or as cleverly pulling the strings of public gullibility? The picture he forms
of himself works as a filter which to a greater or lesser extent allows his values to show through and his values as well
as this self-image must necessarily influence his communication.

Maletzke (1963 : 45)

All of those factors must have an influence on the events she chooses to pay attention to in the first
place, how she perceives them and how she reports them.

The level of self-esteem she has will also have an influence on her self-confidence. Will she, for
example, be able to resist editorial pressure to change her article in some way?

Though not a 'mass media' model, Dimbleby and Burton's model of the self in interpersonal
communication may help you to pinpoint some of the factors which affect self-image, as well as the
way that our self-image affects and is affected by our interpersonal communication.
 If you have not studied self-image, then the various sections on the subject may be useful to you.

Practical work

How does your self-image affect what you intend your practical work to do? From some of the
examples above, you should see how your self-image as the originator of your practical work can
affect the final outcome. For example, suppose that your artefact is to publicise certain college
courses. You will certainly have some negative information about those courses. What do you do with
it? Do you suppress it? Do you warn the punters? Do you contact college management to try to get
them to improve the product? You have an advert from the local Wimpy for inclusion in your
magazine. Your mag's restaurant reviewer has awarded them only one star. What do you do? Do you
omit the restaurant review? Do you change the number of stars? Do you 'publish and be damned'? Do
you give them their ten quid back? Much will depend on how you see yourself, and, as a result of your
self-image, how you see your rôle as the originator of your practical work.

Consider also: How does your self-image affect the developmental stages of your practical work?

I can recall a student of mine who had one of the most negative views of herself of anyone I have ever
known. Although she thought of herself as intelligent, which she certainly was, she was virtually
paralysed throughout her practical work by her inability to summon up the courage to approach other
people. As a result, her audience research was carried out very late in the day and was very sketchy.
She naturally chose to conduct a questionnaire survey, rather than attempting in-depth interviews,
which would have brought her into too close contact with the people she felt were bound to make fun
of her.

I can think of another student who saw herself as an intelligent, efficient, no-nonsense go-ahead type.
Unfortunately, she had to deal with people who did not share those qualities and became extremely
impatient with them. Her whole practical project was starting to fall apart until she sat down and took
a good, long look at how she dealt with other people.

Maletzke: the Communicator's personality

There are various ways of looking at this, because there are various ways of looking at the whole
question of personality. If you are not familiar with the various theories of personality structure, it
would be worth checking through them.

For example, Kelly's personality theory suggests that we each use our own set of personal constructs
to make sense of the world. Would it be possible for a reporter to move, say, from one newspaper
where her personal constructs seem to fit to one where they don't? Does the reporter have liberal,
conservative or middle-of-the-road attitudes? How will they affect her reporting of issues such as
crime, abortion, capital punishment, taxation etc?

Eysenck sees one major dimension of personality as introversion<---->extroversion, another as

neurotic<---->normal. How well would a reporter who tends towards the neurotic-extrovert end of the
spectrum be able to deal with reporting on the human interest aspects of a major tragedy? How well
would a reporter tending toward the introvert end be able to deal with the more outrageous rock
stars?

Practical work

It's well worth looking through some of the theories of personality, if you haven't already done so. See
if you recognise yourself in any of the descriptions and then consider whether the descriptions fit any
of your target audience or any of the people you have to deal with in developing your project. How
well do you and they match up? If you don't get along too well, can that be explained in terms of
personality.
 Are you shy and retiring or outspoken and outgoing? Do you do your college work fast and
superficially or are you scrupulously painstaking?

Variables like these are obviously related to the gatekeeping process in your practical work and they
may also have an effect on the amount of information you have in the first place. The shy, retiring
person is not gong to gather much information if it involves going out and pestering people; she may
not carry out much qualitative research if it involves going out and interviewing people face-to-face.
The slack, superficial person may not gain much information if the project involves poring over heavy
books and statistics. That person, as well as perhaps the more diligent student who is, however,
obedient to authority, may well incorporate bias into their project; the one because she can't be
bothered to check out other sources, the other because she takes what she's told by people in
authority and doesn't question it.

You may find it helpful as well to take a look at McCann's idea of 'preferred working styles'. He looks at
how people's personalities affect their preferred working styles and therefore how well they work
together. Albrecht's comments on the results of the interactions between different types of people
might also be helpful.

Maletzke: the working team

 Maletzke was looking at the mass media so it was natural for him to pay attention to the working
team, as it is extremely rare for anyone in the media to work alone. Because they work in a team and
because group cohesion needs to remain high, particularly if work is to be brought in by the deadline
and on budget, then the choices the communicator makes will be strongly influenced by the norms
and values of the working team. (see, for example, Conformity).

The fact of belonging to a working team has important consequences for the communicator: he has to fit into the
group; for the benefit of the team he has to give up a large part of his freedom to act and decide. So he is not 'free' in
his production in the sense that, for example, and 'independent' artist is. Thus it can sometimes happen that the
communicator has to work on material which is diametrically opposed to his own views.

(1963 : 48)

Practical work

If you are following an examinable course, you may well find that you are required to produce your
practical work alone - entirely unrealistic, of course, but it does simplify assessment. Nevertheless,
there is in a sense a 'working team' to the extent that the examining body has laid down a marking
scheme and has stated a number of expectations of candidates. Your teacher will then interpret them
and pass them on to you. They will be discussed with you individually and with the class as a whole.
Although you don't work in a team as such, you do become aware of a set of norms - even 'traditions'
if you have the opportunity to look at other practical work from previous years - which apply to your
class group as originators of communication projects.

Maletzke: the organization

How big is the organization? Who owns it? What are its policies? Is the leadership style autocratic,
democratic etc? Where does it place its priorities? How is the newspaper etc. laid out? What are the
limitations imposed by the house style? How much space is there for this kind of story? These are all
matters which must have an effect on the gatekeeping process, i.e. on the choices which the
Communicator makes. Maletzke himself places the emphasis on the three main types of media
organization which are discussed in the section on types of broadcasting organization. They may be
organized along

1. authoritarian lines, as would be the case in, for example, the media of a totalitarian state, such as Nazi Germany or the
fomer USSR; though Maletzke points out that this kind of organization is not restricted to that kind of state - for example,
the press of a particualr political party, union etc. would be expected to keep to the 'party line' and there is also plenty of
evidence that journalists in the national newspapers in the UK are 'encouraged' to produce articles which consistently
support a political party (see the section on media ownership in the UK)
2. capitalist lines, in which case most communicators will see themselves as business people. Maletzke quotes from Asch's
Social Psychology in which he quotes a producer who says:

We're not concerned with the intelligence of the people or with their emotions. The question is what they like
to have, what they want to see, what they are willing to pay money for. We will give them slapstick and
circuses if they would rather have these than serious plays and music

Asch (1952)

3. public service lines, the typical organization of TV and radio in most of western Europe until recently, with relatively little
direct influence from above on the content and construction of the media messages, though these are required to conform
to the standards set out in some kind of charter, or similar framework.

It's worth bearing in mind that news media are capitalist undertakings and therefore are to an extent
constrained by the market. Readers and viewers have certain expectations of the news media and the
news media will be constrained by those expectations, so-called 'news values', the criteria that news
organisations and their employees use to determine whether a news item is newsworthy or not. To a
greater or lesser extent, those news values will apply, independently of the particular organization,
nowadays also to 'public service' broadcasting as media markets are increasingly deregulated.
There is also the question of where the media organization tends to find its sources. How closely is the
organization connected with the centres of power? In order to effect cost savings, media organisations
will tend to be centred near political and economic power centres, because that's where newsworthy
events are likely to break, where there will be interesting rumours and leaks and so on.

Knowing that, the major corporations and government departments will be only too happy to feed the
media a constant flow of press releases, leaks and news conferences, normally structured so that it
meets the media's scheduling needs. Journalists are only too happy to take it, because, especially if
it's on the record, it appears authoritative, thus lending credibility to their organization, and it will at
least protect them from libel suits.

Checking it is expensive, so official news is likely to make it into the media much as it was issued.
When President Reagan claimed (falsely) that the Nicaraguan government was involved in drug
smuggling, that went straight into the news without any checking. When a stream of reports from
imprisoned drug smugglers claimed (truly) that the Nicaraguan Contras (backed by the US
government) were smuggling drugs into the USA with official approval, these claims were subject to
intense checking and received little media attention. Noam Chomsky refers to this uncritical parroting
of official views as the propaganda model of the American mass media and has amply documented its
functioning.

It happens in the British media as well - for example, during the supposedly 'impartial' coverage of the
1992 General Election, every 'independent' commentator on Labour's economic and tax policies that I
saw on the TV news was a 'City analyst' of some kind. Hardly likely to give an unbiased view, but
authoritative, especially when framed against all those computers in the Stock Exchange) and readily
accessible.

Practical work

This may not appear to be particularly relevant to your practical work. Certainly, it is less important
than it is to mass media professionals, as you are probably much more of a free agent. However,
suppose you were developing advertising materials on behalf of your college. it's quite likely that the
college management would insist that you should not refer to 'free' periods, but something like, say,
'self-study' periods. Even if the majority of your target audience are Sun readers, there is little chance
that the managers will allow you to feature topless models in your publicity.

There will be other practical limitations on what you may do in your practical work - for example, you
are relying on the college's reprographics section to produce your publicity materials in time for
validation, but someone in senior management gives them a 'rush job' to complete, insisting that it
take priority over your project. There will also be different facilities available to each project. One
college will fully cover the costs of your practical work, another will charge for it. One college will have
a fully equipped video edit suite, another will have a couple of VHS recorders.
Maletzke: the social environment

This includes the society as a whole, the Communicator's immediate community, the groups she
belongs to and the individuals she interacts with. Membership of a group strengthens an individual's
beliefs, attitudes and values. The more an individual accepts membership of a group, the more the
messages she chooses to communicate will be influenced by the norms of that group. Thus, there is
standard criticism of the major news media in Britain that they present a picture of our society
principally from the viewpoint of the white, male, middle-class people who dominate the media
industries. Thus, for example, ethnic minorities will relatively rarely be reported on and then normally
only when something happens in their community which challenges the white middle-class consensus
- a riot, for example.

Maletzke quotes the following sets of attitudes from Wiebe's 1955 article on mass communication:

1. the communicators' views and basic principles as regards: government, religion, unions and professional associations,
social, charitable, civil and state organizations, schools, family
2. the communicators' assumptions and attitudes as regards the audience: its intelligence, curiosity, morality, inclinations and
opinions
3. the communicators' assumptions and attitudes as regards mass communciations: their influence, the relative importane
accorde to their commercial and public functions
4. the communicators' views and opinions as regards themselves in relation to society: to work colleagues, employers, friends,
advertisers, society's institutions, powerful pressure groups

Maletzke (1963 : 46)

Practical work

It seems to be quite common for members of friendship groups in Communication classes to choose
broadly similar subjects for their practical work. For example, in the last year, in one class a group of
young women who were close friends covered:

• Diet and fitness

 • The danger to health presented by pressure to achieve the 'ideal figure'
• Safe sex
• Sexual relationships
• Vegetarianism

- all, in one way or another, concerned with health issues. So, as you can see, your social environment
can affect the choice of subject matter in the first place.

It will also probably have some effect on the presentation of your practical work. You may have
noticed, for example, that throughout most of these materials, I use 'she', 'her' etc. for the third
person singular, rather than the more conventional 'he', 'him'. This is in part the result of my
belonging to certain organisations: the examiners of Communication Studies criticise students' use of
sexist language; over many years I have been a more or less active member of the lecturers' union,
NATFHE, and have certainly been influenced by the pressure there for greater representation of
women; in my college, I have had some input into the development of equal opportunities policies. In
part, this is also due to the values shared by those with whom I mix socially most closely.

Maletzke: public character

As a 'publicist', the communicator produces and disseminates public messages and must therefore bear in mind the
currently prevailing views and opinions, norms and values. His work is also partially determined by the reactions to his
message which may be expected from the public. ... 'Public' is certainly not always identical to the audience of a
message. Broad and important circles of people react - often with extreme sensitivity - to messages which they have
only become aware of second-hand.

Maletzke (1963 : 40-41)

 Maletzke (p.51) suggests the foolowing significant sources of influence caused by the public character
of the media content

1. The state attempts to influence media content in order to broaden its power, influence which varies according to the
particular state and will include such factors as censorship etc.
2. The political parties
3. Pressure groups
4. Public opinion
5. Mass communication itself in that the comunicator is constantly exposed to public criticism

all of which, he suggests may well lead to conformity and conservatism to the extent that the
communicators may be influenced by these factors to avoid contentious issues.

There are a number of legal constraints on the media. The media worker must avoid running foul of
these. So, for example, the programme planner will have to try to ensure that a movie with the
dreaded 'f-word' in the opening five minutes is not screened straight after nine o'clock; a newspaper's
solicitors will subject any article which might be construed as libellous to very close scrutiny.

In addition, there is the question of just how much the media worker may be prepared to reveal about
him/herself in public. At the time I am writing, there is considerable fuss in the theatre because a
number of actors are being required to appear naked on stage, though that was not stated in their
contracts. Of course, it's not only a question of physical revelations - how much does the news
reporter want to give away about her opinions, beliefs, past experiences etc?

Practical work

You will also be subject to these rules/laws. For example, my student who prepared an information
pack on sexual relationships aimed at schoolchildren may have been sailing close to the wind when
she included information on homosexuality. Her presentation of homosexuality was so positive that t
may have come close to infringing against clause 28 of the Local Government Act which forbids the
promotion of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle by schools and libraries.

There is also the question of how much of yourself you are prepared to reveal in public. That will vary
from one project to another, of course, but, in the project referred to, such self-revelation had the
potential to be embarrassing and took some courage.

Maletzke: selection & structuring of content

 This requires fairly little comment if you are familiar with the notion of gatekeeping, which is what the
whole of the left-hand end of Maletzke's Model is about.

You may perhaps find it useful to take a look at news values, if you are not already familiar with that
idea. Maletzke's model looks at a variety of factors which influence the gatekeeping process. The news
values to which the originators of news (reporters, editors and so on) work would come particularly
under the headings of 'social environment', 'working team' and 'organization'.

Practical work

The notion of gatekeeping is fundamental to Communication Studies and therefore also to your
practical work. Maletzke lists on the left of his model the socio-psychological factors which affect the
choices you as gatekeeper make in putting together your project artefact. As you go through your
project, you should constantly bear those factors in mind and, if required to log your progress, you
should record why you included some information and excluded other, as well as why you chose to
formulate/design the information in the way you did.

Maletzke: pressure from the medium

 The 60s Media 'guru' Marshall McLuhan produced a number of memorable aphorisms. One which
probably encapsulates what Maletzke is getting at here is 'The medium is the message'. As Maletzke
puts it, the medium 'owing to its technical characteristics, suggests, or indeed prescribes, certain
subjects and forms and, on the other hand, excludes others' (1963 : 40)

Different media have different characteristics. To a greater or lesser extent, these characteristics
determine what can be communicated and how it is communicated. Video, for example, is a very
linear medium (though no doubt that will change in a very few years with the advent of digital video).
That makes it difficult to present a complex argument because the viewer can't readily refer back to
something you said before to see whether what you are saying now is consistent with what you said
before. It could be as well that we have become used to a 'three minute culture' and become
impatient with anything that lasts longer than that. Think, for example, of the differences between
broadsheet news coverage of a political issue and TV news coverage, with it constant use of the telling
'soundbite'.

Neil Postman reformulated McLuhan's the medium is the message to be understood as:

embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another,
to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another

Postman (1993) in Chandler (1995)

Daniel Chandler's website

As Chandler points out, 'any medium facilitates, emphasizes, intensifies, amplifies, enhances or
extends certain kinds of use or experience whilst inhibiting, restricting or reducing other kinds'. For
example, one fairly obvious constraint of the mass media is that most of us don't have access to them.
TV programmes, newspaper articles are produced by 'other people'. It might be reasonable to expect,
then, that the picture of the world in those programmes and articles could well be 'theirs' rather than
'ours'.

You'll no doubt have experienced at first hand the differences which the choice of medium makes. It is
not uncommon for me to come across a student who is better informed than the average and who
expresses that knowledge articulately in classroom discussion and yet has considerable difficulty
expressing him/herself in writing, where everything suddenly becomes awkward. I greatly enjoy using
a fountain pen and do so when writing letters, especially personal ones. However, for my work I
normally use a word processor. This allows me to present my students with more legible and better
presented work than if it was in my handwriting. On the other hand, though, I seem somehow to be
more detached when using a word processor and occasionally end up writing utter nonsense. I'm sure
too that, if I did use a fountain pen for producing handouts, then they would be a good deal shorter
and more to the point than the long-winded handouts I produce with a word processor. When working
with video, I tend to find that, no matter how carefully I plan, whatever I end up with is something
different from what I intended, not so much in terms of the structure, but in terms of the emphasis.

As an example of the pressure from the medium, Maletzke quotes the following points from Asheim's
research into 24 novels and the film versions of them:

• the emphasis in the films is on the plot

• the films are structured more strictly chronologically than the novels
• although the plot is emphasized in the film adaptations, the relative proportion of violence, brutality and sadism is less than
in the books

Practical work

If you were producing advertising for your college, video would probably be a very attractive medium
for the audience, but would make it impossible to produce anything like a 'prospectus' which the
audience could use to find details of specific courses. You would almost certainly have to produce
something which would be 'impressionistic', rather than something which gives detailed information.
You would probably find also that your audience would actually expect it to be impressionistic and
become impatient with attempts to give detailed information (see 'the receiver's image of the
medium')

Such factors are specific to video and impose quite different constraints from those imposed by print
media. Some students choose to produce their project in the form of an exhibition on display boards.
That gives them the opportunity to provide fairly detailed information in print for those receivers who
want it and strong graphic images for those who want them. It's also possible to provide leaflets to
take away, giving even more detailed information.

Those are the obvious advantages, but the disadvantage is almost the direct opposite of video: video
starts here, goes on to this and ends on that; an exhibition, on the other hand, has no clearly
identifiable starting place. If someone's already looking at the top left, another person who comes
 along will start reading at top right. If another person arrives, she may even crouch down and start
reading at bottom middle.

Those are all examples of 'constraints' from the medium.

Maletzke: image of each other

These two factors in a sense form the broad framework within which all the other factors have an
effect. In any communication, the Communicator will have an image of the Receiver and vice-versa,
which will in large part determine the form that the communication takes and how it is received. In
terms of Berlo's S-M-C-R Model, these images are equivalent to the Source's and the Receiver's
attitudes towards each other.

In mass communication, the Communicator's image of the Receiver will be based on a mixture of
detailed audience research and a variety of assumptions about what audience members are like. How
messages are actually formulated as a result of that knowledge will vary, depending on the various
factors which Maletzke enumerates as influencing the Communicator. For example, TV audiences in
Europe and the USA are presumably broadly similar in their tastes. However, the broadcasting systems
have developed in quite different directions: the US system is primarily market-oriented, i.e.
concerned to 'give the audience what they want'; the European model has until recently been mainly
 one in which there has been heavy state regulation of broadcasting. In Britain, for example, there has
long been the 'Reithian' tradition of 'public service broadcasting' whose aim has been to 'inform,
educate and entertain' the public. (De Fleur's model of the 'taste-differentiated audience' provides a
graphical representation of this difference)

The Receiver's image of the Communicator will set the framework for reception of the message, within
which the other factors all play a rôle. For example, the Receiver's image of the medium may be that
TV is pretty trivial, but that the BBC is particularly trustworthy and that Jeremy Paxman is especially
good at his job. Prestige and credibility of the communicator are of importance here (see under
Hovland's research into persuasion).

Practical work

In developing your practical work, you should take some time out to reflect on the image you have of
the Receivers before you begin your audience research. What influence do your assumptions have on
the way that you formulate your audience research? Are there any assumptions you have made which
you have not double-checked via your research? Is it possible that your pre-existing image of the
receivers has in any way led to bias in your audience research by for example leading you to omit
research into certain aspects of the audience because you've assumed you already know it?

During the interim testing of your artefact, are there any instances where the receivers' image of you
has led to communication breakdown? Do they, for example, not co-operate seriously because they
see your work as just another crummy student project? Do they not give you the time you think you
warrant because you are just another teenager? What do you do to try to correct that image?

Maletzke: pressure from the message

The reporter is constrained by the message. Certain information must be included. A vote of the
European Parliament against proposals by the European Commission is just that. The Sun reporter
may choose to present it as yet another example of 'Euro-lunacy', but there is no getting around
mentioning the European Parliament and the European Commission, whether the readership know
what they are or not. Well, at least in principle, there's no way around it. In practice, of course, a
newspaper which can invent an interview with the widow of a soldier who died in the Falklands
campaign is probably not constrained by any message at all.

Practical work

As Communicator you will be constrained by the message itself. It may, for example, be a message
which you cannot communicate without gong into considerable detail. Even if your audience are Sun
readers and don't like lots of printed text, it could be difficult for you to find a way round the problem,
you'll just have to use the lengthy explanations.

A Haynes manual for car maintenance can't do without those step-by-step detailed explanations,
whether the readers like it or not. At the same time, though, knowing that your audience are not
particularly literate, you may try to replace verbal explanations by photographs as much as possible,
which might not be necessary or desirable if you were dealing with a highly literate readership.