Agenda Setting in Newspaper Circulation

Agenda setting

Agenda setting plays an important role in print media organization. Agenda setting can be describes as a very powerful influence of the media, which is controlling appearance of the front pages stories. The sample of the front page stories is the best example to differentiate any newspaper in the market. It has the ability to tell us what issues are important. As a conclusion it will frequently appear on the front pages of newspapers.

Agenda setting has a strong relationship between what voters in one community said were important issues and the actual content of the media messages used during the campaign. Every community had a different perception, perspective and desire in observation of current issues. Not most of them like to read political issues and also not have an interest to read sensational stories. In addition, not most of them are interested with the news that appears on the front pages. As a conclusion, it create a conflict, either publish the stories which is focusing on human interest or public awareness.

Different newspaper had a different target on strongly focusing the element of the stories, either create awareness, give information or publish sensational stories which is gain more profit. The issue is how many of print media organization still practising the good ethical in journalism field; the propaganda, profit, or educate people.

Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. The media concentrate on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. One of the most critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is the time frame for this phenomenon. In addition, different media have different agenda-setting potential. Agenda-setting theory seems quite appropriate to help us understand the pervasive role of the media. http://www.cw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht

House style

House style can be defined as a style guide or style manual. It is a set of standard for design and writing documents, either for general use or for a specific publication or organization. Different print media organization had a different set of standard in their publication house style. It includes the sort of grammar, particles and jargons.

BERITA HARIAN

As we know, Berita Harian is a mainstream newspapers or also known as morning newspaper. This newspaper is under the government ownership and of course; it should obeyed and fully support the government. The publication of the Berita Harian newspaper is under News Straits Times Press (NSTP) organization.

Every newspaper organization has their own agenda setting and house style of publication. Same goes to Berita Harian. For its agenda setting, Berita Harian always reports on the political issues on the front page and continued on the other five to six pages. They need to support the government in whatever issues either in politics, economic, education and so on. They cannot protest or blame the government when publish the news because the government itself is the ownership of the newspaper organization. Berita Harian writes the variety of news such as on political issues, economic, sports, community, entertainment, education etc. Other than that, they gain their profits through the section of advertisement that are called 1Classified.

As we can see, Berita Harian applied 5W 1H (inverted pyramid) writing style where the most important information at the top and the others are backup and supporting facts in the lead of every hard news. The way they write is straight to the point and not using a lot of conjunction words such as “oleh itu” in their story to make the news are easier to understand by the readers.

In addition, the news in this paper is not using the direct quotation from the source. For example, if the sources says something that are not important, the lead should not be the quotation from the source unless, the sources is someone that gives comment, which can give impact to the society. Then the quotation can be used of an issue.

METRO

Metro is a local newspaper in Malaysia, well-known as evening newspaper of Berita Harian. The size of this printed material is a tabloid size. The content of Metro is local, global, celebrity, and sports. Frequently, the news in Metro is most focus on community news rather than the political news.

Based on the observation that had been made on Metro’s news content, the agenda setting of Metro’s content is frequently focus on sensational stories by put it as front pages news as a target to attract readers attention.

As we aware with the taste of the readers in Malaysia, most of them more interested with sensational stories. Usually, they will attract to a sensational headlines rather than dull or boring-appearance of headlines. For example of headlines; RAHSIA LELAKI - SINGGAH ‘KEDAI SYAHWAT’ SELEPAS KERJA.

The concept of mostly being highlighted in Metro is focusing on human interest which is involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sale and exciting public opinion as we mention earlier.

From the observation, Metro follows the concept of yellow journalism. Yellow journalism is a negative reference to journalism that features scandal – mongering, sensational, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by media organization or journalist. However, the facts must be concrete by simply double-triple check one’s sources and reading between lines.

The house style of Metro is including feature news to hard news. Usually, they not put all 5W and 1H as the lead in the first paragraph. They more highlighted sensational words in the lead. On the other hand, usually they not use certain word in their stories, such as ‘oleh itu’.