Page 281 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 271
Problem Within’. But in a more fundamental sense there has been little change:
in both decades the press has presented a white audience with the image of a
black threat to a white society.
But those factors which are peculiar to coverage of race relations are
inextricably linked and overlaid-with the operation of normal news values. This
can be illustrated by the press coverage of the arrival of a number of Malawi
Asians in 1976. This coverage was inaugurated by a report which appeared in the
Sun under the banner headline, ‘SCANDAL OF £600-A-WEEK IMMIGRANTS’
(4 May). It reported that two families comprising thirteen individuals had been
accommodated for some five weeks by the West Sussex County Council at a
four-star hotel at a weekly cost of £600. The Sun continued to give the story
extensive coverage for nine days and some of the developments of the story can
be deduced from various headlines which appeared on 5 May:

Daily Express: MORE ASIANS ON THE WAY TO JOIN 4-STAR
MIGRANTS
Daily Mail: WE WANT MORE MONEY SAY £600-A-WEEK
MIGRANTS
Daily Telegraph: MIGRANTS ‘HERE JUST FOR THE WELFARE
HANDOUTS’
Sun: ASIANS OFF TO THE WORKHOUSE
The Times: HOMELESS ASIANS LIKELY TO BE MOVED TO
WORKHOUSE BY END OF WEEK COUNCIL SAYS.
(Evans, 1976)
It is not hard to see elements in this story which would have aroused the interest
of ‘our merciless popular press’ even had the individuals concerned not been
black immigrants: ‘spongers’, free-spending welfare officials, wasting of public
money, and so on, will usually make a good story. But in this case the racial
aspects provided an added dimension sufficient to push the story onto the front
pages and keep it there for some nine days. This dimension may consist of fears
of an unending flow of black immigrants (perhaps attracted by welfare
handouts), the belief that immigrants live off the welfare state, and the strong
passions aroused by immigrants’ entitlement to council accommodation. In
short, what made it a good story was that the threat implied by black immigrants
was sufficient to ensure that ‘race was news’.
Because race was news in this case does not mean that race is always news, or
that stories about race are not subject to the normal criteria of news value. But
the operation of news values and the definition of news are extremely elusive.
The journalist, perhaps quite prudently, is not much concerned with analysing
why a story is ‘news’; it is enough he has—or believes he has—a nose for the
kind of story which, in the words of a distinguished American newspaper editor,
makes the reader say ‘Gee Whiz’. It is left to the outsider to try to go beyond this
cliché—that ‘news is news’, to try and arrive at some understanding of the way
in which all sorts of newspapers select which news is fit to print, though it should