164 Conclusion
the net, mostly via slower dial-up connections. As such, the news
revolution at the turn of the century relied on cable and satellite television. Cushion identifies three phases of 24-hour news television,
a ”coming of age” phase following the launch of CNN, a race for
transnational reach and influence, and finally increased competition
within nations as satellite and cable channels proliferated.
3
A major
concern of this proliferation, discussed by Cushion as well as other
commentators such as Rosenberg, was how CNN pushed the speed
of communications, with a demand for a truncated news cycle that
greatly reduced the amount of time devoted to checking and verifying stories, a “speed mentality” that continues to reverberate across
journalism.
4
One particular consequence of this speeded-up news cycle was noted
in 2008 by Jeffrey Cohen, in his book The Presidency in the Era of 24Hour News. Beginning from the counter-intuitive proposition that news
media in the early twenty-first century influenced public opinion less
than it had a generation previously, despite the fact that there was more
news, Cohen suggested that there was a growing disconnect between
things such as reports in the media and public opinion over the Clinton–
Lewinsky scandal than there had been for Watergate. In the “new media”
era that began in the late 1970s, television audiences began to fragment
and, among other factors, those audiences began to rely more and more
on channels that conformed to pre-existing political leanings.
5
Cohen’s
analysis is important for the following reason: it draws attention to an
underlying structural shift in mass audiences that predate digital technologies (but which are greatly reinforced by online news habits), and
as such that the filter bubble has now been in effect for nearly 40 years.
The introduction of cable and satellite news, then, represented an
important shift in media ecologies in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. Initially a poor companion to the established
networks, it was via CNN and its competitors that audiences first became used to the compressed cycles of always-available news and the
transformations via gatekeeping, production, and distribution that
would lead to substantial changes in audience behaviour. Two decades
after most of these competitors were launched, however, Sambrook
and McGuire could ask whether such news channels were finished as
broadcasters sought to close gaps in their finances caused by the shift
to online and mobile platforms in particular. As they point out, 24hour news is expensive and fails in its original proposal, which was to
break news first: instead, the Internet provides even greater speed and
potentially depth of coverage, with social media having taken up the
role of primary influencer over news channels, which themselves “are a
symptom of the age of satellite which… is now all but over”.
6
As channels were a symptom of satellite, a development from the distribution
of terrestrial broadcast, even web pages and sites are beginning to look
the net, mostly via slower dial-up connections. As such, the news
revolution at the turn of the century relied on cable and satellite television. Cushion identifies three phases of 24-hour news television,
a ”coming of age” phase following the launch of CNN, a race for
transnational reach and influence, and finally increased competition
within nations as satellite and cable channels proliferated.
3
A major
concern of this proliferation, discussed by Cushion as well as other
commentators such as Rosenberg, was how CNN pushed the speed
of communications, with a demand for a truncated news cycle that
greatly reduced the amount of time devoted to checking and verifying stories, a “speed mentality” that continues to reverberate across
journalism.
4
One particular consequence of this speeded-up news cycle was noted
in 2008 by Jeffrey Cohen, in his book The Presidency in the Era of 24Hour News. Beginning from the counter-intuitive proposition that news
media in the early twenty-first century influenced public opinion less
than it had a generation previously, despite the fact that there was more
news, Cohen suggested that there was a growing disconnect between
things such as reports in the media and public opinion over the Clinton–
Lewinsky scandal than there had been for Watergate. In the “new media”
era that began in the late 1970s, television audiences began to fragment
and, among other factors, those audiences began to rely more and more
on channels that conformed to pre-existing political leanings.
5
Cohen’s
analysis is important for the following reason: it draws attention to an
underlying structural shift in mass audiences that predate digital technologies (but which are greatly reinforced by online news habits), and
as such that the filter bubble has now been in effect for nearly 40 years.
The introduction of cable and satellite news, then, represented an
important shift in media ecologies in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. Initially a poor companion to the established
networks, it was via CNN and its competitors that audiences first became used to the compressed cycles of always-available news and the
transformations via gatekeeping, production, and distribution that
would lead to substantial changes in audience behaviour. Two decades
after most of these competitors were launched, however, Sambrook
and McGuire could ask whether such news channels were finished as
broadcasters sought to close gaps in their finances caused by the shift
to online and mobile platforms in particular. As they point out, 24hour news is expensive and fails in its original proposal, which was to
break news first: instead, the Internet provides even greater speed and
potentially depth of coverage, with social media having taken up the
role of primary influencer over news channels, which themselves “are a
symptom of the age of satellite which… is now all but over”.
6
As channels were a symptom of satellite, a development from the distribution
of terrestrial broadcast, even web pages and sites are beginning to look