The Enigmatic Literary Gradations of News as Mass Media Staple/Consumables

Abstract

News is the enigmatic representation of factual and sometimes concocted daily events. But the presentation of news as a mass media staple goes beyond the mere portrayal of events as they occur. The journalistic output is mostly defined by gatekeepers and entrepreneurs of media outfits. This study adopts a dispassionate look at news as a mass media literary staple and the contributing factors in news portrayals. It discovered that apart from the heuristic perception of news, there is a conundrum behind news-fare and this conundrum is inherent in the internal factor of the mass media stable’s setup itself (house-style and literary ideology), qualifying factors such as media ownership (entrepreneurship), media system (environment) and external factors such as audience/readership as well as individual’s literary perception of the importance of media fare, and the utility of the news-fare itself. The study proffers a mitigation of these influences on the mass media portrayals in order to resolve the conundrum that media fare has become, and to prevent its perception as media farce. News items should not be reduced to a conundrum due to contrived gatekeeper choices in mass media portrayals. This would play a mitigating role in moderating the resulting perception of news as a ruse or as a mere shibboleth that should be endured for its nuisance value.