Theft at the Public Till
implies that if a newsmaker pretends to an action and the media cover it, they'll cover the action more or less on the newsmaker's terms. They won't drop their accustomed posture of objectivity, accept responsibility for the meaning their words are conveying, and start telling a story that diverges substantially from the newsmaker's performance. Thus, the genre's objec- tive voice turns news into a stage on which the newsmaker may strut his stuff, secure in the knowledge that backstage realities will stay backstage. Each story conveys a very different view of reality and represents a special way of seeing. From a problematic situation that is vague, ambig- uous, and indeterminate (or rich and complex, depending on one's frame of mind), each story selects and names different features and relations that become the things of the story-what the story is about. Things are selected for attention and named in such a way as to fit the frame constructed for the situation. Together, the two processes construct a problem out of what is seen otherwise as a vague and indeterminate reality. They carry out the essential problem-setting functions. They select for attention a few salient features and relations from what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly complex reality. They give these elements a coherent organization, The stories we choose to tell can describe what is wrong with the present situation in such a way as to set the direction for its future transformation. Through the processes of naming and framing, such stories can leap from data to recommendations, from "is" to "ought," from fact to values. Through the generative metaphor of a story -- a process by which a familiar constella- tion of ideas is carried over to a new situation, the familiar and the unfamiliar come to be seen in new ways. One thing is seen as another. A situation may begin by seeming complex, uncertain, and indeterminate. However, if we can once see it in terms of a normative dualism such as health/disease, na- ture/artifice, or wholeness/fragmentation, then we shall know in what direc- tion to move. Indeed the diagnosis and the prescription will seem obvious. Media politics not only sacrifices public to private, it also often ends up weakening its private beneficiaries. It is a politics of decline and ruin. People and groups routinely ride media bandwagons to short-term advantages that
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