Coming clean... always clean... lovely and clean...

I’ve recently noticed that I’m a bit of a minimalism junky. This isn’t new – for months now my room has been entirely white, grey, silver, and impeccably clean, with a place for everything and every electrical cord. The layout is thought out, I’ve informed myself on clean, modern colour schemes, and invested the time to make it swish.

Though out? Informed? Invested? This sounds like a case of investigative journalism! Although Ross Coulthart pondered, “Isn’t all journalism investigative?”, this week’s JOUR1111 lecture clarified exactly what it is.

While my room has been described as creepily stark but somehow welcoming, investigative journalism is described as a method of discovering the truth using any medium – finding out what somebody somewhere wants to suppress. In my case, dust.

I don’t know if I have a talent for linking random subjects together or if my life is weirdly based on this course, but the cleaning of my room is a lot like I.J – critical and thorough and of a substantial effort.

I can draw a line though. While I’m one of the most pessimistic people you will ever meet on my off days, to be a great investigative journo you have to be skeptical, NOT cynical. Bollocks.

I still have a fighting chance though, as we were told that investigate journalism understands the hidden agendas of messages and doesn’t just act as a channel for them. I doubt everything, including media! The press lives by disclosure, so investigative journalists should take nothing for granted.

This week we were asked: what do many investigations have in common? They changed the world, and it is this in-depth reporting that actually reveals important news. We came to the conclusion that Wikileaks is not itself an investigation, as it’s just data – just stuff, meaningless until categorized, like the objects in my room. It needs journalists to go through and analyse it.

Investigation thrives on interaction, through interviews, observations, documents, and hell, if it comes to it, trespass and theft.  Yet it is threatened, oddly, by the online phenomenon and, not oddly, by the growth in PR. Investigative journalism could be big, but citizen journos are too afraid to put themselves out there. Nowadays if you look at someone the wrong way they’ll sue you, let alone if you reveal their shocking secrets.

We were asked what kind of journalists we wanted to be, and the furthest I could really go was to say I favoured print. Now I’m skeptical though. How am I to put anything out there without it being either drivel, or make me jail meat? I figure if I keep my work like my room – clean, emotionless, and dimly lit – it might be total crap but at least I won’t have a law suit on my hands. I hate formal wear.

Suspicion is on my agenda.

In our JOUR1111 lecture this week the idea that we were being told exactly what we like and what's good to like in the media was simply reinforced. In a bleak turn of events, I found out about agenda settings in journalism.

Reality bites. But these bites are socially constructed and mediated through shared language. That is, we simply perceive these bites! Very deep.

There are a few agendas in journalism. There's public agenda - what we, the public, perceive as important (keeping in mind this is also dictated for us). Then there's policy agenda, which the decision makers reckon are important, and corporate agenda, and finally media agenda. In a tangle of perception versus reality, these four agendas are interrelated.

Media isn't just (badly) reporting reality, they're also shaping and filtering it. Cheeky bastards.

In 1922 Walter Lippman proposed a theory - that public opinion is formulated from the creation of images of events in our mind. Propaganda and the power of images substitute on social pattern for another and we end up relying on images as opposed to critical thinking. Remember that birthday party you thought was awesome, with memories of fun slides and cake? But no one reminds you of how the bee stung you! That's how the media injects direct influence to set the agenda.

Agendas can manifest themselves in various forms. Media gate-cutting describes how individuals themselves control the flow of messages through a communication channel to expose it, and even these issues are often (surprise surprise) chosen by the media.

Agenda cutting is quite crafty, and not the awesome kind involving pipe cleaners and Clag. Not even close. While the media can't just blatantly lie (we assume), most of the truth isn't represented. Less coverage means that an issue is less cared about, which is the Beibs' claim to fame.

Then there's agenda surfing - the bandwagon effect. Personally I don't like wagons, but apparently existing public opinions do influence others towards that opinion. I still don't like wagons.

While media dependence can often mean an individual is more easily influenced, I'm stubborn enough that even my hours on Facebook and Twitter mean I'm always scoffing at what the news has to say.

So while my agenda involves cleaning my room, shopping for party supplies and redecorating my wall, media's agenda involves sneakily nudging you toward a certain opinion, quietly enough that you think it's your own.

So if you think my humour's tacky, you're being fooled. The world just WANTS you to think it's poor when really I'm a literary genius. Good day.