The Impact of Narratives

While a particular story may be interesting to one person, that same story may be of little or no interest to another person. Gerald Prince does a tremendous job of explaining what is not successful in terms of narratives in his article “The Disnarrated”: “More specifically, we are all familiar with the category of the unnarratable, or nonnarratable: that which according to a given narrative, cannot be narrated or is not worth narrating either because it transgresses a law (social, authorial, generic, formal) or because it defies the powers of a particular narrator (or those of any narrator) or because it falls below the so-called threshold of narratability (it is not sufficiently unusual or problematic)”(Prince,1). [1] I think this statement holds true in today’s news world as many stories that may be of importance are not discussed or shown on television because they are not out of the ordinary and therefore, may not be of “news value”. This concept is significant because information that may be of actual value to people in regards to their everyday lives is either being completely withheld from them or is becoming increasingly harder to find.

In today’s times, the entertainment world has much significance in the news industry. For example, all one has to do is take a look at all of the magazines and television shows that focus solely on entertainment and the celebrity world. The entertainment world is obviously appealing to many people or else it would not be as covered as much as it is. In Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill’s article “What Is News? Galtung and Ruge revisited” it highlights the fact that one of the first moves Rupert Murdoch made after purchasing the international tabloid Sun was to increase the amount of entertainment coverage and shrink its coverage of public affairs. [2] By adding the appealing narrative and taking away the dis-appealing narrative, Murdoch helped the Sun become the most popular UK daily newspaper. The news industry has come to understand that dis-appealing narratives means less profit, which is really the driving force behind the choice of narratives.

In closing, at the end of the day, I think the key to understanding narratives lies in the fact that you are never going to please everyone, just as with anything in life. If one can explain a narrative in a clear, concise, and interesting fashion then the chances of having an audience on the other end are greatly increased.

[1] Prince, Gerald. “The Disnarrated”. Volume 22 (1988), 1. Print.

[2] Harcup, Tony and O’Neill, Deirdre. “What is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited”. Volume 2 (2001), 261-280. Print.