A Research of the Sports Nationalistic Report and the Factors Affecting the British Newspapers

Introduction

In our everyday lives, news is everywhere. It reports on what is happening, what will happen and what is foreseen to happen. It even reminds us of past events that are worth remembering. Koch (1999) described news stories as “consistent rational system and abstracted interpretation derived from the chaos of a given moment and filtered through the stages of fixed, editorial necessity”. He further claimed that news reports are organized artificially and fully mediated by the culture it supports and not ordained by reality nor necessarily complete descriptions of each. Basically, the whole idea of journalism is to give information that people do need as well as do not need (Franklin and Murphy, 1998). In this time of information revolution, people are overloaded with information, both necessary and unnecessary. Irritating to some and useful to some as it may seems, journalism evolved with the times and have managed to keep up with its media counterparts. Journalists are more powerful than before, with the aid of many modern reporting tools brought by the emergence of globalization and technological innovations.

Journalistic articles are meant to inform and not to educate, but in the process, knowledge can still be acquired especially if the person reading the article has no prior idea about the topic. Moreover, journalism promotes knowledge because it is the task of the journalist to gather knowledge through reading and listening (Bovee, 1999). Even though such knowledge are to be transformed into messages for commercial use, important parts of the knowledge are still intact with the news, thus giving the readers the opportunity to learn what the journalist had learned. Journalism is not based on haphazard research. As we all know, there should be no room for irresponsible journalism although there are some journalists are not sincere with their duties. In the context of the argument presented here, some facts about journalism will help clear its usefulness in promoting and providing knowledge to viewers or readers.

Generally, newspapers are meant to inform and educate. Now, newspaper and its related vehicles are used to promote social values and development. For instance, the sports nationalistic report wherein the main focused is on sports but now, it promotes nationalistic perspectives. The factors that are present in news – whether it is straight or feature in structure, opinion or sports in type are elemental to the overall impact of news to the reader. With this, there is a need to study the factors affecting British newspapers with particular reference to sports nationalistic report. This research proposal aims to present a discussion of the sports nationalistic reports and the factors affecting British newspapers.

Research Objectives

The aim of this study is to discuss the sports nationalistic report and identify the factors affecting the British newspapers. Specifically, the author of this research study aimed to achieve the following research objectives:

• To investigate the characteristics and features of sports nationalistic report and the factors affecting British newspapers in terms of:

a. Presence of elements of news writing

b. Reportage, structure and style

c. Overall effect

d. Technology

• To identify the advantages and disadvantages of sports nationalistic report alongside with the factors affecting British newspapers.
• To add significant body of knowledge that will bring out new information about sports nationalistic report and factors affecting British newspapers.
• To explore the potentialities of sports nationalistic report and British newspapers in general especially in its future use, ways and means.

Research Questions

During the course of the research, it is important that the research is able to answer questions leading to the presentation of the data needed to meet the requirements of the objectives present. This study is mainly focused on the features of sports nationalistic report and the factors affecting the British newspapers. These are specific research questions that this research study should answer.

1. What are the characteristics and features of
1. sports nationalistic report
2. British newspapers?
2. Is there a difference in terms of
1. Presence of elements of news writing
2. Reportage, structure and style
3. Overall effect
4. Technology?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of sports nationalistic report alongside with the factors affecting British newspapers?
4. What are the potentialities of sports nationalistic report and British newspapers in general especially in its future use, ways and means?

Methodology and Access to the Sources

The researcher finds it necessary to use the descriptive research method, which is primarily concerned with describing the nature or conditions and degree in detail of the present situation (Creswell, 1994). The emphasis is on describing rather than on judging. In this case, the descriptive-qualitative design is used to compare and validate the findings, analyses and conclusions of previous researchers. The descriptive research method uses the process of observations and interviews. In this method, it is possible that the study would be cheap and quick. It could also suggest unanticipated hypotheses. Nonetheless, it would be very hard to rule out alternative explanations and especially infer causations.

The purpose of employing this method is to describe the nature of a situation, as it exists at the time of the study and to explore the causes or effects of particular phenomena. The researcher opted to use this kind of research considering the desire of the researcher to obtain first hand data from the respondents so as to formulate rational and sound conclusions and recommendations for the study.

This study also employs qualitative research method, since this research intends to find and build theories that would explain the relationship of one variable with another variable through qualitative elements in research. These qualitative elements does not have standard measures, rather they are behavior, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs. Furthermore, as we define the qualitative research, it is multi-method in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. A qualitative approach will be chosen for this study because it will give more opportunity to the participants to be able to describe their experiences and understanding of their public health functions, once they have understood the mains of the research and the contents of the (Benz and Newman 1998). Accordingly, qualitative researchers deploy a wide range of interconnected methods, hoping always to get a better fix on the subject matter at hand.

Specifically, the methodology used a wide variety of literature covering the period from 1990s to present. The literatures relates to the following key words: media and journalism, newspaper and news, elements of news and news writing, reportage, structure, and style, sports nationalistic report, and factors affecting British newspapers. The author conducted a thorough critical review of the literature. Aside from literatures that will serve as the main source of data, individual sources will also be interviewed to add credibility to the research. The researcher will do the actual data collection following these steps:

1) Formal letters will be sent to the randomly selected respondents asking for informed consent and informing them of the study – the purpose of the study will be explained in general terms and the respondents can then reply with their informed consent and their choice to whether do the interview by questionnaire or by phone;

2) Assurance will be given on anonymity upon the actual data collection;

3) During the data collection, the respondents will be asked to answer a set of questions about how news are made using the new media and the challenges that lie ahead – as previously stated, this could be done either through hand-in and mail survey or by personal and telephone interview, whichever is comfortable for the respondent;

4) After the collection of data, the researchers will express their gratitude for the respondents’ answers.

In sum, the following are the major steps that the researcher undertook to complete the paper:

1) The first part of the paper involved reading, evaluating and finding the research gaps in the literature in order to come up with a topic that would be helpful for the understanding of general health.

2) The researcher limited the scope to focus on and refine the questions in this study and in the process revised and redrafted queries to come up with a compact and substantial subject.

3) The researcher designed the overall research process.

4) Finally, the researcher discussed and analyzed the finding and supports it with literature that led to conclusions and/or generalizations.

Chapter Headings of the Research

The following is the forms of presentation as this study is composed of five chapters.

• The Chapter 1 will present the background of the study, the objectives, research problems, the study’s scope and limitation and its significance.
• In Chapter 2, literatures pertaining to public health and primary care are reviewed.
• In Chapter 3, the methodology used for this study is discussed.
• In Chapter 4, the results of the conducted survey and interview are presented and analyzed.
• And in Chapter 5, the study summarizes the findings and provides conclusion and recommendations.

References

Benz, C.R. & Newman, I. (1998) Qualitative-Quantitative Research Methodology: Exploring the Interactive Continuum. Carbindale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Bovee, W.E. (1999) Discovering Journalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Creswell, J.W. (1994) Research design: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Franklin, B. & Murphy, D. Eds. (1998) Making the Local News: Local Journalism in Context. London: Routledge.

Koch, T. (1999) Journalism for the 21st Century: Online Information, Electronic

Databases, and the News. Westport, CT: Praeger.