Television news needs be highly entertaining and visual in order to maintain audience attention. Much of the “news” content consists of summaries of events, but those summaries are accompanied by often dramatic video clips and bulleted lists of headline summaries. Moreover, in contrast to the BBC “newsreaders,” national news anchors themselves such as Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Paula Zahn as well as local anchors are often celebrity stars whose own perspectives, comments, and asides become a part of the broadcast.

To enhance their celebrity status and role in entertaining audience, anchors engage in “happy talk” banter with other anchors or weather/sports reporters on the set. Their engagement with audiences is maintained rhetorically through direct address — “you’re really enjoy the story about the escaped tiger coming up in our next segment” — as well as direct eye contact with audiences. “On the scene” reporters or correspondents functions as subordinate extensions of these anchors, “reporting in” to them and then receiving the anchor “thanks for your report.”

To analyze these elements of presentation, log onto a on-line news site such as CNN and play a video clip of a news story. Focus on the ways in which the story is presented and framed. As with newspapers, there is use of the narrativization of events (Fairclough, 1995) in which the dramatic aspects of an event — a murder, political scandal, natural disaster, business collapse, etc., becomes the primary focus, as opposed to background context or social/political issues. . Those news events that lend themselves best to compelling narratives—dramatic, unusual crimes, scandals, or natural disasters are more likely to be given air time, as opposed to topics related to abstract, theoretical issues related to political, social, and cultural issues.

For video clip examples of different types of news stories, go to the NewsLab site and click on “Links” for a list of the video clips.

In watching a news clip or the entire news, consider how much and what kinds of conceptual content you are acquiring from the news. The news is also highly segmented based on an unfolding flow of stories organized down to the second. Most stories last for less than a minute, a use of time, a pace that differs from the slow, unpredictable flow of time in everyday worlds.

The high speed at which stories are reported with an emphasis on a multi-media presentation may ironically detract from a substantive understanding of the news content one may acquire from reading a newspaper account.

Television news also continually promotes and advertisers itself, forecasting up-coming stories within a newscast or on later newscasts in order to attract and maintain audience attention. They also promote their larger community function as providing a valued service to the community not only through their news presentation, but also through hosting community and charity events.

One of the underlying assumptions behind their promotion is the belief that their “live, up-to-the-minute” news is valued because of its immediacy, as opposed to the less immediate reporting of newspapers. (This sense of immediacy has been eclipsed by on-line news.) However, simply because a reporter arrives on a scene and gives an “immediate” report does not necessarily mean that this reporter provides any more insightful understanding of an event than a reporter who spends more time and analysis reflecting on different aspects of an event. The assumption that the immediacy of reporting an event means that audiences will be better informed about that event is therefore highly problematic.

Television news also tend to select those stories that have visual, dramatic content — fires, crime, natural disasters, embarrassed politicians, etc., as reflected in the slogan “If it bleeds, it leads.” They are less likely to want to cover stories related to theoretical, abstract analysis of issues of unemployment, poverty, housing, crime, education, religion, etc. because they simply do not have the time to devote to such analysis.

Moreover, coverage of local events often fails to provide a range of different perspectives about an event, as well as information about background institutional factors shaping that event. Such coverage is evident on the PBS NewsHour broadcast that generally focuses in depth on 3-5 topics, devoting about 10 – 15 minutes on each topic with background interviews, information, and analysis.

However, there is some debate as to whether audiences would view substantive coverage of local event. In a PBS NewsHour analysis of WBBM, a Chicago station that made a failed attempt to provide in-depth coverage of local news, audience ratings declined when in-depth coverage was provided, leading the station to abandon what they perceived to be a journalistic experiment.

It may be the case that audiences are not accustomed to substantive coverage on a local news broadcast, and prefer the familiar fast-paced, superficial format. Or, they may not be open to analysis which may challenge the status quo.

In his documentary Bowling for Columbine, about gun violence in America, Michael Moore argues that the heavy emphasis on crime and violence in American television news has created a sense of fear in the American public to the point that they believe that they need to not only own guns, but use them to protect themselves. He contrasts American attitudes towards fear of crime with Canadians’ lack of fear, which he attributes to their low-keyed television news broadcasts. It should be noted that Moore presents no empirical evidence for his claims, other than the fact that Canadians own just as many guns as Americans but commit far few murders.

Crime in the News [ Media Awareness Network Lesson, grades 10–12 ]

For further reading:

Alteide, D. L. (2002). Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Lipschultz, J. H., & Hilt, M. L. (2002). Crime and local television news: Dramatic, breaking, and live from the scene. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Tovares, R. D. (2002). Manufacturing the gang: Mexican American youth gangs on local television news. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

For video:

British Film Institute. (2002). Images and reality. [video]. London: British Film Institute.

The relationship of television news and local community. Many local television news broadcasts promote themselves as more than providing news information. They perceive and portray themselves as serving as a synthetic, central nexus of the community through organizing discussion forums or news conferences, or sponsoring charity events. Local news anchors emerge as celebrities in the community. And, politicians and community organizations build their public relations and events around “getting on the news.”

Television news also frames how people perceive their local community as mediated by television news. The heavy emphasis on “urban crime” often frames perceptions of urban communities as “crime-ridden.” emphasis on sensationalistic content raises a major issue about the function of television news in contributing to a local community’s larger good. Some stations have begun to consider deciding on story selection based more on relevance to the community, as opposed to sensational appeal to audience. However, as was the case with a Chicago news station that attempt to focus more on substantive news content with little increase in their viewing audience, these experiments are not always that successful.

This raises the larger question as to whether the function of television news may actually not be to inform, but to perform a cultural function with the context of the domestic world of providing a ritual-like reassurance that “all’s well” in the world — that despite all of the crimes, accidents, and disasters reported in the broadcast, that the overall community is or will still be intact. This promotional sense of a synthetic community constructed through and with the participation of television news serves to provide audiences with a false sense of comic relief that institutions and communities will be preserved. Thus, television news frames or packages the seemingly chaotic world into a larger ritual experience which itself provides an appealing reassurance to its audiences. As is Michael Moore’s speculates in Bowling for Columbine, this analysis is more cultural hypothesizing requiring further careful ethnographic analysis.

Module 10: Word document

Newspaper or Print News

Teaching the News Itself

Analysis of Newspaper Sections and Functions

Differences in Types and Uses of News

On-line News

Web-based Political Lobbying

Weblogs

The Web and Politics

Editorial Perspectives

Newspaper Ownership

News Bias

A Teacher Teaches about Bias

Studying and Producing Classroom / School Newspapers

Television and Radio News

Characteristics of Television News

Selecting News Stories

Accuracy / Completeness of News Coverage

Television News Development

On-line Television News

Sports Coverage

Coverage of Political Issues and Campaigns

Creating a Television News Broadcast

Teaching Activity: Analysis of a Local News Broadcast

References