Television News

What is News ?

An infinite number of events happen in the world every day. A handful of these events, considered by news institutions to be 'important' or 'interesting' are selected and represented to audiences. These audiences may be local, regional, national or international and each is targeted by television, radio and press news media in different ways.

Definitions of news are constantly shifting: much that is regarded as news in TV news rooms today would have been rejected without hesitation thirty years ago and vice versa. Not only has the criteria by which what is regarded as 'important and interesting' changed dramatically, but the way such information is packaged, has evolved over the years into the format we recognise today. The dictionary defines news as 'a recent event': a newcast takes such events and forms them into narrative by using 'live' footage, journalists' reports, the opinions of different people and 'unbiased' comment. News events cover a wide range of situations involving people, animals and things; some marvellous, some mundane; but all of which only become 'newsworthy' because of their being positioned in newscasts or newspapers.

It is important to remember that news material is bought and sold like any other product. British television news is not subject to direct commercial pressure as it is in America because ITN and Channel 4 News receive their income directly from the ITV network or Channel 4 and not from advertising revenue. Nevertheless, high costs or low ratings spell trouble for any news organisation. ITN, for example, has to show value for money to the independent networks it serves because SKY news offers a cheaper, populist alternative.

TV news organisations may be in competition, but they buy and sell stories from each other and are linked by their dependency on regular news sources such as the large news agencies, governments, political parties, the police and any number of official, 'recognized' institutions. The similarity of major stories, their treatment and even running order far outweigh the differences to be found in TV news programmes in Britain. This suggests that TV news has a fairly uniform 'agenda' of what its editors regard as interesting or uninteresting, important or unimportant.

What makes news on TV, therefore, will be determined by this 'agenda'. Who sets this agenda is a complex and controversial question. What is described as 'traditional practices' suggests selecting stories is simply a matter of journalistic skill . The cliched notion of a 'nose for news' is something which TV journalists and editors have to develop. In practice it means trainees working with 'experienced' journalists or editors until they recognize the type of stories that are acceptable and are capable of packaging the items in ways that the news organisation approves of. The concept of 'traditional practices' helps to partly obscure the question of who is setting the agenda.This question is examined in the section (Who Controls News ?) below in more detail.

News - An Historical Overview

The coronation of George Vl was one of the first events to be recorded by the fledgling BBC shortly after its launch in 1936 and one which helped boost early sales of television sets. Before the war there was no news service as such, although the BBC screened Movietone and Gaumont newsreels on a weekly basis. The BBC television closed down for the duration of the war and the service only resumed with a broadcast of the Victory Parade in June 1946.

The BBC's newsreel division was producing its own footage by 1948 supplemented by 'live sound' recorded on the spot - although difficult to synchronise at this stage. They recorded dramatic scenes such as accidents, storms, fires and floods with the emphasis very much on what made exciting images. Elizabeth ll's coronation in 1953 gave a huge boost to television sales, with the BBC broadcasting the ceremony live. By the mid 1950's television news was overtaking British cinema newsreels in importance. Traditionally, the five major newsreel companies had been the only source of images of world news events that people may have heard about on the radio.

In 1954 the Newsreel Division of the BBC came under the control of News Division which had only produced radio reports until that time. The News and Newsreel service ran news items in the same running order as Broadcasting House, with no allowance given for the quality of footage that might accompany it. Frequently, there was no footage at all, only photographic stills clumsily rotated on a revolving apparatus by hand before a camera lens.

The style of News and Newsreel has been described as 'impersonal', 'sober', 'self conscious' and the content 'hard', heavy' and with an obsession for accuracy or official confirmation even if it meant the loss of a scoop. On one occasion a BBC reporter's eye witness account of the death of a speedboat racer on a Scottish loch sent just before a news bulletin was not used because no agency had yet confirmed it.

In 'Putting Reality Together', Schlesinger quotes observations on the content of BBC broadcasts as,

'..devoted to international and foreign events - including much news from the United States, especially if it relates to the United Kingdom; news of the British Commonwealth; home, political and industrial events; significant developments in literature, the arts, science, and other fields of learning; and the activities of the royal family..' and '..a tendency to eschew the reporting of crimes and accidents, a lack of humorous or light stories, and an absence of colourful adjectives.'

The difference between the media had been appreciated up to twenty years earlier. W.A. Pullan writes in 'Picturegoer' in 1935,

'Newsreel commenting is vastly different from (radio) broadcasting as has been proved on more than one occasion... A newsreel commentary must be all-embracing, conclusive, pithy, full of punch, dramatic, compact.'

All the things, in fact, that the daily 20 minute News and Newsreel was not. Stuffy, untelegenic newsreaders, dull, wordy, primitive, distanced and confused production and 'hopelessly up-market' news values meant that many viewers thought the programme inferior to the pre-1954 BBC Newsreel.

What changed the BBC's approach to news, it is widely recognised, was the growing threat of ITN , the news service of ITV which was launched in 1955. Only weeks before ITN's first transmission the BBC was still not showing its newsreaders' faces on the screen, for fear that this would jeopardise the bulletin's impartiality. By contrast, the commercial pressures driving ITV meant that ITN was encouraged to reach a wider audience by promoting the personalities of its newsreaders. Schlesinger quotes Robin Day on his role as one of the original ITN newscasters:

'..as the newscaster became known to viewers, his professional grasp of his material, and his lively interest in it would make the news more authoritative and entertaining.' (Putting Reality Together)

Drawing extensively on the model of ABC and CBS journalism in the United States ITN allowed the news values of television to emerge and embraced more populist elements like human interest stories, vivid action film, the use of reporters on the spot, 'vox pop' location interviews with members of the public, humour and a more combative interviewing style . Wheen describes how in contrast to the 'deferential' interviewing style of the BBC, ITN's reporters were unafraid to tackle senior politicians and statesmen:

'During the Suez crisis ... it was ITN that broadcast the first pictures of British and French troops landing at Port Said. ITN followed this success with another world exclusive in 1957, when Robin Day interviewed President Nasser in Cairo. Since diplomatic relations between Britain and Egypt were still severed, Nasser's comments generated enormous interest, especially as he expressed his willingness to resume Egypt's 'friendship' with Britain. For Day, too, the interview was a triumph, proving that the ITN style would be applied even to heads of state. when Day asked whether Nasser accepted Israel's right to exist, the President accused him of 'jumping to conclusions'. 'No,' Day replied, 'I am asking a question.' ('Wheen 1985)

ITN exploited the celebrity status of its early presenters - Robin Day, Ludovic Kennedy, Christopher Chataway, Reginald Bosanquet - to compensate for the fact that many news stories took place without cameras being present, while other stories - a fall in the balance of payments or a rise in inflation - were not particularly 'visual' in any case.

A major problem of news at this time was its refusal to deal with any given subject for more than about a minute. The main fear was that audiences would be bored by anything longer. The resulting lack of depth given to any TV news report created a vacuum in news presentation that led to the development of the current affairs programme - a kind of offshoot of television news. Panorama, Tonight, Searchlight, World in Action'and Sixty Minutes followed in the footsteps of the American See It Now whose creator Edward R. Murrow dared to challenge such orthodoxies as Joseph McCarthy's Communist blacklist and the United States's involvement in Vietnam. These programmes sought out and found controversy on a range of 'sensitive' issues such as Northern Ireland, defence spending, homelessness, political corruption, the dangers of smoking, road accidents and spying scandals. Clashes with TV's governing bodies and the government of the day were frequent, usually centring on problems of 'national security' or 'impartiality'. Francis Wheen describes a typical argument in his history of television:

'In September 1963 'World in Action' revealed the appalling living conditions of black people in South Africa and Angola (which was then a Portuguese colony), causing an inevitable protest from the ambassadors of the two countries. The ITA agreed that the programme had not been impartial, and decreed that in future all Granada's current affairs programmes should be vetted before transmission by the Authority's staff.'

The insistence on 'impartiality' and 'balance' led to such absurd situations like films promoting holidays in the Republic of South Africa being shown alongside documentaries and current affairs programmes condemning Apartheid.

The political power of television images, combined with the increasing use of TV satellite transmissions around the world (after 1962) gave the medium even greater importance. Coverage of the civil rights campaigns in America in the late 1950's and early 1960's was widely seen as making possible the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights of 1965. Following broadcast footage of marines razing the Vietnamese village of Cam Ne to the ground in 1965, burning alive some of its inhabitants in the process, President Lyndon Johnson famously rang the President of CBS shouting: 'Frank, are you trying to fuck me ?' adding that, '..yesterday your boys shat on the American flag'. In 1968, protestors outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago chanted 'The Whole World is Watching' while police beat them in front of the news cameras.

This awareness of the potency of television images was not confined to the USA. One of the causes of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was the ending of television news censorship under Alexander Dubcek's liberal regime. During student riots in France in 1968 the government intervened to prevent television journalists giving airtime to student leaders. The resulting strike by TV journalists meant that during five violent weeks of social unrest that brought the country close to revolution - French television (ORTF) controlled by the Ministry of Information had only brief news bulletins produced by a skeleton staff. Following De Gaulle's defeat of the students the striking journalists lost their jobs and the state's monopoly of broadcasting continued.

Controversy has also dogged British news broadcasts. The 1980's and 1990's provided challenges for ITV and, particularly the BBC to provide 'balance' and 'impartiality' in periods of political and economic crisis, when the country was (at times violently) divided. The miner's strike, the 'Falkland's War', welfare cuts, coverage of Northern Ireland, party politics, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were just some areas where broadcasters found themselves under fire from more than one direction for their coverage. In fact, Britain was totally divided on most of these issues - there was no 'consensus' - and as such consensus or even 'balanced' reporting was an impossibility. As Andrew Goodwin notes

'As the social and political consensus has broken down in postwar Britain, so television has encountered more and more problems in knowing how to represent that world.' ('Understanding Television' 1990)

TV news found itself under attack from radical Tories in the government like Norman Tebbit, those on the left of the labour party such as Tony Benn and from the centre with the SDP claiming it was receiving insufficient coverage. Throughout conservative government in the 1980's and 1990's the threat of removing the BBC's Public Sector Broadcasting status was a real possiblity, and one which critics on the left feel neutered news and current affairs coverage.

Broadcasters looked across the Atlantic to see what kind of news US stations, responsible only to their advertisers, were offering. While news had been regarded as something of a public duty in the 1950's and 1960's, by the early 1970's it had become a 'profit centre', as important a weapon in the ratings battle as a soap opera or game show. According to Francis Wheen:

'The trend setter was 'Eye Witness News', a local programme put out by stations owned and operated by ABC. It used a simple formula: plenty of sports reports; even more weather forecasts; a little news, kept as 'soft' and 'visual' as possible; and interminable jokey banter between the anchor-people and the weather-man....This kind of inanity became known as 'Happy Talk' news, and stations around the country hired 'news consultants' to come in and convert their programmes to Happy Talk.' (Television 1985)

Such 'news consultants' - often the same American ones - are still being used around the world and in Britain. Frank N Magid Associates from Marion, Iowa worked on the ITN revamp in 1992, researching viewers attitudes, refreshing 'writing techniques' and 'picture packaging'. The results, as the journalist Rosie Millard notes, are that internationally news programmes have a certain similarity:

'From Sweden to Greece, Liverpool to America, we see the same bright set; the jaunty electronic theme tune; the branding of packages within the programme ('Focus on Britain' ... 'And Finally') and the emphasis on live, "happening events" (witness the increase use of live links by News at Ten).' ('Back with a Bong' - Guardian 1993)

Commercial pressures on British television news production have been growing since the late 1980's when competition from satellite broadcasting started to take a share of the British audience - ending the BBC/ITN duopoly of television news . This development was also regarded, by many who opposed the government, as a move to undermine public broadcasting and, with it, any potential opposition to conservative policy. Conservatism, it was felt, was clearly best supported by a commercial broadcasting sector under the control of large (private sector) commercial interests that government policy supported. In fact, transnational corporations such as Ted Turner's CNN or Rupert Murdoch's SKY were capable of operating, with or without national government backing. Government legislation, which resulted in limiting the BBC's ability to defend its interests in a variety of ways only marginally hastened their success.

News Values

While the day to day agenda of news items may appear to change, the underlying principles of selection and presentation of news are more constant. These principles are often described as 'news values' and include some of the following characteristics.

Personalisation

'The social power of elite persons is underscored by the narrative power that familiarity confers.' (John Fiske 'Television Culture' 1987)

' Personalisation' (i.e. events, 'seen as the actions of individuals rather than forces), Brian Dutton suggests, is one of the most important news values held by journalists. In the historical context of violent racial attacks or changes in legislation affecting thousands of asylum seekers extensive TV news coverage of a libel action by two individuals against another for describing them as 'racists' would seem wholly disproportionate. When those individuals are well known media and sports personalities, however, ( Ian Botham, Alan Lamb, Imran Kahn - July 1996) then the widespread coverage seems completely 'natural'. According to Pilger (1992):

'On the day Robert Maxwell died, an estimated 6,000 people were killed in a typhoon in the Philippines, most of them in one town....On the BBC's Nine O'Clock News Maxwell was the first item; the disaster in the Philippines was one of the last in a round-up of fillers.'

Political or industrial disputes are frequently reported in terms of personalities: Scargill v Thatcher, Major v Blair. The 'human interest angle' of the story of an individual or small group can graphically illustrate the effects of any news item. The horror of war , for instance, is brought home most powerfully by showing its effect on one family or child (a technique ITN employed in Bosnia). Used excessively though, as many critics suggest British TV does, the personalisation of issues in this way fails to even attempt to unravel the causes of the wars, famines, industrial or political disputes and other conflicts:

'Clearly the news is peopled by real individuals, but in representing events through people the news is following the conventions of classic realism, for it assumes that the way to construct an understandable and authentic version of the real is through the actions, words and reactions of the individuals involved. Social and political issues are only reported if they can be embodied in an individual, and thus social conflict of interest is personalized into conflicts between individuals. The effect of this is that the social origins of events are lost, and individual motivation is assumed to be the origin of all action.' (John Fiske 'Television Culture' 1987)

Negativity

'The bigger the tragedy, the greater the images of the disaster, the more prominence it acquires.' ( BBC news presenter - Martyn Lewis 1993)

'Hard news': serious, 'important', dramatic events - wars, disasters, terrorism, political and economic crises, crime, the deaths of famous persons has traditionally dominated TV news. 'Soft news' : consumer features, entertainment, human interest stories, bizarre or amusing tales, experiences recounted in the first person, personality gossip has, until recently, remained in the province of magazine and tabloid journalism. Martyn Lewis, writing for the Daily Mail in April 1993, sparked a fierce debate by publicly calling for more good news on television. Viewers, he claimed, were sick of TV's 'remorseless emphasis on disaster, conflict and failure.' He put forward an argument for more positive 'hard news' such as the increase in productivity of miners through the late Eighties because it was, 'part of the fabric of understanding of what is now happening in the mining industry,' That Lewis, writing for the loyally conservative Daily Mail, chose the 'mining industry' - if it could still be called that - to support his case, exposes the ideological dimension of such arguments. Certainly, ex-miners and unionists complain that the destruction of mining communities, closure of profitable mines and decline in safety standards and working conditions for the few remaining miners under privatised companies did not get enough coverage on TV news.

In fact, Lewis's suggestions, based on developments at ABC in America where a segment of the main evening news called 'American Agenda' explored solutions to what seem intractable problems, had already been taken up by ITN. Their thrice weekly feature package 'Focus on Britain' launched in November 1992 was exactly the type of feature he was calling for.

The issue of 'soft news' was only briefly addressed in the debate. Lewis criticised the ' 'And finally ...' tailpiece, the frivolous, often funny story, which, on a rational assessment of what is important in the world that day, would never make it into a properly packed news bulletin'. Market pressures which shifted the press towards soft news, lifestyle features and entertainment in the late 1980's and early 1990's were slowly being felt in TV newsrooms. The tabloidisation of news - already experienced in America and graphically illustrated on satellite 'infotainment' shows like Hard Copy - was felt to be a growing threat in Britain. ITN's 1992 revamp - a response to such commercial pressures - was criticised by those in the industry as, 'a Las Vegas floorshow', 'stylish but not informative', encouraging 'down market news values' and 'formulaic' presentation. Lewis's coverage of a delivery of Christmas presents from British schoolchildren to children in war torn Armenia on the 19th December 1996, is, perhaps, typical of the kind of good news story he was pressing for. Reporting from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, on 'a story which touched a nation's heart' Lewis interviewed grateful parents and children as they opened the 'personally wrapped gifts'. The report is symptomatic of a shift towards sentimental 'human interest' stories that do little, or nothing, to explain distant conflicts and reinforce a smugly paternalistic view of Britain's role in world affairs.

The journalist John Cole, amongst others, argued that news values should not be set by public opinion: 'News', he wrote, 'must be judged by whether it is right, interesting and significant..' (Bromley 1994). Less subjective and more useful definitions of news are given by Corner as, 'part of general citizenship rights, 'to provide knowledge and understanding about circumstances of consequence to readers, listeners and viewers, to contribute not only to their understanding but also to their capacities for judgement and action' '. (Television Form and Public Address 1995) or by Fiske as, '..factual information that its viewers need in order to be able to participate in their society..' (Television Culture 1987). Defined by its function in this way, news remains a highly controversial form, but one more easily distinguished from various types of 'infotainment' that adopt the conventions of news. However, the fact remains, that, when people talk about 'the news' they generally refer to the particular events which have been reported in news output. As such, functional definitions such as those quoted above may be no more than altruistic ideals against which we can measure the reality of news production.

Locality

Regional TV news covers news from that region, or how national news affects the region. National news - like the BBC's six o'clock bulletin tend to concentrate on developments close to home. It is often remarked that a news event in London will take precedent over an identical event in Glasgow. A plane crash in France will be considered more important than a similar crash in Russia. News from Africa or India usually has to involve a major catastrophe before it is covered, reinforcing a view of developing countries as places of natural and political disaster and not much else. Such catastrophes are also usually covered in relation to how British people are affected.

News for international audiences such as CNN or BBC World News are also accused of being top heavy in terms of 'Western' news. This is due to the reliance of such organisations on the larger news agencies, like Reuters (British), AFP (French), AP and UPI (American). Being based in 'the Developed World' and having most of their journalists employed there means that the transborder data flow works to the disadvantage of Third World Countries. According to the Unesco report 'Many Voices, One World':

'Associated Press sends 90,000 words daily from New York to Asia on its world wire service. In return Asia files a mere 19,000 words for worldwide distribution.' and that 'A study of one particular day's news in Venezuela in 1977 showed that for every 100 items received from the USA, Venezuelan sources dispatched only 7 - and these via AP or UPI, both US agencies.' (Lewis and Pearlman 1986)

This disparity in news material is reflected in, for example, CNN's coverage of elections in the USA, Russia (as a former superpower) and Europe compared to other regions. It is also reflected in the Western 'perspectives' of the so-called 'Third World'. As the journalist John Pilger remarks:

'The fact that Africa's recurring famines and extreme poverty - a poverty whose rapid increase is a feature of the 'new age' - have political causes rooted in the West is not regarded as news. How many of us were aware during 1985 - the year of the Ethiopian famine and of 'Live Aid' - that the hungriest countries in Africa gave twice as much money to us in the West as we gave to them: billions of dollars just in interest payments.

We were shown terrible pictures of children dying and we were not told of the part our financial institutions had played in their deaths. This also was not news. The camera was allowed to dictate a false neutrality, as is often the case, with the reporter playing the role of the concerned innocent bystander and caption writer. Public attitudes flow from both perspectives and ommissions. Unless prejudice is countered, it is reinforced. Unless misconceptions are corrected, they become received truth.This 'neutrality' is commonly known, with unintended irony, as 'objectivity'.' (Pilger 1992)

Timing

'Hand in glove with objectivity go authenticity and immediacy. Both these link news values in particular with qualities of television in general. For authenticity links with realisticness, and immediacy with "nowness" or "liveness", both of which are central to the experience of television. In news, both work to promote the transparency fallacy and to mask the extent of the construction or interpretation that news involves.' (Fiske 1987)

The more recent the events, the more newsworthy they are. Television's main advantage over the press is that it can deal with today's news, or even news as it breaks unlike most daily papers which can only report yesterday's events. During the Gulf War CNN's reputation as a news channel soared throughout the world because it reported events as they happened. John Eldridge in 'Getting the Message' comments:

'These CNN reports had a raw quality about them. They were unfiltered happenings. We see one reporter knock over another as the sirens wail out in Dhahran and they instinctively duck to avoid the anticipated missile. At times, because of the noise or because their voices are muffled by gas masks we can scarcely hear what they say. But what kind of knowledge is this ? It was fairly described by one critic on BBC 2's 'Late Show' as 'immediacy without understanding, drama without information' (22 January 1991)'

There are many occasions when the 'live' nature of TV news reports is employed only for effect. Live links to an empty Downing Street, or outside talks where nobody has emerged are a common sight. In the same article on the Gulf War John Eldridge quotes an ITN reporter, Alex Thomson:

'One of the standard devices is the live two-way ... you go to your man on the spot ... Bill, what's the latest ? That's fine. In Dhahran you didn't know what the latest was because the latest was 150-200 miles away, or in Riyadh. So what was a perfectly respectable journalistic device - asking someone who was there - actually became completely downgraded and abused in that situation ... I'm informed that such and such is going on. The only reason they knew was that they phoned their office (the London newsroom) just before going on air and the office had read over to them the latest wire copy. I know. I did that.' (Tales From the Gulf BBC2 19 July 1991)

A story like the Gulf War is extremely attractive to television news because, while the details of the conflict and its outcome were difficult to predict, the story had 'legs' and would run for weeks if not months. To this extent it was predictable as a news event. Day 13 of Desert Storm was the screen caption behind the newsreader while expertise, 3D maps, satellite links, Middle East specialists and army experts could be called in, safe in the knowledge that the story wasn't going to disappear tomorrow. News stories like this develop the narrative qualities of soap opera or epic sagas with easily recognised characters( mad dictators, determined generals, brave soldiers); cliff hangers (will Iraq use chemical weapons ?), twists in the plot (the capture of airforce pilots) and reversals of fortune ( Iraqi soldiers chased out of Kuwait).

For a story to run and maintain a high priority on the news agenda there must be a daily supply of fresh, dramatic or unexpected developments. The war in Bosnia floated out of the headlines once the reports of Serb concentration camps and mass murder had been aired. Only major military advances, the death of UN soldiers or the final US brokered peace deal could push the first war on European soil since the second world war back into the headlines. For similar reasons the Dunblane massacre of schoolchildren remained the lead item for many days, while the drawn out government inquiry on possession of handguns - an inquiry that, in the opinion of the police federation, could end similar atrocities - was barely mentioned either on TV or in the press for several months until their conclusions were made public. In this way the 'public inquiry' is a well known government stalling device that allows 'tempers to cool' or tragedies to be forgotten.

Pictures

'Television news is generally given greater credence by the public than either newspapers or radio; probably because it is perceived to be less partisan than the press, and because it offers the 'evidence' of pictures that isn't available on the radio.' (Andrew Goodwin 'Understanding Television' 1990)

'We quickly learned how television affects the selection and arrangement of news. The fact of yesterday's air disaster may no longer be top news tonight - but the first film of the scene may well merit first place in this evening's television news.' (Robin Day quoted in Putting Reality together)

The emergence of ITN witnessed a rediscovery of the importance of 'picture value' in British TV news - a concept already clearly grasped in American news bulletins and, previously, by British newsreel. Today 'picture value' has very high importance - too high according to many critics. A common complaint is that TV news' reliance on dramatic, visual events reinforces the lack of coverage given to long term developments which may be far more 'important' in terms of their effects. Floods, for instance, affect many people and make dramatic footage. The destruction of forests however, which in many instances causes such floods and displaces as many people, is a daily reality and therefore makes far less dramatic footage for a news report. Unemployment, pollution, malnutrition, disease and political oppression are also slow acting, if far reaching developments, but lack the visual punch of an earthquake or a rocket exploding, and so tend to have a lower priority on TV bulletins.

Short term, immediate and easily explained filmed news items will generally take precedence on TV bulletins. For example, minor outbreaks of violence amongst Hong Kong citizens queuing for documentation at the British consulate found its way into British news reports because a camera crew were present at the incident. Had the crew arrived five minutes later it is highly unlikely the item would have been covered at all.

In fact the majority of film on news items shows places and persons connected to a story after the event. The principle action is over and news teams resort to a repertoire of visual prompts around which the spoken narrative can be organised. These include shots of the location, library film, 'stagings', photographs of individuals or families or footage from related stories. As John Corner suggests when cameras are present at the news event the effect can be very powerful:

'..such picturing may serve to crystallise the whole report and to enter public circulation with a force no other form of contemporary journalism could possess. The examples of the first pictures of the mid-1970's Ethiopian famine, broadcast all over the world, are often cited here. Other, more recent, examples having international significance would be the scenes of the Baghdad shelter following the Allied bombing in 1991 and the scenes of the Serbian-run interment camps in Bosnia, shown by television in 1992. In both cases, and in many others, the television pictures attain a 'nodal' status for subsequent public debate about the circumstances depicted, and often for political responses to them too.' (Television Form and Public Address 1995)

Simplicity

Related to all the points above is TV news's preference for simple stories over complex ones. This is hardly surprising given the constraints of time and the medium. A typical news programme attempts to pick out what it considers will be of interest to its viewers from thousands of news reports and reduce all that information into the same number of words as can be put on one page of a broadsheet newspaper. Furthermore, the speed of electronic newsgathering and the pressure for TV stations to be first with the news has 'turned newspapers into magazines' according to Peter Ibbotson, former editor of Panorama. 'Being unable to compete on news, they put their resources into features. As a result of this same process, however, TV itself has become less interesting. The immediacy has meant that pictures are thrown onto the screen straight away and the painstaking TV journalism has been pushed aside.' (Bob Woffinden 'Fast and Loose')

It is relatively easy, for example, to focus on the images of suffering caused by 'war' - such as civilians whose legs have been blown off by mines. It is more difficult, however, to investigate the more complex causes of such atrocities such as Western 'aid' in the form of weapons, government subsidies to arms manufacturers or the reluctance of western powers to sign international treaties outlawing mines. In this sense TV news tends to be reactive, rather than investigative. John Birt's reform of news coverage at the BBC was partly a response to this criticism. The 'mission to explain' - providing 'focus, context and background' to news bulletins is, however, undermined by the medium's reactive news values. According to Bob Woffinden this is true of the media in general at the moment:

'Immediacy is all.....Opportunities for mature reflection have evaporated. The media seem to be lurching from crisis to crisis with little in between - certainly none of the painstaking monitoring that might help prevent disaster occurring. News events are regularly conveyed as a series of news dramas; covering non-emergency (but serious enough) stories becomes difficult.' ('Fast and Loose')

In 'Television Culture' Fiske illustrates how these deadline pressure and news conventions mean that TV news stories are effectively prewritten, they 'write' the journalists:

'For news is as conventional as any other form of television, its conventions are so powerful and so uninspected because the tyranny of the deadline requires the speed and efficiency that only conventions make possible. The type of stories, the forms that they will take, and the programme structure into which they will be inserted are all determined long before any of the events of the day occur. During the forced withdrawal of Belgium from the (then) Belgian Congo, an American journalist landed at Lusaka airport and, on seeing a group of white women waiting for evacuation, rushed over to them with the classic question, "Has anyone here been raped, and speaks English ?" His story had been "written" before landing, all he needed was a few local details.' (Television Culture 1987)

'Accuracy', 'Objectivity' and 'Balance' in TV News.

'It is quite plausible to believe that all media images are constructed and still maintain that some constructions are more truthful than others.' (Goodwin 'Understanding Television' 1990)

In 'Television Form and Public Address' John Corner makes distinctions between the journalistic principle of 'impartiality' and the 'regularly associated and often confused' notions of 'accuracy', objectivity' and 'balance'. 'Accuracy' he takes to mean the correctness of facts - names, dates, quotes etc. This is not always as straightforward as it sounds. In the early 1980's news reports of marches by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament often gave both CND organisers and police estimates of the numbers attending as they varied so enormously. Clearly the dividing line between facts and opinion is sometimes a blurred one, but, as Corner notes, 'no one doubts the possibility of a journalist being 'accurate' about a lot of things for a lot of the time as agreed by the very widest spectrum of political and social opinion and very few people doubt the desirability of them being so.'

'Objectivity' as defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as '..that which is external to the mind' and '..that which is unaffected by subjective mental operations' is clearly, Corner observes, philisophically and practically as impossible for journalists as for anyone else. To say 'objectivity' is possible assumes that an unarguable interpretation of an event exists. In fact all reporting implies a point of view - in the selection or non-selection of stories (thereby setting a value upon them), the placement and angle of the cameras (behind police lines or demonstrators for example), the selection of interviewees and relevent questions, and the language and tone adopted by reporters and presenters. Ironically, as Fiske points out, despite unanimous critical agreement that no communication can be totally 'neutral' or 'objective': 'The idea that television is a window on the world, now known as the "transparency fallacy", still survives, if anywhere, in TV newsrooms.' (Fiske 1987)

'Balance' is also a notion presenting problems, according to Corner. It usually implies the idea of equal time given to 'defined positions'. As such, the act of nominating the 'positions' and allocating them airtime becomes an institutional responsibility fraught with controversy. The timing of broadcast material presenting opposing views according to a sliding scale reflecting electoral popularity occurs both in the studio and at the headquarters of the major political parties, particularly around elections. The 'stop-watch', in this way, can become the arbiter of 'balance' both figuratively and literally - with the main political parties dominating the debate and exercising enormous pressure and influence on TV news production. Such reductive 'stop-watch' practices are further complicated when there are more than two positions or parties. Where the point of 'balance' for the presentation of different views would seem to be between two parties - the 'middle ground' - a further problem occurs when this position is occupied by a centrist party, in which case the slant of reports would tend to be 'biased' in favour of that party above others.

'Bias', 'the term applied to the media when they give an 'unfair' advantage to one side in a dispute, either by misrepresenting, underplaying or ignoring alternative points of view' (Gill and Adams 1988) is an accusation which TV news must be careful to avoid. In various studies about 70 per cent of people asked trusted television news to be unbiased: only 8 per cent trusted newspapers (Bromley 1994). Broadcasting organisations are legally obliged to show 'due impartiality'. 'Due impartiality', as defined by the BBC charter and the various Acts of Parliament covering independent broadcasting, means taking into account a full range of views and opinions but also giving prominence to mainstream opinions, whilst recognising shifts in public opinion. Where 'points of view' are given they must be clearly signalled as such and immediately matched by an opposing view. For ITV and the BBC this principle is supposed to operate within any programme; on Channel 4 impartiality is required only across the range of programming shown. News broadcast on all channels, however, must be 'fair' and free of bias in respect of all legally expressable political and social viewpoints (blatantly racist opinions, for example, should not be given airtime as a result of UK race relation legislation).

The problems associated with such terms as accuracy, objectivity and balance, notwithstanding, few critics would argue that 'impartiality' in the sense of 'equity of representation' was not a principle worth defending in television news. According to Andrew Goodwin , bias is not the opposite of truth:

'The real issue is whether the range of biases represented is fair. In other words, does it adequately reveal the range of points of view held by the public ?' (Goodwin 1990)

Corner concludes his investigation of the issue by defining 'impartiality' simply as that which is 'not partial, not prejudiced' and 'bias', in the negative sense, as a 'significant departure from fairness'. Thus,

'..it is not necessary to have uncompromised access to the 'truth' of circumstances in order to advance a reasonable and cogent case for a report being biased in a way which is detrimental to journalism's public function. Here an uncompromising philisophical scepticism does not make a helpful guide, since it is that which is realisable in practice which requires attention. The omission of arguably significant details, perhaps ones published in other national news sources, the treating of an interviewee to hostile questioning in a way which prejudices their expression of opinion, the suggestion of causality which is not substantiated, the use of certain labels to define groups in a pejorative way, these are all grounds for a claim of bias.' (Corner 1995)

Bias in the News

Evidence of bias (as defined above) in TV news comes in several forms. Andrew Goodwin illustrates how bias emerges from the news values that shape what broadcasters consider to be newsworthy. The following examples illustrate only one aspect of what he calls 'unconscious bias' in news production:

'One of the classic values employed in selecting news is 'negativity', and when this is combined with 'frequency' (news has to be as new as the publication or broadcast presenting it) the effect is often of a barrage of bad things in the world which seem to have no rhyme or reason. One of the Conservative Party's complaints has been that when they close a hospital ward, that is news; but when they build a new hospital, that isn't news. Hence broadcasting creates an image of a heartless, uncaring Conservative government, through the bias of news selection. This is exactly the argument that trade unionists have been making for years about strikes. When we go to work, they say, that isn't news. When we go on strike, that is news. Hence broadcasting creates an image of a lazy workforce willing to strike at the drop of a shop steward's hat. Here, bias in news values themselves creates the problem.' (Goodwin 1990)

In a peculiar way, television's obligation to select the news under 'opinion free' conditions makes true investigative journalism - usually fuelled by a strong sense of commitment or (in)justice - almost impossible. As a result, television has a frequently noted tendency to respond to a news agenda set by the press - which is unapologetically partial and biased in its news coverage. As a huge majority of national papers take a Tory 'line', therefore, it seems hardly surprising that the most consistent and thoroughly documented claims of bias in the selection and construction of news on TV have come from the trade union movement and the left in British politics.

The Glasgow University Media Groups and Bias

The Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG), who produced a series of seminal studies on television news during the 1970's and early 1980's, have produced some of the most heavily researched accusations of bias . In what became known as the 'Bad News' books they tested their hypothesis that television news systematically favoured dominant groups by investigating its coverage of a whole range of different stories. Through extensive videotaped evidence they argued that the news reproduced a coherent middle-class ideology. The news, therefore did not show 'due impartiality' , but relied upon certain class-related presuppositions or 'points of view'.

These 'points of view' could, GUMG argued, be found in television news's choice of topics and favoured interpretations (a right wing 'agenda'); in the language employed by reporters and presenters; in interviewing styles and the choice of interviewees, and in the placing of oppositional views within a framework of debate set out by the establishment.

Three types of bias were picked out in their study of industrial relations in the late 1970's. First, the GUMG found, the media was biased by its misrepresentation of social 'reality', over-emphasising the contribution of strikes to the poor economic performance of Britain. As a part of this misrepresentation certain workplaces, such as the car industry, were given excessive coverage. Secondly, the media worked within a dominant ideological consensus - which suggested that strikes are never justified, and are always the fault of the workers. Thirdly that working class voices were excluded from the production of news. The occupational culture of television, GUMG claimed, was dominated by people from middle-class back-grounds. Television workers were separated both materially and symbolically from the working class. Information that contradicted the dominant middle-class world view was either excluded or existed only in fragments. These three notions of bias combined to produce a powerful ideology that distorted reality, reaffirmed dominant relations and excluded contradictory perspectives.

Contradictory perspectives were also markedly absent during coverage of the Falklands War in 1983 which was, in the view of GUMG, overdetermined by direct forms of control imposed by the Minister of Defence, the lobby system and the journalists' own judgement of public opinion. In 'Understanding Media Cultures', Nick Stevenson deftly summarises how the symbolic production of good news necessitated by the need to cement together military, state and public concern, was highlighted by GUMG's discussion of task force families:

'Much of the coverage of the families of those soldiers involved in the Falklands war was focused on women. According to the Glasgow group, the lives of the women only became newsworthy as a result of the absence of the men who were making the news. News journalists, in this context, represented women relatives in terms of their traditional roles as carers and emotional supports for men. This not only misrepresents the real, given the decline of traditional family patterns and women's increasing engagement in the economy, but ideologically positions women as 'vessels of emotion'. The women interviewed were unlikely to be asked to reflect critically upon state policy, and were much more likely to be asked how they felt. This discursive strategy trades upon an unspoken division between a rational male public sphere and an effective feminine private realm. Further the heavily gendered search for good news creates the notion of family and community solidarity centred around the visible private suffering of women.' (Stevenson 1995)

Official sources were also heavily relied on by news journalists in the 1984-85 Miner's Strike. Coal board press releases were often quoted verbatum, as with the highly charged phrase 'the drift back to work' which was used frequently.Violence on the picket lines was, in the view of GUMG, over-emphasised - with miners rather than the police invariably held to be responsible. With events at the Orgreave colliery, for instance, it was claimed newsfootage was played out of sequence to code the miners rather than the police as violent. Miner's leader Arthur Scargill was found to be subject to far more aggresive interviews than Coal Board officials or the government. Furthermore, there was virtually no discussion of the so called 'Ridley plan' - a conservative strategy developed years in advance of the strike that suggested stockpiling coal and boosting gas and nuclear power in order to defeat the NUM, close mines and weaken trade unionism generally.

GUMG's conclusion to their detailed content analysis of news broadcasts was that:

'.. television is biased to the extent that it violates its formal obligations to give a balanced account. Our research also led us to discover that the broadcast institutions are extremely hierarchical, that close links exist between them and a range of 'official' and 'accepted' sources. The result of this is that the news gives preferential treatment to some ways of seeing the world.' (Really Bad News 1982)

As Stevenson (1995) notes however, the GUMG were not proposing a conspiracy thesis, in which broadcasters and the powerful were plotting to brainwash the public. They regarded much of this bias to be the result of unconscious professional practices and the class background of television journalists, editors and producers.

The arguments of the GUMG have been countered by various critics. Martyn Harrison (1986) suggested that the GUMG's self-confessed Marxist stance negated their research because their prejudices would interfere with their judgements. Casting doubt on the supposedly 'objective' content analysis of GUMG in this way, however, only goes to highlight the problems of 'objectivity' that this debate throws up. If Harrison is correct, how can individual 'subjects' - with viewpoints, opinions, biases - 'objectively' judge anything ? To admit as much is to make Harrison's and all other researcher's work effectively meaningless. Putting this objection to one side, contrary to the GUMG's (more heavily documented) findings, Harrison's (1986) and Alastair Hetherington's (1985) studies found that TV news coverage of the miners strike was generally impartial. As Branston and Stafford (1996) note, 'Arthur Scargill, for example, was argued to have been given many more hours coverage in interviews than were government representatives.'

Further objections to the GUMG's findings were provided by Guy Cumberbatch's Broadcast Research Unit report (1986) on audience response to coverage of the strike. This study admitted that one of the problems with measuring bias was in gaining access to a reliable account of the real that was independent of the media of mass communication. The Broadcast Research Unit's conclusion about audience response to news coverage over the period of a year indicated that the general public were satisfied by the balance provided in the reports of the dispute. Stevenson's response to this study is simple:

'Cumberbatch's retreat into the audience makes it impossible to make objective truth claims about television content..I would argue that whether audiences perceive bias is a different order of analysis to whether bias exists.' (Understanding Media Cultures 1995)

Who Controls News ? - the Ideology of News Production

The state in every country uses various means to control or restrict broadcasting, and Britain is no exception to this rule. While direct censorship of television output is rare, though not unknown, indirect controls of various types are operating constantly. The most obvious form of control comes from the power governments have to grant broadcasting franchises and (in the case of the BBC) funding. In addition, the government appointed BBC Board of Governors is composed, according to Stewart Hood, of establishment figures and political 'placemen' who can, to some extent, steer the Corporation in directions favoured by the party in power:

'It has been composed traditionally of members of the establishment who have 'sensible' views on political and social matters, on taste, decency etc. It has been interesting to discover that one member in recent times had been an employee of MI6. The Board is drawn from 'the great and the good' and is therefore thoroughly unrepresentative. It's members have no identifiable constituencies. Their interests are undeclared. During the General Strike of 1926, Baldwin took the view that there was no need to commandeer the BBC because it would know what was expected of it. Today's government can be equally easy in its mind about the Board of Governors.' (Behind the Screens 1994)

While the press are hampered by very few legal restriction regarding what may be printed, broadcasting is subject to legislation which effectively outlaws views that radically threaten the status quo.The points of view allowed on television in any debate are carefully framed by notions of 'impartiality' (see above) and the limits of Parliamentary consensus. The influence of the major political parties is, therefore, powerful in establishing limits to 'acceptable' political debate, definitions of what count as political problems, and their potential solutions:

'There are of course many political groups who hold competing explanations of the social and economic world who receive little or no sympathetic coverage on television news broadcasts - terrorists, fascists, anarchists, and revolutionary socialists are generally excluded by virtue of their lack of support and/ or their rejection of the rules of the game of political life in a parliamentary democracy.' (Goodwin 1990)

In addition to legal restrictions and government appointed overseers, the BBC is subject to political leverage, particularly in the run up to the periodic setting of the license fee level. During the 1980's and early 1990's the Conservative party under Mrs Thatcher proved ideologically hostile to the liberal sense of social responsibility historically associated with public service broadcasting. The traditional 'fit' between the values of British politicians and broadcasters was, therefore, disturbed and the BBC found itself under conserted attack from the Government. This was exemplified by coverage of the Falklands War where the BBC's supposed stance of neutrality in its reporting of the conflict was condemned as 'unpatriotic' .

Fear of license fee cuts, running disputes over coverage of Northern Ireland, the controversial appointment of Director-General John Birt (seen by many as a move to prepare the BBC for privatisation in some form), the 1990 Broadcasting Act, staffing and training cuts, de-unionisation and 'Producer Choice' (see Public Service Broadcasting and the Furture of the BBC below) have combined to reduce the BBC's editorial independence and strategic public service role. The result, according to Brian Winston, amongst others, is that the BBC is in danger of being little more than a servile business monopoly as it moves into the 21st century. He calls for a constitution that could protect the public service responsibilities of the BBC from government interference of various kinds, including the appointment of its Governors, and asks:

'..what business does the state have, in a modern democracy, claiming 'responsibility' for organs of expression beyond its own information and publicity apparatuses ?' (Behind the Screens 1994)

However, powerful ideological pressures exist within, as well as outside of, broadcasting institutions. Recruitment criteria operating in broadcasting institutions and particularly in the prestige area of news journalism tend to favour middle-class applicants from 'public', private or grammar schools who are university educated (frequently Oxford/ Cambridge). Various 'Equal Opportunity' measures are slowly changing the traditional white, male image of the news room, but change has not, as yet, reached into senior management positions. The result is, as the GUMG and others have suggested, a 'world view' that remains, essentially, white, male and middle-class.

Self-censorship also contributes to the process of creating a 'uni-vocal' position in the news. Journalists will be unwilling to waste time on stories or angles that they know are divergent from the 'norm' because they will be rejected by more 'experienced' senior journalists. News, being so tightly controlled by ideological conventions and deep rooted traditions is difficult to change quickly and radically, even by those in a position to do so, because any violation of these 'rules' would disrupt the expectations of the regular news viewer, who might change channels. These conventions include, for example, describing the actions of management in the passive voice - a technique Fiske calls 'exnomination'. Thus, management never appears as an agent in the conflict:

'Geoff Duke, whose dismissal at Port Hedland, for alleged misconduct, triggered the strike..'

(Fiske 1987)

while the 'nomination' of union action through the active voice discredits its status:

'..the Rail union failed to come to an agreement with management..' (ITN 22nd August 1996)

To rewrite basic conventions such as these requires a huge ideological leap. As the GUMG point out, whilst the verbs 'reject', 'demand' and 'threaten' are used when referring to unions and workers, more positive terms such as 'offer' or promise' are used where employers are concerned. Therefore a phrase such as:

'Management rejected the unions offer to work for a 4 % pay rise'. jars because it appears within a framework of debate set out by the unions and not, as would normally be the case, the management.

The high production standards of television news is another factor excluding groups outside the dominant consenses from news bulletins. Whereas a major political party or a large corporation such as BSkyB are in a position to, at least partially, 'manage news' through the use of expensive press briefings, glossy press releases and promotional material: less well funded organisations have fewer opportunities to appear in the public forum of TV news. As news production grows in technical complexity whilst attemting to be 'stylishly perfect' TV's journalistic values become increasingly passive.

A related point to production standards is the use of 'experts' and 'official sources'. To ensure a steady flow of news that can be easily packaged, news organisations have an elaborate system to 'control, process and routinize' the production of news. According to Ralph Negrine journalists rely heavily on institutions such as Parliament, the Courts, the army and the emergency services to guarantee a regular supply of news. The use of set events and 'the diary' - including anniversaries, birthdays, celebrations and 'pseudo-events' of various kinds took up almost 70% of BBC news bullletins according to one study. The use of specialists and news categories also ensures a regular supply of news. These categories include: home affairs, the economy, parliament, foreign affairs, crime, science, education and sport. As Fiske notes:

'The semiotic and political practice of categorizing social life into neat compartments - the economy, education, crime, industry, etc. - is an essentially reactionary one, because it implies that a 'problem' can be understood and solved within its own category: localizing the definition of problems encourages local 'solution' and discourages any critical interrogation of the larger social structure.' (Television Culture 1987)

A greater danger, as Negrine argues, is that dependence on 'legitimate' sources ensures that the TV news (and the media in general) 'reproduce the definitions of the powerful, without being, in a simple sense, in their pay.' (Politics and the Mass Media in Britain). Journalists compromise their independence by becoming overly dependent for information on, and building too close a relationship with, their sources. In this way they gradually absorb source values and perspectives. It is well known, for example, that the Watergate scandal was uncovered by general reporters and not political correspondents. They were not dependent for their livelihood on a close relationship with political sources.

More recently the reliance on American and British military sources during the Gulf War has been the subject of controversy. Noam Chomsky and Edward Said are two intellectuals who have questioned the absence of debate and the orchestrated drive for war in the media:

'Americans watched the war on television with a relatively unquestioned certainty that they were seeing the reality, whereas what the saw was the most covered and the least reported war in history. The images and the prints were controlled by the government, and the major American media copied one another, and were in turn copied or shown (like CNN) all over the world.' (Said 1993)

Negrine suggests that the analysis of source-journalist domination and collaboration contains within it a suggestion that public opinion is 'orchestrated' by the powerful for political and social purposes. He makes use of Stuart Hall, and his Birmingham based colleagues, to make the distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' definers. 'Primary' definers such as politicians or the police identify a threat and cue the media ('secondary' definers) to a particular event. The media exaggerate and amplify the threat and the police and courts then act to eliminate the threat. Hall in 'Policing the Crisis (1978) saw the 'moral panic' over muggings in the early 1970's as a specific response to a more generalised crisis in society and a search for authoritarian solutions.

Negrine concludes his investigation of the issue by asking if the success of the media lies in the fact that, despite crude distortions, the media interpret and organise rather than create attitudes and myths:

'Studies which employ the concept of 'moral panic' leave one in no doubt that the media do reproduce the opinions of the powerful; but do the media also reflect public concerns ? Is it possible to suggest, in other words, that whilst they unjustifiably exaggerate and accentuate news stories, the mass media at the same time are resonating unarticulated public concerns ?' (Politics and the Mass Media in Britain *)

The debate on news and ideology ends, therefore, where the debate on media effects begins. The weight of evidence examined above suggests, nevertheless, that (as Fiske concludes) TV news represents the: ' "unauthored" voice of the bourgeoisie.' (Fiske 1987)

News Narrative

In 'Television Culture' John Fiske explores the similarity between fictional and non-fictional (news) narratives. Taking Todorov's account of the basic narrative structure 'in which a state of equilibrium is disrupted, the forces of disruption are worked through until a resolution is reached, and another state of equilibrium is achieved', Fiske notes that this constitutes the basic structure of a television news story, just as it does a sit-com or a cop show.

The similarity between fiction and news can also be seen in the news' treatment of character which adopts the conventions of classic realism. Central to the story are individual, goal-orientated characters, made recognisable through their social roles - the political leader, the unionist, the crime victim etc. These social roles are then organised into narrative functions, for example: police officers ('heroes'), social workers ('helpers'), drug runners ('villains') and drug users ('victims'). Fiske quotes a study of drugs in the news in which the media:

'posit heroes and helpers acting on behalf of the administrative arm of society in just the right proportion to allay any excessive threat that the villainy of racketeers and the weakness of victims might arouse.' (Bell, P. (1983) "Drugs as news: Defining the Social" Australian Journal of Cultural Studies)

Because news values the 'vox pop' so highly, despite various strategies used to contain 'oppositional, alternative or unruly elements' the narrative structure is not always powerful enough to dictate which of the voices we should pay most attention to. The montage of voices can, therefore, create a certain 'leakiness' in the presentation of any preferred ideological reading. Furthermore, the segmentation of the news undermines the structure given by its narrative and works to open up its meanings.

'The collisions, the lack of laws of cause and effect, and the surprising contradictions remain the manifest character of the news despite any latent ideological coherence. Grouping of stories into "political", "industrial", "foreign", and so is an attempt to minimise these collisions but is of limited strategic effect.' (Fiske 1987)

The structuring of narratives around binary opposites such as:

unions : management

labour party : conservative party

euro-sceptics : euro-enthusiasts

British government : European bureaucrats

traditionalists : modernisers

police : criminals

unionists : republicans

road protestors : road constructors

creates stories which can go on almost indefinitely. There is no suggestion that superficial narrative closure at the end of a story signals an end to the dispute. The conflict, in fact, lies unresolved and ready to disrupt the fragile equilibrium once again. Fiske compares news, in this way, to the series drama or sitcom, for in all three genres the basic situation is never finally resolved.

Fiske concludes, however by considering the narrative similarities of news and soap opera:

'For all its attempts to impose a masculine closure and sense of achievement, the news shares many characteristics with such drama as soap opera - lack of final closure, multiplicity of plots and characters, repetition and familiarity. The apparent formlessness of soap opera approximates to the multifacetedness of the real, so the struggle within the news to control the disruptive forces of reality is reflected in its formal dimension by the struggle of a masculine narrative form to impose its shape upon the feminine. The masculine principle invokes control and rules, the feminine disruption or at least evasion. The masculine attempts to control meanings and center the reader, the feminine to open them up and decenter him or her. The masculine bears the dominant ideology, the feminine enacts the strategies of resistance. It is this interplay of similarity and difference with a fictional form that underwrites our distrust of dividing television generically into fact and fiction, and justifies thinking of the news as masculine soap opera.' (Fiske 1987)

Production Practices - In the Newsroom

Preparation for news bulletins is an ongoing 24 hour-a-day process, with agency reports and other sources providing news directly to television stations. The BBC's first meeting of the day for the evening news bulletins is at 9 a.m. Around twenty people meet in the managing editor's office who talks through likely stories. An hour later the editor of the day will assign stories to around eight producers who will spend the next eight hours briefing reporters, deploying cameras, calling interviewees, and finally writing the item on their computers. The editor will join a phone conference at 10.30 am with the BBC's 13 regions. Each area summarises what they are working on and the editor may take any stories which s/he feels is of national interest. There are 200 reporters, ten London-based camera crews, the foreign bureaux and a host of resources for the news gathering operation to call on during the day.

News broadcasts have changed, over the years, to take on relatively standardised formats. They employ many of the same techniques as sports programmes in which a presenter introduces various clips sometimes providing a commentary, and is always prepared to improvise. The presenter speaks to camera from behind a newsdesk using an autocue (or telepromter) which reflects the words over the lens of the camera so that it appears that s/he is looking at the viewer. The newsreader periodically looks down at typed noted which act as a backup in case of autocue failure which helps prevent the apparently direct eye-contact of autocue reading from being too intense or threatening to the viewer. Messages, cuts and changes can be communicated to the newsreader from the control room via an earpiece.

Most newscasts involve the use of the presenters voice over film, graphics, archive footage and photographic stills or drawings. The presenter may also interview guests in the studio (often pre-recorded) or via a link up at another location - perhaps in another studio overseas. The presenter also introduces pieces by reporters who may be specialist correspondents, on location, at a 'live' link-up or reporting from abroad. These pieces may include interviews, live action, voiced over sequences, reporter to camera speech or question and answer sessions with the news presenter.

The running order of news broadcasts may be changed up to the last minute although, now, this usually only happens when a major story has broken. Each story is allocated an exact duration of time ( for example 57 seconds) and it is the responsibility of the newsreader to ensure s/he reads his or her script at exactly the right pace so that stories do not over or under-run. Deviations from the script are not welcome as there is a need to achieve precise cueing-in of insert material which is taken from marked places in the script. In the event of the non-appearance of a film or VTR item, a reserve story is held on a standby machine, the newsreader having a reserve script for these stories.

The presenters are frequently sitting alone in a studio space with only state-of-the-art robotic cameras to keep them company. The camera positions are static, and shots are modified by zooming. The director must ensure cueing of the right source, and coordinating contributors. Subtitles (identifying people, places or time) are added strategically, when they will not detract from an important point in the story. The studio background may be real or partly computer generated. Chroma key panels behind and to the side of newsreaders may display insert images or there may be a simple cut away to location footage.

The tone of the news broadcasts aimed for on British terrestial channels is 'unremote' without being tabloid, although there is a tabloid-like interest in the Royal family. The BBC's six o'clock news concentrates more on home news while 'the Nine' has a slightly more upmarket agenda and looks at world news and the activities of diplomats and leaders. Whilst the lunchtime news is still developing and things can be found out on the programme, for example, through interviews, by 9pm the news is expected to be neatly packaged. There are usually around 15 items - far fewer than in the early days of television news - and some attempt to give background and context to the stories covered. ITN's Channel 4 news at 7 o'clock is, at an hour, by far the longest, most substantial and detailed and also the least downmarket of the of the news bulletins. There are currently strong commercial pressures to move ITN's 10 o'clock slot on ITV to a later time to prevent the interruption of films screened after the 9 o'clock watershed. Such a move could have profound implications for the future scheduling and resource priority given to news broadcasts on British television.

Student Exercises

Practical Assignment

Produce a short (5 minute) local news bulletin for TV .

Criteria

1) The bulletin must be no longer than 5 minutes.

2) It must be clearly identifiable as a local news bulletin (i.e. it should use the conventions of television news and the story should be a local one).

3) The bulletin must contain a minimum of 3 minutes worth of investigative reports (including interviews).

4) Reports must be made entirely of news you have researched.

5) Groups of 2 and 3 only.

Exercise - Bias Case Study

The ideological significance of news, particularly television news, is keenly appreciated by political groups. News output is closely monitored by party political interests of all shades who frequently bombard newsrooms with complaints when they feel they have been mis- or under-represented.

In August 1996 the commisioning chairman of the Independent Television Commission (ITC) George Russell warned ITN that an interview Trevor McDonald had given for News at Ten with John Major the previous month had been "too friendly". The warning came in response to a complaint by David Hill, Labour's chief media spokesman. Labour complained about the decision to lead News at Ten with the interview on July 18, rather than with a report about the TWA air crash in which 230 people died. At one point in the interview, conducted in the garden of number 10 Downing Street, McDonald said: 'I have been reading some of the interviews you have been giving to newspapers and what comes over is the extraordinary dedication you have for this job.' He also praised Mr Major's achievements in Northern Ireland, saying he 'had a great deal of courage'.

Labour's deputy leader, John Prescott, said the interview was a disgrace, complaining that it was a party political broadcast. 'We shall be seeking to know when Tony Blair can expect such fawning treatment,' Mr Prescott said in a letter to ITN at the time. The ITC, in response to labour complaints, concluded that the interview did not breach the clauses on impartiality in its programme code and pointed out in a letter to David Hill that McDonald was known for his courteous style of questioning. However, the letter continued, 'it may have seemed to some viewers that the overall approach was a little too friendly and relaxed for a major setpiece interview with a party leader, and that value judgements within the questions, such as the reference to Mr Major's extraordinary dedication were inappropriate.'

The commision also warned ITN that it would be monitored in the run up to the general election to ensure that its news coverage was impartial and it advised producers to ensure the 'right tone' was adopted in future. (The Times August 23 1996)

Prepare a letter of complaint to the ITC about a recent news item you have studied. You are advised to video tape one, or more, news broadcasts and look for examples of lack of balance or bias in the treatment of a story. You may wish to write the letter on behalf of a political party, pressure group, union or commercial company. You will need to produce evidence such as amount of time allocated to sides of an argument, bias in the use of language, images etc.

Note: such complaints are treated very seriously by television companies, particularly when directed via the ITC and are usually passed on to the producers of the programme.

Essay

'..news 'normalises' life, by reporting events from a position of assured normality in a way which may serve to reproduce the interests of those holding economic and political power.' (Corner 1995)

How does it do this ?

Essay

'TV exists in a defined period of time in a little square box. It is an emotionally loaded symbol. If you go to TV for your only news, then you're lazy. If you go to TV for the truth, then you're a looney.' (Richard Blystone CNN's London correspondent).

Why should he say this ?

Essay

Fiske writes of Television News:

'The strategies of containment are many, subtle and tried and tested by time. they are essentially formal characteristics and thus bear the brunt of the ideological work. But the intense need that the news has for such strategies should not be seen merely as evidence of the desire of the dominant ideology to impose and naturalise itself, but also as evidence of the strength of the forces of disruption. By the forces of disruption I mean those aspects of the text, of the real, and of the audience, which threaten the sense that it is used to contain oppositional, alternative or unruly elements.' (Fiske 1987)

1) Briefly outline some of the 'strategies of containment' that Fiske is referring to in the quote.

and/or

2) Taking an example of a recent news report show :

a) evidence of 'ideological work' or preferred readings.

b) evidence of 'the strength of the forces of disruption'.

Essay

In 1982, the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) began broadcasting regularly scheduled TV programmes in order to strengthen the culture of the Inuit Indians across northern Canada. Inuit programming reflects Inuit cultural values. The news/public affairs programme Oagik ("Coming Together"), for example, departs dramatically from Western norms and conventions by avoiding stories that might cause a family pain or intrude on their privacy and by eschewing any hierachy between correspondents and anchors. (Shohat 1986)

How else might an alternative television news broadcast depart from 'Western norms and conventions' ?

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