Is television news a ‘Window on the
world’?
Television news is meant to appear to the
world as unbiased and impartial but is it really unbiased, impartial and is it
possible to present the news without any opinions at all? That’s the question I
will be asking and also if the news can ever be a ‘window on the world’ and how
accurate in can be without including opinions or biased viewpoints.
Starting Sequences, Sets & Presenters
One of the most important ways in which
television news appears to be unbiased and impartial lies within the starting
sequences, the set of the programme and the way the studio news readers present
themself. These all contribute greatly to how biased or unbiased a news
programme may seem, for example in the starting sequence you will often get
rushing CGI graphics of famous landmarks to connote that the news is being
received from all over the world but if these rushing graphics only show’s
British landmarks it would connote not being biased towards other countries but
would more likely let the audience watching know that it is the national news
rather than it being international. Another famous feature on starting
sequences is that they are likely to be a lot of clocks which would connote
that the news is up-to-date and has the most recent and most important facts
and events on the show, but just by doing this it already shows some biased
opinions, what is the matter with the slightly older events? Or even the less
important ones? Often television news will also have transparent images in the
starting sequence's to reinforce the fact that it's a 'window on the world' but
by making this point of choosing more recent events or the event's deemed to be
more important already shows that it's not quite what it appears to be and the news
may not be what we believe it to be. This is just in the starting sequence but
the way in which they do this creates a very clever feeling of us thinking that
the news we are receiving is the most important and it is the facts that we
need to know and without us knowing we have all thought this because of all the
sub-conscious decision that we have made on the programme and we have already
decided that the way the programme is made has to be unbiased and impartial
without the first story even being read in detail yet.
When we do get into the set with the studio
news readers we find everything usually quite organised with the news readers
already sitting there waiting for us, like we have just walked into a very
important office meeting ten minutes late. It creates a mode of address to the
viewer of being very important and crucial but instead of the news readers
making us feel uncomfortable about being late they just dive into the first
story and continue with business as usually once we have arrived. This feeling
can be created in many different ways, one of which being the set itself. The
set will often contain a news desk with the studio news readers setting at with
a pile of important looking papers in front of them showing they are prepared
for what’s to come in the next thirty minutes, also the set will often look
very bland without to many bright eye catching colours and will look a lot like
an office, this creates the very important, office and business like feel to
the situation making television news feel very important, very powerful and
overall a very manly feel to the news, making watching the news seem like a
masculine thing to do, once again creating a flaw in the fact that the news is
meant to be impartial and equal to both sides, although this has nothing to do
with the stories it still creates that element of the news which you just can't
shake. As for the news readers themselves they will often dress in formal
clothing, a suit and tie for males and a formal skirt accompanied by a blazer
for the females once again adding to the important business like feel that the
news has to it. In terms of who the studio news readers are it can show a whole
different side to television news, as when you look at news readers in
different channels the can nearly always fall under many of the same
categories. For men most will be older so between forty or fifty and will
usually be white and middle class, when regarding to female's they will also
usually be white and middle class but will tend to be younger often between
thirty and forty. The age difference is simply because the nation is biased but
will not admit it. When it concerns males old age connotes wisdom whereas with
females the nation would prefer a younger female so it’s more attractive to
look at as opposed to someone who is older. Also no matter on age, or gender
they will always tend to be white and middle class and will speak standard
English because other accents connote too much about the speaker. Just by
looking at this you can already tell that the news isn't impartial just based
on their studio news readers however most people will be concerned about if
they are impartial to the news stories rather than who they are so when they
read the news stories they will use a limited range of facial expressions to
justify the fact that it is unbiased and they truly have no opinion on the
subject. By making us feel this way it has already created a sense of trust in
which we believe the studio news readers and believe what they are saying is
unbiased and impartial.
The Legal & Regulatory Framework
But news programmes still have legal and
regulatory framework as well as government laws in which they have to follow,
these rules are set in place by companies such as the BBC and Ofcom and in many
of the BBC’s reports on the subject they say that impartiality is at their
hearts and they even say that they are required to present due impartiality
across controversial subjects although they go further than that and present
due impartiality across all subjects, or so they say. This is meant to apply to
all of their output and services, be it TV, Radio, Newspapers or the Internet
it is meant to apply to all of them however I can think of one example where a
news story might not be completely impartial.
When
a news story is shown it is meant to be shown as being impartial and not taking
sides to a story however it is biased no matter what it does. News story can
never be impartial just for the simple fact that they are being presented, when
you present a story you must go through a series of choices to decide how you
are going to do it, this simple fact makes it so that a news story can never be
completely impartial so how do they go about this? They construct the story to
cover up the fact that it is impartial and they do this with things such as the
presenters. Presenters are meant to show the news with no biased opinion and
show no favouritism to a side of the story and the do this by using the mode of
address. With the mode of address the present themselves to be well dressed,
well-spoken and in common ground where everyone can understand them creating a
sense of security in which we can immediately trust what they say and end up
believe what they say is the exact truth being presented in an unbiased way
because of the way they present themselves and how they use the mode of
address. However all of this considered the news is still not impartial
although we might like to think it is.
It can be very difficult to present the
news in an impartial way especially on the more controversial subjects but as a
member of the BBC or any other news company it is surely your duty to follow
the legal and regulatory framework set by the BBC and Ofcom as close as you
possibly can without upsetting any kind of balance and remain impartial to the
subject as much as possible in order to try and give the public the full story
without any views or opinions of others getting involved. It should be but as
we know it is impossible to remain 100% impartial and I shall continue looking
at why and how they can get as close as possible.
News Selection Process
The question that a lot of people will ask
is how does a story ‘make the news’? Well firstly for a story to make the news
it has to be found, certain sources will be monitored by news organizations so
they are more likely to be found because the sources cover it, once found there
may be 20 news stories to pick through. This is where the news selection
process begins.
The first thing they will consider when
selecting the stories is the news values that each story contains, most of the
time the more negative the news the better the news. Most news values were
created by Galtung and Ruge who had the theory that all news stories must share
similar news values and study the news extensively until they compiled a list
of news values in which all news stories could be applied to and shows how news
stories may be selected, some news values have been added in later years but
most of them are the originals created by Galtung and Ruge. Some of the other big
news values are unexpectedness, the more outrageous and unexpected the story
the better the news, also Elite Persons. With a news story if it can be
followed just by a name that everyone will recognize like Barack Obama then it
is more likely to make the news because that way everybody will be able to
understand it and know what is happening just from knowing the name of this one
elite person. A final thing that will be thought of crucially is the
composition of the report structure. When doing a news programme people will
make sure that they have the right balance of everything in the show and
although negative news usually makes the best news to much of it can just be depressing
so this is why they have the lighter and happier story right at the very end of
each show. Just by doing this it already show it being unbiased as it is
selecting different stories over others because of the values in them and by
doing this shows that some stories must be more interesting or more valuable
than others and someone has to pick them, so already it shows that there has
been some kind of biased opinion in the news just from selecting the news
stories.
Once they have looked at the news values
each story has the will look at the availability of the equipment and similar
things they have to cover each story, this could vary from how many camera’s
they have available or even if they can get field reporters out there and
connect links to the studio, even interviewing experts or eyewitness’ to the
event. Most of the time in they cannot get these links they will scrap a story,
some stories might not need interviews but if they are covering a controversial
topic and need an experts opinion to keep the image of them being unbiased and
impartial and they can’t get these experts in then it might not be worth the
risk, or they might play it safe and only show facts and statistic to the story
and although that shows them being accurate, it would seem a lot more
professional and accurate if they could get an expert’s opinion, although as I
have said not every story needs and expert’s opinion it does help to keep the
news company as being seen as impartial, because people will trust that what
the expert says is trustworthy and accurate but also that it is not the news
companies opinion’s or views, it is those of the expert. Once the stories have
been selected it is then time for them to decide how the story will be
presented and in what way it will be portrayed.
News Construction Processes
The news constructions process is much
different to the new selection process, whereas in the selection process it's
all about selecting the story the construction process is about making the
story and how they create 'realism' within the story through the use of cutaway’s
and edits to hid the constructed nature of the text with continuity editing.
A good example is a story we watched in
class about a rise in the rate of house reposition, which focus on a single
family and a man named Pierre and how he was being evicted from his family home
due to losing his job and not being able to find one. Now seemingly on the
outside this news story may appear to be very touching and about a man trying
to provide for his family and it is, however the way in which the story is presented
once you look deeper into it you can fins hiding meanings to it and can begin
to unravel this concept of realism that they have constructed and put together.
It uses narrativisation to create this realism in which Pierre is the hero who
goes on a quest to try and return back to the normality of his own life.
It begins by saying about Pierre and his
family and the unfortunate situation they have been put in, even showing us
shots of the family and even play on our heart strings a bit by showing us the
baby playing, creating this realism where you would expect this sort of thing
to be normal and as the story progress's it becomes very interesting. Throughout
the entire story you notice that the only person to get a close up shot of
frame to themself is Pierre which shows him to be the hero of this story as he
is trying to provide for his family. If we are referring to Todorov's narrative
theory then Pierre being the hero has got to go on a quest to put a roof over
his families head and provide for them as the disruption of losing his job has
put him in this situation. When he goes off on the quest and speaks to a member
of the council to try and return to normality he returns empty handed leaving
them with no return to normality so the must deal with this new equilibrium of
their modern life and try to make do until it can be fixed. By doing this to Pierre
and portraying him as the Hero it cleverly makes us feel sorry for him and
pulls on our heart strings in a very subtly way to which we don’t even realize
it.
Not only do they cleverly use the characters
in the story, but they also make good use of the camera angles and techniques
as well. When the news story first starts it gives us an establishing shot of
the home in the middle of winter with Pierre walking towards his front door
slipping on the ice, we are now clear it's cold and there's lots of snow and
ice, it's then followed by a quick cut to the baby to make us realize that a
child is being chucked out of the family home in the middle of winter. This is
the only shot other than ones with Pierre that give the person in shot a whole
frame to themself but this is used for good reason. To make us feel sorry for
them. Once Pierre starts talking to the member of the council about the current
situation it is then quickly followed by a over the shoulder shot, from the
opposite angle to give a reaction shot from the Hero of the story at the disappointment
of this story, but hang on how can they do that? Surely you can't have an over
the shoulder shot showing a reaction without it being scripted right? Well
wrong. This is a clever use of editing where the camera man will have just
walked around the room observing the situation and that would have just been
cut out in the editing in such a way that it looks like the conversation was
fluent and didn't stop. It's techniques like this alongside a story like this
that create this realism and creates the emotion to the situation, however
although it creates realism, it does not show reality.
Realism and reality are two very different
things and are by no means the same so it is important to know and distinguish
the difference between the two when it comes to things such as the news and
documentaries. Realism has been defined as hiding the constructed nature of the
media product and as I have discussed continuity editing can be a crucial part
in creating realism for a media product such as news and documentaries. The way
it works is the continuity editing is done in such a careful, clever way that
we forget it has been edited together and we believe that this is what is
happening however we do have to remind ourselves that this is not reality based
on the sole fact that it has been edited together so therefore it must be
realism as it makes it in such a way that we forget it has been edited
together.
Through the sole purpose of News Selection
and News Construction it shows that news is not a transparent mediation of
reality but is in fact a highly selected matter containing implicit viewpoints.
This is shown multiple times especially in News Selection as to decided what
stories should appear on the news you must make a decision and every decision
will always have a little bit of influence from your personality on what you
would want to see, what you think would make good news and what the audience
would want to see. So therefore it is impossible to make a decision without
some of your opinions or views creeping into it and the same goes for the News
Construction process.
When constructing a news story once again viewpoints
will creep in, for example if a camera man is trying to get some actuality
footage it is down to them to think what will look best, what will be the most
effective and overall what to capture. By doing this he has to make some sort
of decision once again containing his own viewpoints and opinions. Then once
the camera man has got the footage it is down to the people editing the clips
together to decide which clips look the best and which will work better so once
again more viewpoints are coming into the final news story and it's impossible
to avoid getting viewpoints in these stories. If this is all true and all these
viewpoints do creep in and it's impossible to stop it I wonder does it matter
and can we do anything about it?
What Can Be Done?
Well the simple answer to that question is
nothing. It doesn't matter how makes the news or how many people try it is
impossible to present the news in an, impartial, unbiased, accurate way with a
good balance for both side of the argument and no opinion's in a news story
what so ever. Most of the decisions made during this process are made on a subconscious
level so people won't even realize they are making them. Even if they are
trying to make decisions with viewers interests at heart, one person’s
interests will differ from the next making it physically impossible to cater
for each individual persons needs as no matter what is selected there will be
someone who doesn't agree with it.
So what will be the next best thing to do?
Well I think news stories have already answered this question. Try to appear
impartial and unbiased. If they try to appear impartial and unbiased by
creating realism to hide the constructed nature of the text, by doing so people
will not be able to tell if it is actually biased or not but it will appear to
be impartial and unbiased and a lot of this is down to the Studio News Readers.
Studio News Readers will present the news
in a way that seems unbiased, impartial and fair to add to the constructed
image of the text by just reinforcing it as if it is being presented in an
impartial way it will be difficult for the untrained eye to tell any different.
By doing this they cleverly get around the fact that yes the news is not
impartial and no the news cannot be 100% unbiased without any opinions.
Obviously the views and opinions are still there it just they are hidden behind
a mask of impartiality in which the Studio News Readers provide. But is there
something more that can be done by us, the viewers?
The Impact of New Technology
With a wave of new technology inbound
almost every year the world is changing as we know it. In the last few years we
have seen the invention of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and we have also seen
the effects it has had on the modern world but has it had an effect on the
world of TV news and is it even changing the way we consume news in general?
Simply put yes, yes it is changing the way
we consume news. With the ability of being able to choose the news we consume I
feel this gives people a chance to voice their own opinion's really easily
especially on something such as Twitter because all you have to do is read an
online news article and click share and bang! You have just created your own
bit of news. The strange thing about it is because we are not representing a company
or anything we can express our own opinions on the news story without being
judged to harshly for it and this is because we are individuals, we are our own
person that has views and opinions on news stories as opposed to being a
representative of a big company where we watch what we say.
The big thing about Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube is that we can personalize what we watch or what we find out about. For
example on Twitter we can follow someone who constantly posts the latest updates
to news in the video gaming industry as opposed to someone who posts about
political events. It's all to do with personalization and the fact that we know
choose our own news, it's like being able to have a pick 'n' mix but with news
stories instead, we can choose what we see and furthermore we can choose what
is news.
With such a wide selection to choose from
how do we select what ones to have and share with our friends? Simply we choose
which story we best like and with a click of a button it off posted to however
many thousands of subscribers or followers you might have. This gives us the reins
on choosing what news is, personalizing our own news and making our own news.
It has developed onto something new and radical, new technology has definitely
had an impact of modern day society and what can now become news, it's a big
part of our life, I for one, wouldn't know half the stuff I found out about
today if it wasn't for modern day technology and I am pretty sure most people
will agree. By giving us control over what we can do it frees us from the
limitations of having to be impartial and unbiased as we our making our own
news for people all around the world and if they don’t like someone they can
simple 'change the channel' by un-following us and going to someone else who
discusses topics more to their interests.
In Summary
With the impact of modern technology it's hardly
a surprise that the way the news is being told has started to change; new
companies are not just fighting each other anymore. They are now at war with
the internet to win over the public, but the internet does not have the
restrictions they do and they have the freedom to talk about what they please.
It frees them from the bonds that have been formed giving them the ability to
do as they wish, although the News studio for TV might be a highly constructed
process that shows many flaws in its methods the news is changing with the
power of the internet. It may have the same flaws as the TV news but this is
forgiven when you realize that they can give an opinion ad they are not Studio
News Readers or anything else of the sort. The news is changing with the world
around us and adapting to modern technology although some people may not think
so, it is. When it comes to the News Selection process it will still have the
biased opinions that it already contains but its made okay by being able to
personalize your own news and that goes for everything. The flaws are still
there it's just more accepted because of the way the people and the public
present it, we decide the news now and modern technology will decided the
future of modern day news, as technology advances so will the way we tell the
news but at the very bottom of it all the base values are still there the only
thing that has changed is the way in which it has been presented.
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