Is TV News a "window on the world"? To what extent does TV news show reality and to what extent does it construct it for us?

The starting sequences of the news are used to connote urgency, importance, and the transparent view the News supposedly presents of the world.The Office of Communications, also known as Ofcom, is a government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the UK. Ofcom states that the news should be both accurate and impartial. As of 2003, their current policy is:

• All news in any part of the service should be presented with due accuracy and impartiality. 
• Due impartiality should be preserved on the part of the persons providing the service as respects matters of political or industrial controversy. 
• The Act places the additional duty on the ITC to do all that it can to secure the exclusion of all expressions of licensees' views and opinions on matters (other than the provision of programme services) which are of political or industrial controversy or relate to current public policy. If a director or officer of a licensee does express an opinion on such controversial matters, in a broadcast by the licensee, it must be in a context which makes clear that the opinion expressed is not that of the licensee. Speeches in Parliament are exempt. 
• Licensees should adhere to the rules on impartiality drawn up in accordance with Section 6(3) of the Act, contained in Section 3 of the ITC Programme Code. 

However, due to the nature of media, the news' ability to present a completely impartial and accurate view of events across the globe is much more complicated. It would be impossible to report every single event that happens, and therefore the news has a "Gatekeeping" process to filter out the newsworthy events from the non-newsworthy.  

News sources 

Economics 

Different news networks have different financial years. The closer an event happens to the beginning of the financial year of one network, the more resources they can afford to send over to gather a report. If one Network, say BBC, starts their financial year before another, say ITV, and an event happens, the BBC will be able to gather more information for their story than ITV as they will have more money. For example, the Tiananmen Square Massacre began in April 1989, which happened to coincide with the beginning of the BBC's financial year, but the end of ITV's. This meant that the BBC could afford to send a lot of reporters, crews etc. across to report over the next couple of months, but ITV couldn't. 

Competition

News companies are always competing to see who can report on a story the fastest, which leads to there being a limited number of stories being covered. So, rather than presenting a wide, transparent view, the news gives a narrowed view of the world by focusing mainly on stories that other news teams are reporting on. 

(Sky News, 18/05/17)

(ITV News, 18/05/17)

(BBC News, 18/05/17)

News gathering processes


As social media has grown, the sources newsrooms are able to gather information from has grown too. Most newsrooms used to use 3 or 4 wire services for their main sources, but social media sites allow them to access thousands of sources around the world. However, it is important to then filter out the stories that are newsworthy before they reach the screen.

Newsroom routines

News teams have to work together to create "packages" for the the news programmes. There a number of jobs including script writing, camera operation, graphics designers etc. that all have to be prepared before the news airs. 

Late breaking stories

There are certain stories that take priority over others. For example, if a terrorist attack happened in the middle of the day, the headlines will have changed from the early morning news to include the attack, e.g. the 9/11 attacks dominated the news. Another example of this would be if someone famous (or infamous) passed away and the story was made public, e.g. David Bowie's death.

Technical problems 

The news relies heavily on technology. If there are technical troubles, it could alter which stories can and cannot be presented. For example, if there is a live link feed away from the studio during the opening sequence, which then gets cut off, the news will have to work fast to change the order of the stories, or perhaps even cut out the story with the live link completely. Therefore a story that was considered newsworthy gets binned, as it cannot be reported on. 

In the mid-20th century, Galtung and Ruge came up with a list of News Values. These values can be put into 3 categories: Impact, Audience Identification and Pragmatics of Media Coverage. The Impact category includes: 

• Threshold- The bigger the impact of a story, the more people it affects. 
• Frequency- Events which occur suddenly are more likely to be reported on than stories which occurs gradually e.g. a car pile up vs. global warming
• Negativity- Bad news is more exciting that good news, and is more likely to rate higher than other news values.
• Unexpectedness- If an event is unusual it is more likely to make the news than an ordinary event.
• Unambiguity- If an event is easy to make sense of, it tends to make better news than a story with multiple interpretations. 

More about Galtung and Ruge's News Values here. "Galtung and Ruge’s analysis cites pragmatic reasons why certain news stories are not reported.  For instance, the mass Burmese demonstration in 1988 failed to receive much media attention because the hostile regime of General Ne Win barred overseas journalists from the country.  By contrast, the mass demonstration in 2007 received far more attention because civilians themselves had the technology, with modern mobile phones and camcorders, to send instant messages and pictures out of the country to a waiting international media such as Reuters, BBC and CNN."

News programmes often use elements of the continuity system most often found in fictional media to engage the audience emotionally. They can use establishing shots, close ups, voice overs etc. For example in this report a voiceover of the interviewee is played whilst showing a group of people working on decorating a house to prevent the eviction of a "bunch of kids".  We also learn about the mothers of the families the volunteers are helping, which makes the volunteers seem heroic.

Overall, the news claims to be a "window on the world", but there is no way to give a completely transparent view of events all over the world. The reports are affected by what will make the best news, and the unpredictability of life. Therefore, the news presents a concentrated, simple version of global events, biased towards the levels of importance created by the news companies. For this country, the most important news is picked mainly by educated, white males and is therefore influenced by what they deem important.