Notes - Daniel Chandler

Notes on the construction of reality in TV news programmes - Daniel Chandler








Objectivity




- TV and radio are required to present an impartial and balanced summary of significant events - although this is can be questioned




- Do news stories adequately reveal the range of points of view held by the public?




- Fiske: "News...can never give a full, accurate objective picture of reality"




- The newsreader is presented as a neutral observer




- Newsreaders have a sense of permanency: they are always there when the programme begins: they are never seen to arrive and don't move about during the programme. We are directed by the newsreader. Our gaze follows the newsreader's gaze if they look off the screen. Everything supports what the newsreader says. The content may be far from reassuring but the newsreader's manner is always friendly and reliable. The 'tail piece' offers a happy ending. The weather presenters have become cheerful figures




- Stories are repackaged from secondary sources such as news agencies, press conferences, spokespeople often with bias intact.




- Less powerful groups are given disproportionate coverage e.g. women and minorities. Some minority groups are ignored while others are portrayed negatively




- Newsmakers may influence what we think is important




- The cultivation hypothesis might lead us to expect that heavy viewers would be most likely to adopt to TV news agendas as their own concerns




- Stuart Hall: "The media...tend, faithfully and impartially, to reproduce symbolically the existing structure of power in society's institutional order'




-Justin Lewis: "TV favours and sustains the hegemony of those in power."




- In Western countries, ideas promoted on TV news tend to fall somewhere between the status quo and the political right




- Ideas that subvert the existing power structure are either ignored or treated like a problem


-Norms embody the sense of what our social life ought to be rather than what they are




- Third world countries are seen as places of famine, natural disaster, social revolution and political corruption




- News is divided into categories such as politics, the economy, foreign affairs, domestic news, occasional stories and to structure the programme by grouping them.




- Everyday realities are not news, crime is strongly over-represented. Important but gradual social changes are less likely than stories in which daily events are obvious




- A story which is easy to obtain and report may be more likely to reported than others.


Camerawork


- By looking at the camera, the newsreaders are directly addressing the audience


- Eye contact establishes a you/I axis between newsreader and viewer


- Hartley: "News has to be impartial; it must narrate events without point of view. Since that is impossible, there is a contradiction between (required) impartiality and (unavoidable) point of view. - This idea complements well with post-modernism as there is no such thing as the truth. There are only versions of the truth


- News is a constructed reality possessing its own internal validity


- The news follows a Todorovian narrative structure in terms of the disruption of the equilibrium and the eventual return to either similar state of equilibrium


- Individuals and events are labelled in stereotypical terms to make the stories easier to tell. E.g. scroungers or terrorists and muggings or child abuse.


- The more we watch TV, the more we are able to hold contradictory ideas simultaneously

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