Introduction to the News

The news program I've watched was Channel 4 evening news about Labour trying to block no deal and the Conservative leadership elections. The broadcast started with Conservative leadership elections, then the Labour no deal and then back to the Conservative elections. The starting sequence of this broadcast was Gary Gibbon talking about both of the news stories above and it was conducted in a classic interview style with the interviewee talking to the interviewer and not at the camera.

The story was about Labour trying to block no deal and the Conservative leadership elections and the structure of the documentary was mainly based on interviews with no lead in. The main content in my opinion was Jacob Rees-Mogg talking about his views on Boris Johnson's leadership qualities and why he's supporting him. The four main people involved in the story was Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Gary Gibbon and Rory Stewart. 3 of the 4 people are Tory's. The people are represented as just politicians representing what they believe in. I feel like the people in the story were not providing a fair balanced story, I believe their opinions were bias towards their side of politics but I do believe what they were saying was accurate just swayed towards their side of politics. Small parts of the news were narrative but since it was interviewers interviewing mp's for the most of it their was little chance for there to be narrative. 

The newsreaders in the Anglia news documentary were middle class white man and woman. The newsreaders are addressing the audience directly, speaking directly to them. This is because when an audience member watches the news they like to feel like they are being directly spoken to. The role of the newsreader is to present the news in an entertaining and direct way to make the audience feel involved in the show. Some skills news reporters need to be reporters are being able to talk to the camera quickly and clearly and they also need to be confident when talking or they look bad. A field reporter is an on-scene reporter reporting what going on usually behind them, e.g. someone outside a courthouse talking about the trial going on inside. Qualities you need to be a good field reporter are being confident and being able to speak loud and clearly because there is almost always stuff going on in the background, e.g. cars, other news reporters etc. Other people who are involved are the editors. The main roles of an editor is to scrutinize headlines and stories, researching local events and checking data to see if its correct. Another role in the broadcasting industry is the producer. These duties include designing show schedules, scouting locations and either writing and approving scripts.  Another job is a photographer. This jobs include taking photos for the news for the reporter to say in the news.

News ordering is the term given to the term in which the order the news is given, for example the news will start with the bad and depressing stories and move on to happy stories towards the end of the broadcast. A prospects list is the term given to the list of stories that will be likely to appear on the broadcast, obviously this can change based on if the news they want to broadcast actually happens or not. Obviously the most important story goes first normally on any broadcast but normally the news is bad/depressing. This is because most things that go on around the world generally aren't good and good acts of kindness go largely unreported. News reporters especially need to be able to react quickly when presenting because they all have earpieces producers shout down telling them to do or say things. Slow news day means there is not much news to report, this means news is often reported more so than usual.  The final story is called an epilogue. This is almost always a happy story to end the news for the audience on a high note. Actual footage is film or shots shot for the news intentionally and stock footage is shot for the news unintentionally but still makes it into the news. This can help the news producers by having extra footage so they have more footage to select from for the news final cut. 

For most news broadcast it normally starts off with at the beginning of every hour with the main news for that day for example, 'Theresa May to stand down as prime minister' or something similar and as the hour goes on the news presenters go into more detail about this hours stories explaining the back story to the news and how it originated. A slow news day is a time where news reporters and media outlets have little to report on that specific day.



The video above shows how title sequences have developed from the year 1954 to 2015. You can see the first one which was used over the years 1954-1964 is very old-timey because off the lack of technology available at the time. As the years move on into the eighty's you can see that they change more frequently because of the new technology increasingly becoming available, during the eighty's they would change almost every other year but when e go into the 90's they start to change less frequently, only twice in the 90's era. When we hit the 2000's we get the classic chime which we all know today begins to start, this is still used in 2019. As we go on into 2008 and on wards it changed very little because the BBC is happy with how it is at the moment, this title sequence is still used to this day in 2019. Two news pioneers Galtung and Ruge helped identify a number of factors that help news stories get the headlines they need. Some include Continuity (An ongoing news event like war will continue to be reported on), Predictability (An anti-war demonstration is likely to be eventful so journalists will cover the event. This means that it will be reported on, even if it passes off peacefully) and size (The bigger the news story, the more people it affects. A bomb with may casualties is more news worthy than a hoex bomb alert).