TV News Assignment - Window On The World

Is TV News a "window on the world"?


TV news is by law supposed to be impartial. This meaning that the news is not supposed to be covered up or any of it hidden. At the start of the news there is an intro, these usually show a world, clocks, rushing graphics and words in gold. The world and clocks are usually transparent, like the news is supposed to be. However the news isn't like this at all, they like to believe that they give a "window on the world", however they have people that select the news and usually pick between 5-10 stories that they pick from the start of the day, once these are chosen, the ones that are seen as "less important" and thrown into the "bin of history". This meaning that these stories will never be shown on the news. Things that happen in other countries are usually pushed aside a bit more than they are when the happen here, this is because people believe that things that happen over here are more current and don't necessarily want to see what happens in other countries. However sometimes stories come through during the day which can change the whole schedule and stories that would've been in the line up then would be left out and put into the "bin of history".


Galtung and Ruge have 12 news values that they formed:
Frequency - Short term events like murders are preferred over long-term developments like a famine. The recent terror events that have happened in both London and Manchester would fall within this category, however, because of the amount of deaths, and the affects that they have caused, they stay in the news for a lot longer, but start to gradually get less and less time on the news, usually until an anniversary. 

Threshold - Basically the size of an event indicates his importance.

Ambiguity - Events do not have to be simple but they must be accessible to the public - e.g. simplified by the media.

Meaningfulness - Divided into two categories after Galtung and Ruge’s "Familiarity": a) cultural proximity, in which the event agrees with the outlook of a specific culture; b)
relevance, where events will be reported and discussed if they seem to have an impact on the "home" culture, especially a threat.

Consonance - Or "correspondence" where the familiar is more likely to be thought than the unfamiliar. This would be where things that are usually terror events would be in the news, instead of things that happen within the community, or special events like children in need. 

Unexpectedness - Or "surprise" where it is the rarity of an event which leads to its circulation in the public domain. Due to notes, the "newness" of the event is usually processed through a familiar context. It has to work with 4 and 5. In the news recently there has been a weird story that wouldn't usually occur where an octopus took on a seal, which i have linked. 

Continuity - once a story achieves importance will be continued to be covered for some time.

Composition - This is to provide a sense of balance, gloomy news with good news, foreign with domestic. Because of the terror acts in the news recently and the fire and Grenfell Tower, there would have to have been a lot of good stories in the news to attempt to balance this out, e.g. there was an open farm day in around Norfolk for people to go look at the animals and walk around the farms.

Reference to elite nations - Events are more likely to be reported if they occur in the developed world; the threshold system would apply for developing countries’ events to be reported.

Reference elite people - The famous and the powerful are more newsworthy than ordinary people. After the fire at Grenfell Tower, Lily Allen, a singer who used to live in that area was interviewed, and slated the media for tying to hide the amounts of deaths there had actually been. However there wasn't many or any interviews with people who weren't "elite persons".

Personalisation - Events are seen as actions of people as individuals; an institution may be personalized by reference to a prominent person within that organisation.

Negativity - Bad news is good for the press and TV news; the threshold is much lower for bad news than for good news. Recently there has been a fire in London at Grenfell Tower, where the council or government didn't help out with clearing up and helping people, it was mostly the people who lived their and the neighbourhood coming together and helping each other. This was covered by the news and the council and government were shown up by this. 
The website i found this video on.


Gatekeeping is where information is filtered for distribution, whether it be for publication, broadcasting, the internet, or some other mode of communication. Gatekeeping is a mix of communication studies, journalism, political science and sociology. Gatekeeping was originally intended for mass media, however the gatekeeping theory has now been put into face-to-face communication. News sources come from all over the world, however are usually only within a specific area of what they believe is news worthy. This is usually things that are happening in the UK, and most first world countries. It would have to be quite big for something to get on the news from a less developed country, as this is seen as less important, as they (the people that select what goes onto the news) believe that it isn't current. This goes onto the next point of how news is selected and who it's selected by. In the morning, teams of editors, directors and news gathers, all go to one room and discuss what they believe is news worthy, and whatever is picked, goes into the news that we see, however, what we don't see goes into the "bin of history". This goes onto things like war. Because war goes on for long periods of time, it is not always on the news as it isn't current, and continues over a long time, there is updates throughout it saying about how its getting on and deaths, however they have to be careful and are monitored about what they say as they could give something away to the people that they are fighting. The people that usually select what goes onto the news are usually around there 50s-60s, white, British and would've worked in the news team for a long time. Because of this, the news would also be picked within their interests and what they like. One other thing that can affect what is put onto the news is late breaking stories. Depending on how severe the news story is, would depend on whether it would get into the news, e.g. recently there was a terror attack in Manchester, and the morning after, there was news coverage all over it, repeating themselves constantly, however providing new information when they received it. Because of something like that, things could be taken out of the news line up, that were previously in it, ready to be aired, would be taken out and put into the "bin of history". Finally one more thing that can affect what is aired would be technical difficulties. These could affect the line up as they would take time to fix, and the news is broadcasted over a certain length of time. So if they had technical difficulties, they would have to cut stories out to fit in other stories in, which they believe are more important.


Conclusion:

Overall the idea of TV news being a "window on the world" is false. The law states that the news is supposed to be impartial, however is biased towards things that they believe are more important. So to answer the question, "Is TV news a window on the world?", no, it really isn't. The news is covered up and gives you the information that they want you to see, there is some truth in what they show, however, it isn't truly impartial.