International Radio Journalism

Tim Crook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134862993
• Subtopic: Media & Entertainment Law
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Radio journalists have witnessed much of the history of the twentieth century. From early documentary recordings , to the ground-breaking war reporting of Ed Murrow and Richard Dimbleby, to the sophisticated commentaries of Alistair Cooke and reporters such as Fergal Keane, International Radio Journalism explores the way radio has covered the most important stories this century and the way in which it continues to document events in Britan, America, Europe and many other countries around the world.
International Radio Journalism is both a theoretical textbook and a practical guide for students of radio journalism, reporters, editors and producers. The book details training and professional standards in writing, presentation, technology, editorial ethics and media law in America, Britain, Australia and other English speaking countries and examines the major public sector broadcast networks such as the BBC, CBC, NPR and ABC as well as the work of commercial and small public radio stations.
Timothy Crook investigates the way in which news reporting has been influenced by governments and media conglomerates and identifies an undercurrent of racial and sexual discrimination throughout the history of radio news. There are chapters on media law for broadcast journalists, the implications of multi-media and new technologies, digital applications in radio news, and glossaries which cover the skills of voice presentaion, writing radio news and broadcast vocabulary.

Part I

Introduction

Practice, theory and history

Chapter 1

From box room to digital control room

Radio journalism has been enormous fun, thoroughly exhausting, a decent way of making a living, and a constant education in life. My career began with an interview at the London College of Printing in 1978 when the first editor of UK’s Independent Radio News, Dr Fred Hunter, was recruiting trainees for the first vocational radio journalism course in Britain outside the BBC. Up until this time the BBC had been the model for radio journalism practice in Britain. Their reign of cultural domination was at an end. I was an aspiring poet going through a George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London phase and working as a roadsweeper for the Corporation of London. God knows what sort of picture I must have presented. I was applying for the magazine journalism course and, towards the end of an aggressive interview, Dr Hunter piped up ‘Would you like to work in radio?’ My weak response: ‘I suppose so,’ was quickly followed up with the question ‘Why?’. The answer, ‘Because I like the sound of my own voice’ is I think an important lesson on how not to answer questions during an interview.

Fred must have been very desperate, because for some reason he offered me a place. There were several months of travelling, writing and a little journalistic freelancing in the Middle East before I turned up in a tiny box-room on the second floor of a tower block at London’s Elephant and Castle. My experience of walking naively into the 1978 Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon did not create a thirst within me for foreign or war reporting. Ignoring United Nations’ advice I had travelled to the border only to be greeted with a sustained attack from Palestinian Katyusha rockets. I was convinced there were plenty of other people prepared to observe and write about man’s inhumanity to man. Poems seemed to be a more creative and harmless way of fulfilling a role in society. There then followed a gallant attempt to train me in the art of radio journalism by Fred and his colleague Dr John Herbert, an experienced radio news editor from ABC, BBC World Service and IRN. I still do not know why I got on the course.

My first move was to listen to badly scratched vinyl records of news broadcasts by Richard Dimbleby and Ed Murrow. They are hard acts to follow and I do not see myself getting anywhere near their achievements. Over the years as I have delved into archives and blown off the dust lying on books long out of print, I have grown to love the world of radio and the art of its journalistic and creative broadcasters. I believe we are living in an age of Radio Renaissance and this book is an attempt to celebrate its history, present craftsmanship and a great future for a medium that has never lost its importance and value to human society.

In the last few years we have begun to experience the impact of a new technological revolution which has radically changed the efficiency and way that radio journalists can operate. The digital age, ‘multimedia’ and the implications of communication on the World Wide Web have liberated journalists from the point of view of individual research, have expanded the opportunity of freedom of expression and commercial application of radio news operations. When this book was originally commissioned, it would have been out of date if it had been delivered within two years. I first entered journalism when newsrooms thundered to the clattering of manual typewriters, the cries of copy tasters and the litter of analogue tape. Typewriters disappeared in the middle to late 1980s. In less than three years, entire radio stations have jettisoned the paraphernalia of analogue technology to produce and transmit twenty-four-hour programming from digital work stations. Using reel-to-reel tape machines and analogue mixing consoles, radio journalists would have taken one and a half hours to produce the all-round package of news cuts, wraps and programme pieces. When I introduced digital work stations at my news agency in September 1995 at the Royal Courts of Justice and Central Criminal Court, the same job now took less than fifteen minutes. Research requiring hours of requests to news cutting libraries is achieved in seconds from CD-Roms. This book will endeavour to share the excitement and implications of this technological tornado which is changing the lives of people within the industry as well as the habits of listeners and consumers.

My experience in 1978 throws up a number of important issues. Somebody with my background, doing a labouring job but having a commitment to current affairs, an ability to communicate with the written word and the voice, and a track record of using my initiative to generate news stories was given a break. Once offered, I tried very hard not to throw it back in anybody’s face. I may have been an utter pain in the neck to the people who taught me and the patient colleagues who have tolerated me over the years. After twenty years I am relieved to say that some people are prepared to accept that I have contributed something. I am now in the position at Goldsmiths College, University of London, to provide opportunities and to teach and train. I own a news agency which employs radio journalists in national and international news gathering and I am also very active in the radio drama field as a writer, director and producer. I have been and still remain at the coal-face of live presentation and all the developments in digital production and communication.

Over the years I have read a number of excellent books on radio journalism and they are to be applauded and commended, but up until now, I have not come across a book which seeks to provide practical training advice and at the same time give radio journalists the chance to discuss and analyse the history and current practices of their trade, or profession. I also feel that not enough is being done to celebrate the art of radio journalism. It is an honest and fulfilling way of communicating the truth and humanity of our world to other human beings. I want to pay tribute to the courage and example shown by the ghosts of voices from the past and the voices of the present.

Radio is a fast-moving medium of broadcast news for both listeners and journalists. Throughout my career there has been little opportunity to question, to challenge, and to compare in a field where deadlines are literally up to the second. The radio journalist is at the mercy of a telephone call and a clock. Who are we serving? Our peers? The companies for whom we work? Our listeners? Or the communities to whom we broadcast? What are the imperatives which guide us? Are they commercial, social, religious, political, ethical, or professional?

The editor of this series, Professor James Curran and Routledge’s Senior Editor Rebecca Barden wanted a book which marries the disciplines of practice and theory. It is an interesting brief given to someone who is teaching and very active in radio at the same time. Throughout the teaching process at Goldsmiths College I have found it very bracing to be challenged and confronted with awkward questions by a multi-cultural and rather unique community of students. In many ways I have gone through a thorough re-evaluation of my journalistic objectives and values.

In this book, there is a great bias towards writing and editorial crafts. I stress the importance of using the voice and achieving competence in a range of specialist areas. Technical knowledge is as important as good judgement in relation to applying the law. But a book of a little more than 100,000 words is never going to be comprehensive and effective on its own. So I have included an extensive bibliography listing a considerable amount of factual spoken word material now available on cassette and compact disk. Live practice is, in my opinion, the only way to learn a professional craft and then you have some credibility when considering an analysis of the hows and the whys. So in the context of training, reading this book should be combined with active journalism.

It is important to understand that this book has not been written by a theoretical lecturer in media and communications. I hope I am not encumbered withany ideological and doctrinaire baggage. My ideas and opinions about radio journalism and the political and ethical culture which determine my approach to the craft are based on my own liberal background and a personal respect I have for individual liberty, democracy and freedom of expression. When academics talk about the culture of journalism, and seek definitions, there is a danger that they will make the mistake of deciding that surrounding factors determine its function and raison d’être. I believe that the community of journalism and the existence of journalists in any society has its own driving force of moral, ethical and political objectives. I believe that journalists themselves have sought to define these principles independently. Their thoughts and professional spirit are separate from the control and policy of state governments, business corporations and proprietors.

The appointment of John Birt to the position of Director-General of the BBC has brought his philosophy of ‘Mission To Explain’ and the challenge to the ‘Bias Against Understanding’ into a new ‘Directorate’ structure in both BBC radio and television. He has introduced a culture of specialist correspondents who are invited to comment on news events and make intelligence assessments. Radio practitioners are also expected to work in television. This is not a new concept in America, or Australia. But the bi-media structure of news organisations raises interesting issues about the relationship between radio and television news, and the culture of management.

At the same time this change has been attended by political controversy and accusations that the BBC has buckled to the pressures of real censorship and self-consorship during eighteen years of uninterrupted Conservative government.

The tensions created by these issues exploded at the UK Radio Academy Festival in Birmingham in July 1993 when the distinguished foreign correspondent Mark Tully attacked the reforms John Birt had attempted to introduce. Within twenty-four hours John Birt responded with a spirited and eloquent apology for the changes he says are necessary to take the BBC into a new era. He explained that the BBC had to win the argument to persuade a Conservative government to renew the Charter and maintain licence fee funding. There have been reports of catastrophic changes to BBC programming and management culture, and complaints of low morale blowing through this great institution. The industry’s trade magazine, UK Press Gazette, once reported that BBC South’s Head of Broadcasting had earned the nickname ‘Vlad The Impaler’. This is because his tenure has been marked by the departure of station managers and senior staff. Aggressive management techniques confronting the culture of radio news journalism have become a prevailing experience for many in the industry. In the USA the Federal Communications Commission agreed to a process of deregulation which resulted in the removal of the obligation for all radio stations to maintain newsrooms and local news services.

While in the grip of recession in the early 1990s, Britain’s premier independent speech service, LBC, developed a more aggressive polemical style of ‘News Talk’ programming. Former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil had a weekday morning editorial and a weekend programme. Presenters such as Australian Mike Carlton and one of BBC television’s first woman newscasters Angela Rippon were free to express comment during live programmes. A former Sun newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn repeatedly berated British establishment figures with contempt and irreverence during phone-in programming. These developments followed a disastrous attempt to create two different newstalk radio services on the station’s FM and AM frequencies. This was also combined with macromanagement mistakes by the station’s holding company. Several years of redundancies, management/union battles and continual crisis management serve as a fascinating case-study on the inextricable link between editorial change and financial imperatives.

The Australian-owned holding company Crown Communications went into receivership and most of the Australian programming management had to leave the station. The Programme Director Charlie Cox had returned the radio station into an operating profit and he showed skill in developing programming initiatives. He remained in Britain and as managing director of DMG, the radio division of the Daily Mail and General Trust PLC, he has played a key role in financial investment in UK commercial radio. Mike Carlton returned to Australia taking with him a UK Sony Award and a Gold Medal from the International Radio Festival of New York as well as the ignominy of being the news presenter who insulted many of his listeners by saying, ‘Wogs begin at Calais’. His undoubted talent and vigorous style of questioning were never really appreciated by the UK industry and radio critics. He now presents the drive time sequence on 2BL, the ABC’s flagship radio station in Sydney.

Despite an effort by Dame Shirley Porter and her family company Chelverton Investments to secure the franchise for another eight years, the UK Radio Author ity decided to award LBC’s frequencies to a new consortium called London News Radio headed by LBC’s former managing director Peter Thornton. The new company proposed a rolling news format service on FM and a commitment to ‘restore journalistic and radio reporting values’. LBC responded with a high profile campaign against closure which involved the collection of thousands of signatures from aggrieved listeners. The axing of LBC and the resulting row generated more publicity for the station than at any time in its twenty-year history. The loyalty shown by listeners for a news and talk station that had been part of London life for twenty years was astonishing. The Radio Authority came under sustained political pressure. The decision to withdraw the licence was taken by an unelected body which sat in secret and gave no reasons for its decision. There was no right of appeal. Thousands of listeners took part in a spontaneous wave of protest and anger and the event has raised important issues about freedomof expression and democratic accountability over the control of broadcasting freedom. The story was to take more dramatic twists and turns. Reuters bought out the winning consortium. There was another relaunch, this time of two separate stations. The FM service was to be dedicated to a rolling news format and self-driven programmes with state of the art technology. D-Cart, an Australian computer news programming package replaced reel-to-reel tape recorders, editing blocks and razor blades. All of the station’s continuity sound, from jingles to adverts, were to be transmitted using another computer software package. A UK multi-track computer sound editing system, SADiE, was acquired by the Commercial Productions Department. But despite millions of pounds of investment, Reuters’ venture into the competitive field of commercial radio news and talk programming was financially unsuccessful. In July 1996 there was another wave of change as ITN acquired the FM station to run a more concentrated, pacey style of rolling news format, and the Great Western Radio Group, the majority shareholder of the national FM station Classic FM, acquired the AM station to relaunch the brand of LBC which so many listeners wanted to hear again. Both stations moved into the hi-tech ITN news building in central London. Traditional reel-to-reel tape recorders were banned and a senior executive was heard to say that they belonged to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The FM station has been rebranded as News Direct 97.3FM and the half-hour news sequences resemble the pace and panache of Capital Radio’s The Way It Is which coincidentally was axed in 1996. The rising of LBC from the ashes with jingles that resonate the sound of the old station has been a success. There was an initial 86 per cent increase in listeners making the station the second most listened to radio service in London and putting it in top position as London’s most popular commercial talk station. The station is hoping to sustain this position and subsequent listening surveys demonstrate consolidation of these good ratings. It is a quite extraordinary experience hosting an LBC live programme in 1997 compared to what it was like in 1977. In those days a studio manager controlled the mixing console with a separate Master Control Room monitoring the output of the station. The presenter and guests were in a separate studio recording area. A producer and assistant producer would be responsible for preparing the content of the programme. In the newsroom the assistant producer would be bashing away on an Olympia or Remington style typewriter to run in with copy and cues in triplicate. Associated Press, the Press Association, and United Press International teleprinters would be clattering out reams of paper for the copy taster to evaluate. Adverts would be transmitted on old-fashioned reel-to-reel loop cartridge machines. Programme pieces and pre-recorded interviews would be lined up on large Studer tape recorders.

In 1997 I am sitting in a combined studio/control room the size of a boxbedroom you would find in a semi-detached dwelling on a modern housing estate.I am responsible for the audio-transmission of the entire station as I read the news, interview guests, and switch in and out of phone-in calls myself. This is known as self-driving or ‘self-opping’. My jingles and commercials are run at the touch of hotkeys on a panel controlling a huge digital sound system which automatically loads the material for cueing every fifteen minutes. Programme features or interviews can be selected by number codes on a computer keyboard from D-Cart, or run from the digital Sony mini-disc machine. All the station’s news subscriber services and information databases are available on screen at the touch of a keyboard. There is only one producer who is evaluating the calls for the phone-in component of the programme and who sends messages by screenwriter before my very eyes. Music is transmitted from compact discs. Specially sequenced sound montages or effects for quiz programmes are set out on another computer screen which displays computer software programmes such as SAW, SAW Plus, or Samplitude. The graphical interface enables me to move and shift sound in coloured blocks with the click and drag of a mouse button. Furthermore, I can connect to Compuserve or the Microsoft Network to explore World Wide Web pages which offer me near instant pictures, text, sound and video on millions of subjects from millions of sources.

There have been breathtaking developments in other areas of radio news broadcasting. The newest BBC network channel, Radio Five, was axed to make way for an all news and sport channel despite parliamentary and widespread public protest. Radio Five had the fastest growing audience of all the national networks. The editor of the all-news and sport channel Radio Five Live was Jenny Abramsky. From April 1994 Radio Five Live has been a success story. Many former LBC producers and journalists have been hired to create a popular blend of immediate news and sports coverage combined with documentary and interesting speechbased programmes during the evening. The transformation of the BBC’s fifth radio network claimed a number of casualties. One of these was the weekly 20-minute live children’s news magazine programme aimed at 9–12 year-olds. The purpose of In the News was to educate and inform a younger audience about national and world issues using music and features in a style appropriate for the target listener. The programme had a take-up of 82 per cent of the country’s primary schools and received two thousand letters a week.

At the time of Radio Five Live’s launch more cynical insiders bestowed on the station the irreverent title ‘Spews’. When BBC Radio experimented with all-news broadcasting during the Gulf War by ‘requisitioning’ Radio 4’s FM frequencies for this purpose, journalists called it ‘Scud FM’—a reference to the Russian-made Iraqi missiles which were being fired into Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The UK Radio Authority which regulates the licences of commercial radio stations has responded...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Bibliography