The Cognitive Impact of Television News

Production Attributes and Information Reception

B. Gunter

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349500314, 9781137468819
• eBook ISBN: 9781137468826
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Research shows that, while people around the world consistently nominate television as their most important news source, much of the content of news bulletins is lost to viewers within moments. In response, Barrie Gunter argues that this can be explained by the way in which televised news is written, packaged and presented.

1

How Much Do We Value Television News?

In its far-reaching survey of the communications market in the UK, communications regulator Ofcom (Office of Communications) reported that despite the overall diversification of the news supply system, television remained the most important and most often used medium for news consumption among the British people (Ofcom, 2013). Nearly eight out of ten adults surveyed by the regulator (78%) said they used television to get their news. Television far outstripped other platforms that were used to access news ‘nowadays’, leaving newspapers (endorsed by 40%), radio (35%) and the internet (32%) in its wake. What also emerged however was that most people today use a range of news sources, of which television is just one. The proportion of British news consumers who said they used only television for their news was much smaller (22%). Such people were more likely to be older and poorer. Focusing on specific named news suppliers, the same research confirmed the continued dominance of television. Overall, more than six in ten people (62%) named a television channel as their most important news sources compared with one in seven (14%) that named a website (Ofcom, 2013).

In similar research reported by the Pew Institute for the US, television again emerged as the pre-eminent medium for news with many more (55%) saying they got their news from it ‘yesterday’ compared with online sources (39%), radio (33%) and newspapers (23%). Benchmarked against the UK, television was not so widely endorsed. Nonetheless, it still outstripped other news media, with newspapers in fourth place and digital or online sources reaching the second spot for American news consumers (Kohut et al., 2012). Perhaps more significant still were the age differences of users of most widely used news sources. Among the youngest adult news consumers, even television had been overtaken by online news sources. For 18–24-year-olds, for instance, the most widely used news source during the day before they were interviewed in the survey was online media (41%) with television trailing some way behind (29%). Among 25–29-year-olds, the gap was narrower, but online media still held a lead over television (45% versus 41%) (Kohut et al., 2012).

These contemporary findings reflect long-term historical trends. The high importance attached by mass publics to televised news can be traced back to the 1950s in countries such as the US and the 1960s in others such as the UK (Roper Organisation, 1983; Gunter et al., 1994; Towler, 2002, 2003). The problem with measures of ‘perceived importance’ of news to audiences based on single-scale measures is how much they really reveal about the public’s thoughts and feelings about the quality of televised news provision. When people say that television is their ‘most important’ news source, what does this mean? Does it mean the same thing for different news consumers? Is it telling us about where people believe they get most of their news diet each day? Or does it say something about how televised news is evaluated; that is, as the most accurate, or most balanced, or most credible, or most trusted news source?

Other measures have also been deployed to address these questions, but do so only in part. Thus, in the UK, most people said they were ‘satisfied’ that television news kept them well informed (Ofcom, 2004). How does this subjective opinion equate to how much they actually know and understand about current news events and issues? We do not know from this evidence alone. In this book, we are primarily concerned with how much people actually gain from televised news in terms of what they know.

Centrality of news to television broadcasting

The news has been a prominent feature of television broadcasting since its earliest transmissions. The first news broadcasts were characterised by crude production formats compared to present-day news bulletins and comprised little more than televised radio news programmes with a few still pictures added. The other difference from radio, of course, was that the newsreader could be seen as well as heard. The first newsreaders in the 1930s and 1940s had the fairly limited role of reading out prepared news story scripts. Broadcast news in the UK during the Second World War years, for instance, was restricted in its coverage but rules were relaxed as the conflict entered its later stages, allowing a more diverse news agenda to surface (Schlesinger, 1978).

By the 1950s, however, significant changes started to occur. More news personnel were introduced to support the main newsreaders or ‘anchors’, including specialist correspondents and reporters who reported on specific topics about which they supposedly had expert knowledge. The news anchors began to show distinctive personalities and engaged in what appeared to be unscripted banter with other news personnel or between each other (Altheide, 1976). This created a less formal and friendlier atmosphere that eventually came to be regarded as a critical attribute in competing for audiences as the news media environment became more crowded and competitive. The concept of newscasters superseded that of newsreaders with the use of trained journalists rather than actors to read out the news, who would also provide input to the news scripts.

This decade was marked not only by the diversification of content on the BBC’s radio services but more especially by the rise of television as the most significant medium for both entertainment and information. At the start of the 1950s, only around one in ten people in Britain had access to television broadcasts, but a little over ten years later this proportion represented those who did not have television (Schlesinger, 1978). By the middle of the 1950s, the BBC faced competition from a commercial rival, Independent Television. Within five or six years of its launch virtually everyone across the UK had access to this new network of regional services (Tunstall, 1983; Franklin, 1997).

Across the next five decades television news broadcasting continued to evolve in terms of the overall quantity of news being produced and the prevalence of bulletins in the regular television schedules; and also in terms of programme formats that were underpinned by developments in production technologies. News broadcasts were transmitted throughout the television schedules. Audiences could then wake up to televised news, catch updates at regular intervals across the day and go to bed with the news at night. As broadcast schedules expanded to cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so too did the amount of news (Noam, 1991). The expansion of television channels with the growth of cable and satellite broadcasting during the 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of all-news channels that transmitted continuous news and factual programming all day long (Franklin, 1997).

The prevalence of televised news and its prominence in the consciousness of the public inevitably led to questions being raised by some scholarly observers about whether news broadcasters always lived up to the professionals standards they claimed were de rigeur in their business (McNair, 1996). Such questions were especially pertinent in relation to news broadcasting. It was widely understood and accepted that daily newspapers, which were privately owned, displayed political affiliations that could influence the nature of some of their reporting. This was not to say that the journalists working for these publications ignored or rejected the usual standards of journalistic objectivity in reporting news events. Rather, it was a feature that generally surfaced in the editorial statements made by these publications. These statements were known to be opinion pieces rather than factual reports. Evaluations of public figures, and especially of politicians, were a regular feature of newspaper reporting in democratic countries. Facts were still researched and corroborated in the usual fashion, but stories could be flavoured with the newspapers’ own evaluations of political decision making, politicising and the performance of politicians or political parties and of governments (McNair, 1996; Franklin, 1997).

Some commentators and researchers argued that we should not be surprised by these observations because news media were part of the propaganda machinery of governments even in democracies that enshrined freedom of speech in their constitutions and objectivity in their journalistic codes of practices (Glasgow University Media Group, 1976, 1980; Herman, 1986; Chomsky, 1989).

Compared to the printed press, broadcasters in democracies were generally ruled by stricter regulations that usually denied the freedom of journalists to make the kinds of evaluations newspapers were allowed to make. For sure, journalists on television could pepper their factual reports with opinions, but these opinions were generally ones proffered by news sources rather than by the journalists themselves. As news organisations, news broadcasters were expected to place themselves and their reporting above any form of political alliance (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991; Franklin, 1997).

Yet, over many years broadcasters were criticised, especially by UK-based sociologists, for failing to observe these statutorily underpinned codes of practice (Glasgow Media Group, 1976, 1980). Broadcasters offered a defence often based on audience research that purportedly showed the level of trust that people placed in major news broadcasters and the relative absence of political partiality in their news reporting (Collins, 1984; Gunter & Svennevig, 1988). Even some reflective news professionals joined the debate critiquing the failure of news broadcasters to provide news designed to truly enhance public understanding. In contrast to the critiques of academics who explained the partiality of broadcast news in terms of political ideological motives, an alternative viewpoint surfaced that standard production techniques created news outputs which cultivated a ‘bias against understanding’ (Birt, 1987). Television news was regarded as superficial, disjointed and lacking the kind of insightful analysis of events and issues needed to stimulate the public’s comprehension of them.

These debates have continued into the modern era with serious questions being raised about the quality of news reporting even by such august public service broadcasters as the BBC. The evolution of media technologies that began in the pre-internet era with cable and satellite television and their multi-channel television packages commercialised broadcasting and encouraged a softening of media regulations. Such developments were accelerated with the public emergence of the internet and resulted in an increasingly commercialised news industry. With this came an anti-elitist orientation towards the news and an appetite for more easily digestible news updates that covered subjects that were of everyday interest to ordinary members of the public and not just catering to the ‘higher-brow’ agendas of the political classes (Franklin, 1997).

The quality of news in the digital era has shifted as the economic foundations of major news suppliers have been shaken by massive growth in market competition for audiences (Currah, 2009). In view of this change news broadcasters can be forgiven for seeking new ways of engaging with their audiences and trying to make their products look and sound better than their competitors. This rapidly evolving news environment has encouraged news broadcasters to embrace digital technologies because they believe it is essential to their survival and not always because they represent part of a considered and strategic business development plan. In so doing, many newsrooms have adopted new technologies and systems before they have acquired the competencies needed to take best advantage of them (Currah, 2009).

The digital era has created a setting in which the news has been pushed towards reinventing itself to boost its interest to foraging audiences that get their news diets via an increasingly diverse array of news feeds. We cannot be surprised that mainstream news suppliers use methods designed to make their news seem more than ordinary ‘news’. This drive to be different in the face of market demands did not begin with the digital era. Even in the 1970s, the idea that news could be entertainment was championed by local network affiliates in the US (Gunter, 1987). This notion was adopted even more widely and enthusiastically during the increasingly crowded news marketplace of the 1990s. Debates were also triggered about whether the news was becoming excessively ‘dumbed down’ (Franklin, 1997). There were concerns that the news was becoming too concerned with the sensational while serious matters of substance were being sidelined (McManus, 1994; Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995; Blumler & Kavanagh, 1999; Graber, 2001).

News professionals’ concept of audience

News provision formed part of the original ethos of the BBC. Its purpose was to inform and edify the British public in a way that was accurate, balanced, comprehensive and impartial in its coverage of daily events and issues (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991). The eventual introduction of commercially funded but still closely regulated networks in the UK was not intended to dilute news coverage but to create competition for the BBC to maintain news quality by keeping the corporation’s newsroom on its toes (Ofcom, 2004).

News providers believe they know how to present the news to make it relevant and digestible (Altheide, 1976; Schlesinger, 1978). You might think that this ‘understanding’ that news professionals say they have about their audiences and how best to communicate to them must be founded on scientific analysis and systematic research. Nothing could be further from the truth however (Elliott, 1972; Tracey, 1978). Much of this belief derives from professional training that teaches journalists the established practices of news storytelling. News editors and producers must also think about how to make their programmes distinctive, and to ensure they achieve this they turn their attention more to the work and outputs of their competitors than to feedback from audiences. Indeed, the idea of using audience research to guide the shape and content of the news is anathema to many news broadcasters. The time constraints placed on broadcast news production mean that news professionals must adhere to standardised routines that have developed over many years (Altheide, 1976; Schlesinger, 1978; Gans, 1979).

We might say, then, that television news programmes are in many respects outputs made by news professionals to impress other news professionals. The ways the news is selected and re-packaged for presentation to audiences are determined by professional practice conventions rather than an understanding of audiences’ needs and certainly do not take account of viewers’ information processing abilities. In consequence, television news broadcasts are compiled under the guidance of professional beliefs about what the public need and how they learn. News professionals have long believed that there is little point in trying to understand audiences and their needs, because they often don’t know themselves what they want from news (Warner, 1979).

A further set of pressures then derive from a third party beyond both the newsroom personnel and the audience – the network executives whose main concern is the market performance of their television network and more specifically of its news broadcasts compared to its rivals (Gunter, 1987). Such pressures have in turn created tensions between the aims of news broadcasts to be informative and at the same time to provide entertainment – a feature which network executives believe will enhance market share.

The gap between news professionals and audiences in terms of how much journalists and editors understand of their viewers was underlined in a comparative test of awareness of recent news events. Researchers asked news personnel working for the BBC questions about eight news stories from the week before and the news professionals scored an average of 7.9 out of 8. In other words, they were extremely clued up about current news events and issues. When a sample of over 500 viewers was tested with the same questions only 2% managed a score of six or more out of eight (Robinson & Sahin, 1982).

The practices adopted by news professionals result in news broadcasts that take on a specific form. As well as the professional criteria that are applied to decide which stories will make it into that day’s bulletins, the programmes themselves are constructed to meet professional expectations about how a ‘good’ newscast should look and sound. Hence, programmes are organised according to professional criteria that determine which story should take the lead and which ones should follow on. Further conventions determine whether specific stories should be grouped together in a tight sequence. Production techniques are adopted that are driven by the need to capitalise on the full presentational potential of the medium – in the case of television this means a need to ensure that news stories are ‘visualised’ or visually supported as much as possible. Storytelling methods are used that not only get specific types of information in place but also try to engage the audience at an emotional level (Sahin et al., 1981).

Importance of trust in the news

The news has become an established part of our lives for most of us. We wake up to radio news, we have breakfast in front of television news and we commute to work reading a newspaper. The importance of news in our lives is therefore manifest in our daily behaviour. Further indications of the importance that we attach to the news derive from the things we say about it. We talk about the news to others. We therefore value the news that is brought to us by the media because it gives us a set of common experiences we can share with others (Coleman et al., 2009). In this respect the news acts as a kind of social glue in that it triggers conversations and enables us to disclose aspects of ourselves to others and others to reveal aspects of themselves to us through the opinions we all voice about the events and issues of the day. This collective experience can inform public discourses about events within and outside of our own society and about the way our society itself is governed and managed. These discourses in turn underpin the dynamic processes of questioning the actions of those in power that are critical in functioning democracies (Fallows, 1996; Cappella & Jamieson, 1997; Newton, 1999; Moy & Pfau, 2000).

Audiences in different parts of the world have been found to endorse the value of television news in informing their understanding of world and domestic political and economic affairs. They trust its objectivity and hence it becomes their first choice to consult over complex issues and when confronted with conflicted accounts of current events (Stanley & Niemi, 1990; Waddington et al., 1991; Youman, 1972; Lee, 1975; Adoni & Cohen, 1978; Cumberbatch et al., 1985).

There is also a need-to-know that extends beyond fuelling everyday conversations with others. Keeping up to date with the latest world developments also represents an aspect of daily monitoring of our environment to scan for events that might have personal consequences. In this context we need to find sources we can trust because we cannot rely on first-hand experience to find out about events taking place out of our reach (Rosanvallon, 2008).

Our concern here is specifically with the part played in all these news experiences by television. There is much investment in news gathering and delivery by television newsrooms. Delivery of news is a cornerstone of the broadcast services of many mainstream television networks. The news is therefore important not only to the public but also to the news providers and in the case of television to the networks that underwrite its production costs. In media environments in which governmentfunded, non-commercial or ‘public service’ news broadcasting persists, there are cultural and ideological reasons for the importance of continuing news provision. Any failure on the part of news organisations to capture and retain the trust of their patrons can result in audiences turning away from them (Tsfati & Cappella, 2003, 2005; Tsfati & Ariely, 2014).

The importance of television news in the digital era

As we will see in this volume, television news remains...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. How Much Do We Value Television News?
• 2. Do We Remember Much from Television News?
• 3. How Does Television Compare with Other Media?
• 4. Are Some Television News Stories Easier to Remember?
• 5. Does Television Tell Stories in a Memorable Way?
• 6. Do Pictures Help or Hinder Our News Memories?
• 7. Is Television News Presented Too Fast?
• 8. Is Television News Packaged Helpfully?
• 9. Do We Need to Receive Television News More Than Once?
• 10. Can Television News Be Entertaining and Memorable?
• References
• Index