Window on the world

Starting sequences are the first things the audience will see. The starting sequence will influence the audience’s opinion through showing many different visuals that appeal to importance and urgency. The majority of News intro sequences will use the world to show that they can see everything within world and suggests they bring you the news from every corner of the world. This also suggests that the news station is looking over the world without the use of interfering or interacting but giving an unbiased and observational view of what the world is like. The News can also use transparent objects to portray this impartial and observational type. They use transparent objects as a metaphor for being able to see through the objects, just as the audience are able to see through the news and suggest that nothing is hidden from the viewers however, the news are able to hide things from the audience that has something to do with the world. The news also often uses a transparent background so the viewers are able to see through their backdrop and see into the media room behind. This will show the viewers how you can see them working; this suggests impartiality to the viewers. This shows hard working people who will often be informed; they will be in the background, this is so they can usually look a lot busier to maintain the illusion of importance and urgency for the news.

The law on impartiality is very strict and essential for a news team to follow in order to be able to host the news. The news are legally required to be reported with accuracy and impartiality. This means they are not allowed to report anything that has not happened and they are also required to have the correct info on the event otherwise they are legally not allowed to report it. If they are to show anything that is not impartial or anything that hasn’t got enough evidence, they must instantly correct it on air, otherwise their station will most likely be shut down. When it is corrected, they must state clearly, what they have reported wrongly and correct it, admitting their mistake. This law is stated in 5.1 and 5.2 of the OFCOM broadcast code. This is a certain amount of rules which TV stations/channels must abide by to be able to produce content and continue showing content which will be shown to the public otherwise it will not be shown.

As many people would say the News is fair and impartial, this is clearly not the case. The News are clever and find ways to avoid being impartial as it is impossible to be completely impartial. It will be covered and not very clear to see such as when attacks such as the London stabbings and Manchester bombings recently, have been shown in a point of view against ISIS. This may not be an impartial view when it is reported as they are referred to the incident as terrorists attacks. The News is not impartial when it comes to what they are reporting. The content that they choose to report on the news is chosen carefully through different characteristics. This must be closely analysed by two media researchers called Gultang and Ruge. They identified a set amount of principles that the News would use to decide what is more important and going to be reported to the nation. These principles were: immediacy, familiarity, amplitude, frequency, unambiguity, predictability, surprise, continuity, elite nations/people, personalisation, negativity and balance.

Just as the News has a process for what can be put on the air and reported, they have a process for the stories too. They call this the gate keeping process. This process is essentially all of the people and obstacles which the story will have to go through to be decided if it will be going to be broadcast. It will first start off at the source of the News. They need to consider if it is a solid source, the reliability of the source and the information must not be falsified. They are more likely to take a story from a celebrity who is well known rather than a drunk homeless person in the street. They must consider the evidence into which the story will be based on. They must not report a story which has insufficient evidence otherwise they may report something that is incorrect and will lose their credibility to the public. The next process is economics. This means will they be able to fund the story and the research into it. These costs can come from having to travel to these locations if they are further away or if it is a last minute story. They might have to pay for accommodation of the employees if they are to stay there over a longer period of time. This funding may be shortened if the stories that they are reporting might be useless. This means that their funding needs to be spent carefully to make sure that they get the best stories with their budget. Competition within the news department is a big factor that can influence a decision to put something on the news. Their competition with other news companies to get the most amount of views is important to win to the news companies and helps a lot if one company is to cover a story before the others as it is an uncovered story, it is new to the public and will therefore be more appealing. But it has been shown by other news companies, when someone clicks onto material that has already been shown they will not want to view it as they may already know all about it from another news company. News companies will always reserve stories just in case their story has been covered by another news corporation so they can have fresh material to report. The News gathering process can be a difficult process as it requires the majority of the characteristics of Gultang and Ruges specifications which make up news stories. If they do not have the majority of these, they will most likely not make the cut back to be used as a reserve story if the main stories do not go to plan. Late breaking stories can be a difficult issue as it requires a lot of work in order to be able to be presented by a news company. This can set the main story back and may even shorten down the length or cut out the original length of some of the other stories. The stories that are cut are decided upon by how many of the specific qualities of Gultang and Ruges theory are in the story. This can take a lot of work to be able to fit in and will be essential to gather the information for that story before another news company covers it first. Technical issues can be a major setback if it comes to something as important as the main story that is going to be used. Technical issues can occur with any technology whether this is during the gathering process or during the reporting section of the production. If a camera is to break during filming a story that is as important as a terrorist attack, they will lose vital footage which may attract a lot more viewers or may even be used for evidence.

Overall, in conclusion, the news can show the reality of the world to a certain extent. They can show us anything what they think we want to be shown. With the world today, TV news construct us to believe anything that they tell us as every TV news station tells us similar but different stories of when an incident happens within the world. Its hard to believe what is true but audiences have to accept that its true what the the news tells us as every TV news show tells us similar things which will make the audience think that what they tell us about the reality of the world is true.