Week 12 - Regulation vs. Economics

This week we looked at Public service broadcasting vs. Private broadcasting in Ireland, from their point of view and how they broadcast according to their own agenda, in regards to television news.

Public Service Broadcaster - Educate, Inform, Entertain. (RTE, BBC etc.)
Private Broadcaster - Entertain, Commercial gain, Monetary reward. (TV3, 3e, UTV, Channel 4 etc.)

When broadcasting the news, primarily this meant a commitment to due impartiality so that no particular political bias or point of view is given prominence. But now, broadcasters are more and more conscious of their ratings. There is a growing pressure to reschedule the news to make way for more "popular" programmes. If you were to apply a newspaper analogy, the television is moving from a broadsheet to tabloid news agenda, where there is an emphasis on the entertainment side of news. Rather than actual important news. News that literally affects our everyday living in a country, pressing issues and debates being reported and discussed in a broadsheet newspaper. Rather than which footballer has slept with who's wife now, something you would see on a regular basis in a tabloid newspaper like "the Sun". We see a "dumbing down" process happening in television broadcasting.

Broadsheet - Political, Economic, Social Affairs.
Tabloid - Entertainment, Personalities/Celebrities.

While most events that happen around the world in raw form are not interesting to an audience and wouldn't hold the attention of the majority of the public. There is a need to package a raw event and deliver it as a narrative using different storytelling and literature techniques. By using different elements in a news story, such as, spoken word, video footage, illustrations, and photographs, creates a sense that the story contains "windows", which allow an audience to see directly into an event as if they were witnessing it then and there, but from the viewers own home.

Like the narration, these elements are abstracted from the stream of events, cropped and cut; and as with the narrative element, they can be given a different meaning. Delivering a preferred meaning, telling people what they should be seeing or noticing, leading people to believe in one side of the story, while not directly telling the audience what side to be on. Therefore, influencing their meaning.

News stories allow us to understand stories that would otherwise be separated to us by culture and languages, they help us to understand. In terms of the news story, we are on the outside, looking in. Coming in for a sample so we can appreciate the larger view.

We should note that news stories don't just bring together all these elements merely by putting them together in a single story or sequence. They are put together in a specific (narrative) way. To create a meaning. They are collected by people, who also have their own personal views and opinions, which may shift into their work, even if they are to remain unbiased on a story. There is always two sides to a story, but broadcasters want to point out what sides you should be "looking at" and give their own slant on a story but not forcing it on you. Its kind of like an underhand tactic for you to see what they want you to see, and believe what they want you to believe.