Is TV News a window on the world?

                                                                                                             1. Introduction

To many people, TV news is the window on the world. The news gives access to information, to a broader perspective of the world than we would otherwise have. TV news expands our view and understanding of the world. However, very often television news is biased and provide us with false truth and distorts the world it projects. As it is known, media have tremendous power in setting ideology. Therefore, somebody's interpretations  of the news is presented on TV rather than objective facts. Objectivity and fairness are rare. The ideas of impartiality and objectivity are under pressure in our times. Unfortunately, very often the information that we get from TV news fits the needs of ideological struggle. There are increased signs of propaganda. By the way, on the Internet, there is less control over what gets published, and so biased news pieces are available along with objective pieces. To portray issues fairly and accurately, media must broaden their range of sources. Otherwise, they serve not as a window on the world but merely as megaphones for those in power.  

2. However, the law formally states  that the news should represent real life in a true light. The TV news do many things to persuade viewers  that they are 'a window on the world'.
Starting sequences have many purposes:

• they attract attention 
• they give a recognisable brand image to the news programme 
• they use computer graphics which connote technological sophistication, therefore accuracy of the news is  expected

But the main purpose of news starting sequences is trying to show us that the news is a ‘window on the world’ through connotation and iconic symbols.
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In the shown above BBC NEWS 2014 title sequence an animated graphic sequence begins showing red transparent concentric rings connoting the news being impartial. The rings merge and expand while maps of the world fade in and out of view. The names of world cities appear and disappear until we see a large figure 1 with the logo of BBC News. The connotations of the maps and world city names connote worldwide coverage of news. Loud brass and percussion music accompanies the entire sequence connoting the significance and authority of the news. During the opening sequence, we can see the entire BBC studio with all the equipment and the surrounding area connoting that they are not hiding anything from viewers.

Sets and presenters
The news is also trying to present itself as impartial and realistic through the sets and presenters.The look of the presenters is also formal: they wear formal clothes to emphasize the authority of the news. Formal standard language is used by news presenters. The  serious tone means that the news programme is an important authoritative source of reliable information.  Its sole purpose is to inform the audience in a serious manner, which indicates that the news that they are broadcasting is a serious presentation of the facts. The studio newsreaders remain fixed within the studio environment. This fixed role further constructs them as being in an authoritative position.
The legal and regulatory framework
The UK broadcast regulator OFCOM is approved by the government. Its duty is to protect the public from harmful or offensive material. According to the regulations impartiality is a requirement for broadcasters. All broadcasters must be objective and do not show signs of bias. 
The Ofcom Broadcasting Code.
Section Five: Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions

Interestingly that the BBC is not subject to all of the requirements of the Broadcasting Code. For example, it is not subject to the rules on impartiality and accuracy. The BBC has their own Editorial Guidelines.

But does BBC news deliver what it claims? Very often it delivers distortion and fabrication of facts.

Example: Ukraine -  whenever it's neo-Nazi Right Sector, they're called protesters by the BBC news, and on the other hand, pro-Russians are called terrorists.

Protesters???

3. The gatekeeping process
Gatekeeping process is a process of how information moves from source to receiver. The news passes through many steps of processing on its way to the receiver, and at each step in the process, the original data is reduced in length, edited for style, censored, and so on.
The acquisition of news can be carried out by news gathering from the following sources:
Reporters 
They live in the community and every day contact with people in the area.
Correspondents
They are the part time journalists who work for the TV channel.
Very often their comments are based more on an opinion rather than facts.  This leads to
bad reporting thus not showing reality in a neutral, unbiased and impartial way.
Monitoring officers
They listen to the transmissions in different languages, translate them into English and make a report of it.
News agencies
They sell their stories to news producers worldwide.





Press conferences















Court cases or trials

Other media news (newspapers, Twitter,etc)
However, these news sources cannot be totally unbiased and trustworthy. In all these situations, when news comes into the news studio, rather than news teams going out to find it,  it is easy for a news program to become a victim of spin.

The newsgathering process

The news gathering process involves
1) planning
2) working in the field: interviewing the relevant people who have opinions and knowledge about the topic; attending events related to the story idea.
3) monitoring the web : the Internet is a huge source of information. It is often necessary to be familiar with background information on the topic.

News Values

The most widely studied list of news values was proposed by Norwegian scholars Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge in 1965.  The scholars proposed twelve selection criteria such as frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness,consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition,  reference to elite nations,  reference to elite people, reference to persons, reference to something negative. By these values gatekeepers make decision about newsworthiness of news.They said the more an event
satisfied particular conditions the more likely it would be selected as news.
Galtung and Ruge define and describe each of these news factors as below:

Galtung and Ruge's list of news values has been criticized by many scholars. However, it is considered the most classic news values classification.
Time flies and dictates new values. The four new news values are:

•  
• Visualness

In our times visualness is the the most dominant news value. Our age is a visual one, where images count more than words. The ability of journalists to “get pictures” determines whether an event is selected as news. Visualness is driving  the selection of news in television nowadays.

<-----This is the moment a drunk passenger stripped naked at the airport.

• Emotion 

The news should have elements of entertainment to be interesting and appealing to audiences.

<------David Beckham's emotional farewell

• Conflict   

 The news are often presented in terms of conflicting views. It is considered to be  newsworthy. 

<------Journalists destroy studio set as TV debate on Syria turns into an on-air brawl

• the “celebrification” of the journalist 

Very often such journalists provide their own perspective on the events.
“ We have celebrified the news to the point where we are losing the news, where it is more about what some people think than what they know.”—Frank Sesno, former CNN White House correspondent.

Not everything can be shown or said in TV news. There are laws which prevent some things being broadcast. One of them concerns the coverage of sexual and other offences in the UK involving under-eighteens.

Some more rules concern Privacy:

Television channels have to balance between viewers who watch the TV programmes and advertisers to survive. Therefore, news gatekeeping mechanisms have to handle commercial agendas in a way that does not endanger the trustworthiness of the viewers.  Advertisers pay big sums of money for seconds of airtime. It is no surprise that the advertisers have the influence on content of news. Therefore, the news is not always chosen because of newsworthiness but is influenced by profit motives, by the race to get the story first in order to increase rating. For instance, '' in Newsweek’s June 6, 1983 issue, Newsweek published an article detailing the nonsmoker’s rights movements. When the tobacco advertisers learned about this, they withdrew their advertisements from that issue, which may have cost Newsweek as much as one million dollars in advertising''(White Larry C. Merchants of Death. New York: William Morrow Beech Tree Books, 1988, p 139).

There is competition between news companies - who will get the better news and do it faster. Late breaking stories are usually given in a hurry, therefore they are not always trustworthy. Technical issues might also occur: problems with live translations for press conferences,etc

TV producers have to fight to get and  keep the audience's attention. Therefore, TV news programme makers use different techniques to construct their narrative stories. TV news narratives are constructed around segments, e.g. an individual news story. These short segments don't demand much attention, and often not necessarily directly connected to other segments of the programme. Segments are easily accessible for casual viewing, and deliver quick, easy chunks of news. The narrative plot of television news is much less continuous than that of films. News stories usually start with a summary of key information, followed further details in decreasing order of significance.  However, sometimes the narrative structure of news resemble a ‘soap opera’.

Actuality footage gives added value to news because it is crucial to the narrative story. However, ''much actuality footage is in fact archive footage, and even when not, always a 'representation' of the reality rather than the reality itself''.

Conclusion

In our era we are getting news from very different sources: television, radio, print versions of newspapers and magazines, Internet. The majority of young people nowadays get news and information from social networking: through Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites. They are less likely to use newspapers, television, or radio to access the news. The majority of older people continue to discover news through TV. Unfortunately, we cannot completely trust the information other sources provide either. There is also a lot of misinformation. Although TV news stories are often inaccurate and biased, television remains an important news source for many people. Media illiterate people get affected by false information. False information can lead to unintended reactions. Political, economic, and social events often shape people's life, that is why it is important to have access to the most accurate and true information. In 2013 a tweet from Associated Press twitter account told about an attack on White House. The twitter informed that American president Obama was injured.  This had negative affect not only on the citizens but also on the US stock market.

Moreover, nobody should pay money for being misinformed. Therefore, I think it matters how the news is shown. The news should not tell us what to think but it should set the agenda on what we should think about.
It seems that often mainstream news reflects the values of the middle class, middle age, southern, university educated males who control production of TV news. Evidently it is more newsworthy when covering the news in more democratic way.
I personally think there is no chance for TV news to be unbiased and impartial. The TV channels are mostly private and, as we know, ''he who pays the piper calls the tune''. What concerns public TV channels, news serve as megaphones for those in power.