Is TV News a Window on the World?

Introduction:

It's often described that the television news is a wide representation of the world, and makes sure that viewers get a true and unbiased view on whats happening in the world. The analogy which is most commonly used that is the news gives us a "window on the world", this means that stories from all over the world are shown to us, and therefore presented in an unbiased and neutral way. However, we now know that this is not entirely true.

The news definitely tries to portray itself in an unbiased, factual way, but is it really? I have explained starting sequences of news and about the presentation of news reader in another post : Post in on my blog named 'News Readers -  A Connotational Analysis'.

Gate Keeping Process:
  
The elements mention in the News Readers post (starting sequences, news readers, impartiality laws and the hierarchy of truth) all suggest that TV news is a "window on the world", although this is a clever way to hide and appear neutral. This is shown through the 'gatekeeping' process, this is where news stories are chosen (usually in order of importance) and decided whether or not they are going to be aired that day, discarded or kept for another day, a lot of news is scrapped and only a small number of big news makes it onto the news. 

The 'gatekeeping' process begins with an event, which is then followed by different types of information which could be organisations, professions, police services etc.. The next step of this process is news values, which simply evaluates the importance of the story and how the audience may react. 

News Values: 

The theory of news values were suggested by Galtung and Ruge in 1965 where many terms were discussed to present news values. These terms are; frequency, threshold, ambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, elite nations, elite persons, personalisation, and negativity. For example, the idea of composition is extremely important during this process as TV news will always have a balanced structure of where each event comes. Link to a more descriptive list of Galtung and Ruge's News Values: http://www.owenspencer-thomas.com/journalism/newsvalues 

Personalisation: People are interested in people who are well-known person. Some people claim this news value has become distorted, and that news editors over-rate personality stories, for example celebrities. An example of this is the news at the moment would be Rolf Harris who has appeared in the news recently for sex offences, other sex offender who are not famous are unlikely to appear in the news, just because Rolf is famous he gets noticed more because people want to know about it.


Reference to elite persons: The media pay more attention to the rich and powerful and. Stories about important people get the more coverage than the least important. For example Barrack Obama gets more coverage about his latest decisions than the Councillor in your local village.

Negativity: Bad news is more exciting  and fun to watch than good news. Stories about death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage etc or even extreme weather conditions are always rated above positive stories such as the royal weddings or celebrations.  Bad news stories are more likely to be reported than good news because they are more likely to score high on other news values, such as unexpectedness.

Unexpectedness: If a stroy is out of the ordinary it will be more likely to make it into the news than an everyday occurrence would. For example, as Charles A. Dana quoted, "If a dog bites a man, that's not news. But if a man bites a dog, that is news!''.  A recent example of this would be when Kate Middleton went into labor more people read a story about a woman taking her horse into McDonald's.   

News gathering routines:

These could include having a late breaking stories or technical problems, which are all a part of the new production. Legal constraints is also involved, this is the understanding of the laws when presenting the news, such as "Views and facts must not be misrepresented". This is followed by the cost of a story, the cost of the story would depend on the significance of the story and the audiences reaction. Next is the competition between news teams where the event is then broadcasted, and a story is created. Although this is the case, on many occasions of this process, each story can be discarded if another better story takes its place.

Conclusion:

The statement 'Is the News a window on the world' is either true or false, there cannot really be any in between, so, is it true or false?. There is a lot of evidence to support this claim and say it is true, but there is also much as there is to also go against it. The difference in this is that the audience is usually unaware of the decisions which are made in the production of TV news, but are usually aware of the legal requirements and general structure while the news is being presented, such as the use of the hierarchy of fear. What the news is presenting is obviously true although it is how they are presenting this information, however there is much difficulty to believe the claim of TV news being a "window on the world", suggesting that the news is unbiased when in fact this is not the case. Much of the news which has made it through the 'gatekeeping' process and is broadcasted, is usually negative where the idea of bad news is good news according to the audience. 

Due to the lack of control we as viewers have over what we are being presented with, there is very little which can be done about this claim. Therefore this claim is rarely second guessed by an audience, as we as viewers usually focus of the information we are being presented with and not what occurs behind the scenes of the production.