Introduction To News

32 mins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b073qplg/bbc-news-at-ten-21032016

The news broadcaster I chose to look at was BBC News at Ten from the 21/3/2016, in which 9 stories are talked about. The news starts at ten and promptly starts talking about the plans to cut Welfare, many of the shots are filled with David Cameron talking. Although a lot of the report is taken in the Houses of Parliament in which many MPs put across the view to how this could affect us, this making the story much more realistic. Many of the shots are of canted angles of Ten Downing street, but at one point the narrator talks about how this will affect the labour party so the camera changes to a different location.
Another major news story is about a 19 year old boy named Klayton Williams who killed Police Officer Philips with a stolen car. The boy was being chased by a group of police cars when Philips was placing down a trap, the truck then swerved unfortunately hitting and killing Philips. This story really makes the viewer hate Klayton as many of the shots talk to Philips wife who talks about how little Klayton seems to care about the death of Philips. The camera is then brought back to Fiona Bruce who introduces the next story. Which is about Scotland Yard's accusations towards a supposed group of Paedophiles, the story talks about one candidate has just been let of and is outraged by how Scotland Yard are treating them. The story then goes on to tell the audience that all charges have now been dropped and they're now looking into the missing of a local boy were most of these accusations were brought on.


Next a heart breaking news story about a families car that recently slipped into the sea just of the coast of Ireland, the driver of the car went to turn around as they started moving again the car slipped on the algae slowing pushing the family into the water. A man went in to save the family but found just the father alive who passed the man the baby, just to save it. Unfortunately the rest of the family went under the water, and passed away. The story was gripping and sad, they used many shots of family members to upset the audience. A follow up to this story was much more cheerful, Barack Obama visited Cuba for the first time in 54 years that any American President had visited. The story had many shots showing how happy Obama was in Cuba and the clip finally concluded with Mr Rubio and Barack Obama talking about their future plans for cooperation. This story was then followed up with another positive story as they have recently found and shot a key suspect in the Paris bombings. The report took on many shots from CCTV and phone cameras, they showed a group of militants storming the house of the suspect. He then tried to flee but the soldiers were quick to shoot at his legs.

Novak Djokovic

Serena Williams

The ringleader of the Hatton Garden Heist has just recently been sent to jail for a further 6 years, this story didn't take up much of a feature on this broadcast as it would only concern people that knew about the heist before hand. A major sports story followed up this heist, opening with 'Should male tennis players be payed the same amount as female tennis players?'. Statistics showed to viewers that Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams were payed exactly the same amount for winning both there classes trophies. More statistics showed that more viewers tuned in to watch the men play over the women play, Novak stated that its harder for men to win the championship as their is a much stronger competition. The clip finished with an interview with Serena Williams stating her arguments against the males. Finally a story about history, 21st of march 2016 was the anniversary of the military conscription becoming compulsory in the UK. The story looked into a specific leader of a group that fought against the conscription. After a short time the reporter of the story talked to one of the leaders relatives who had an archive of all of his diaries, and others that took part in the 'Conscientious Objectors'.

The Broadcast ran for 32 mins and took on 9 stories, this shows that they're able to get a wide variety of stories within this time limit. By having a wide variety of stories this means that they can keep a different array of viewers attracted.

Fiona Bruce

The broadcast started with intense music with a shot of the reporter in the studio, Fiona Bruce, she gave a brief summary of all of the stories that would be showing in today's news broadcast. Each gave a little glimpse into what would be shown later on, the glimpses ran in the same order that the stories would come up in the broadcast, this meaning that the viewer could estimate when there interest would be on. After the fragments Fiona then went on to talk about the first story, a mixture of different shots of 10 downing street and characters such as David Cameron, and families that would be affect by the benefit cuts. 
We can tell that the editor likes to use a variety of different shots, this keeping the audience interested, as many of the shots used different techniques. Such as canted angle shots for atmosphere and medium shots for character interviews. In one story the video was created from a cell phone, this showing that they extracted atmosphere from the public by doing this it makes the filming much more raw and natural. 

The main news reader in my Broadcast was Fiona Bruce, shes confident, assertive and believable in what she says. At 51, Fiona has broadcasted on BBC news at 10 for 16 years now, and worked for many different programs in the mean time such as Antiques Roadshow and Crimewatch. The role of a news present is to start the story of for the reporters and sometimes to talk over the stories. 

News Ordering - This is the lineup of the stories that will be in that specific broadcast, depending what the theme of story is this will determine when the story is played compared to the others. For example a negative story will be before a positive story.

Slow News Day - A lack of substantial stories that can be broadcast so the team decide to create trivial stories to ensure that the programme length is hit. Stories that do not have much content may appear on a slow news day, for example a story about a cat that got rescued would be classed as a slow story as this is uninteresting for most viewers and its a common occurrence.  

A Prospects List is written up every morning to decide what stories are going to be aired that evening/afternoon. This will be decided by the director and communicated to the rest of the team throughout the day considering whether the story is relevant. It's more likely for a negative story to be broadcast, first over a positive story as the broadcasting studio wants to keep the viewer enticed. After the top negative story the others then run in a similar fashion, they each get better and brighter as the show goes on, usually ending with a easy going or happy story. 
It's important for all of the team to be able to act quickly as often the stories may change later on in the day or the story may not be relevant at that point in time, if this happens then the broadcasting team will have to fill the gap with a different story. In some cases the team might not even have enough information about a specific story to be able to even broadcast it. Furthermore if another shocking story comes in then the team will ensure that the story is broadcast so another story will have to be removed. 

The final story on a news broadcast is often a positive one, its placed so that the viewer comes away feeling happier and not upset from the headliners. Also by having a diverse selection of both positive and negative stories the viewer is kept enticed. This story being known as the 'and finally'. To decide which story goes at the end the team will first look at the news values, its a way of categorising different stories so that they fit together well. A way in which we categorise them is with the research that Galtung and Ruges completed, they found out which stories worked best in which order and which stories they should be placed with. 

Galtung And Ruges from Toby Middleton

NEWS STORY

The story I have chosen to look at is about a man who has recently been jailed for stealing an enormous amount of luxury goods, the story shows around 5 clips of him in different stores stealing various items. There is no reporter in this clip but instead there is constant CCTV footage of a man named Austin Caballero, who used to live in London. He's represented as a criminal as the voice over is constantly calling him a thief or a shoplifter rather than using his actual, this just ensuring that the viewer creates a hatred against Austin. This making me feel confused towards the thief, as the reporter states that he did think he was going to get away with it. It also interests me into how much shops look at there CCTV as the footage clearly shows the man walking in and stealing things. It made me feel angry that he would do things like that, as he was clearly tricking some of the staff in the store. 
Throughout the 39 second clip there was a narrator talking over the top, this helped to understand what was happening. This was also good as the video they played was much more visual, the voice over the top helped to explain what was going to happen to him after recently being caught. She uses statistics to show how often this guy is stealing different objects, thus helping the viewer to understand how bad he actually is.

David Cameron

Selection and Omission in the news is a sort of bias that is heavily used in this current day, this sort of bias leans more towards the effects caused by the editor. The editor may hold some information back from the clip as this would make it easier to enhance the story in the way in which he/she would like it to be conveyed. This making the viewer gain just small pieces if information that could cause them to have a bias view. In many circumstances this sort of bias is used heavily in Politics, for example when the press found out about David Camerons situations with a pig everybody jumped on it. The news were stating that he had put his penis into a pig, without any justification of why he did it. 

In News shows such as BBC the producer always places the stories that will catch the most attention at the start of the show as this ensures that viewers are enticed from the word go! This type of bias is called Placement, there is always a pattern of how these stories are put together and its always about view count on the first couple of stories. If they feel that a story won't have as many people interested then the story tends to sit at the end. A good example is shown at the start of this blog in which BBC news starts the show talking about the cuts to benefits, this story effects a lot of people in the UK and will interest many of the affected. 

Headline Bias usually tends to happen just in Newspapers or magazines, this sort of bias means that the viewer is instantly hit with a short sentence giving a brief overview of the story. Although in some cases the headline could be misleading, it may have something interesting in the headline, that the viewer is bound to read, but really the story could be boring and irrelevant. There was a story recently were a Palestinian deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people, which also disembarked Jerusalem light rail. This injured many people, young men, women and even small children. The press then decided to print a story in which they stated in the headlines 'Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem', the headline being completely in-factual and totally irrelevant to what had just happened.

The way in which a camera is placed, there could be a lower shot to make a character much more powerful or the shot could be much longer to show that the character is boring and slow. This type of Bias is by shot selection and camera angles, photos are the way in which people make a judgement of people, in most cases, so someones reputation could be majorly effected by what the news has posted. For example this photo shows Ed Miliband eating a sandwich, the pictures makes him look stupid and the complete opposite to a figure who we want running the country. But thats just how the news wanted to convey a competing leader.

Often the News article is given a small piece of text, just to give an overview of whats happening or to create an impression. With Names and Captions bias the news reporter is out to exaggerate what the person in the video has done, they change what the situation is really like so that viewers want to read/watch into more depth. For example a person could be called a 'terrorist' which the viewer can relate to but really they could be a 'freedom fighter', the two mean the same thing but its how the news wants to portray that certain person. 

Language is a very big part of the news as it all depends how the reported speaks to the camera, this sort of bias means that the news reporter could put a little amount of emphasis on parts that the viewer may not want to here. But for headliners or important stories the reporter would talk louder or become much more empowering as this is the part that the viewer wants to hear!