Mass Media: Understanding the Evolution of Television News

Mass Media
Jason Nix
Journalism Instructor and
Program Director
JOURN 110
Spokane Falls Community College

Television: Network News
Not so bad?

Yeah, it’s bad.

It’s getting worse.

Foreign news coverage

6 current trends
1.  The effects of newsroom cutbacks are real, and the
public is taking notice
2.  The news industry continues to lose out on the bulk of
digital advertising
3.  The long-dormant sponsorship ad category is seeing
sharp growth
4.  The growth of paid digital content experiments have
have a significant impact on both news revenue and
content
5.  While the first and hardest-hit industry, newspapers,
remains in the spotlight, local TV finds itself newly
vulnerable
6.  Hearing about things in the news from friends and
family, whether via social media or word of mouth,
leads to deeper news consumption.

Current trends
v Viewership mostly flat since 2010

Current trends
v Digital traffic on the rise

A Brief History of Electronic News

Newsreels
•  Short, around 10 minutes long, news of the day, five
or six items of current news, human interest, and
sports
•  From WW I until TV (1950s), newsreels were shown
before feature films
•  residual news – well-produced, expensive to
produce stories about stories that would have a long
shelf life

Problems facing early radio
•  Lack of recording technology
•  Lack of credibility as new medium
•  Power struggle with established media of the day
(newspapers)

Radio News
•  In 1933, the newspaper industry was powerful
enough to force radio networks into the Biltmore
Agreement:
•  No morning newscasts before 9:30 a.m. or
evening newscasts before 9:00 p.m.
•  No breaking news bulletins from the wire
services (AP, etc.)
•  Newscasts could not be sponsored
•  Radio commentaries, which were discussions
about the news, were permitted.
•  Non-network stations were not party to the Biltmore
Agreement, and several independent radio news
services were created to service these stations.

War of the Worlds
•  Newspaper jumped on the chance to make radio seem
untrustworthy.
•  Fear of new technology
Murdoch vs. Google News
•  Should Google make money from content
created by others?

•  The Biltmore Agreement lasted less than one
year.
•  Newscasters, such as NBC’s Lowell Thomas,
H.V. Kaltenborn at CBS, and gossip columnist
Walter Winchell became radio stars.
•  Radio showed propensity for eyewitness
reporting of breaking news
•  1937 explosion of the German dirigible The
Hindenburg. “Oh! The humanity!”
•  Radio helped newspapers. Audience’s wanted
in-depth newspaper coverage of breaking news
heard over the radio.

•  How can radio compliment newspaper
coverage?
•  How can internet compliment newspaper
coverage?

•  Live reports of Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria,
1939 invasion of Poland, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor
•  During WW II, WSU graduate Edward R. Murrow
becomes superstar for wartime newscast
•  In 1946, 63 percent of Americans cited radio as their
primary source of news
•  In 1948, radio demonstrated its advantage over the
slower-moving print media. Early editions of
newspapers erroneously reported that Republican
Thomas Dewey had defeated Democratic
incumbent Harry Truman in the presidential
election, but radio accurately flashed the news that
Truman had won.

Who Listens to NPR?
•  Audience older, more affluent than U.S. population
•  Median age NPR listener: 50, compared to 45 for U.S. population
•  54% male, 46% female. General population: 48% male, 52% female
•  Substantially wealthier than the population at large, more likely to have a
college degree and to vote.
•  The median household income of an NPR listener is $86,114, compared to
$55,462 for the U.S.
•  40% of NPR listeners have a household income of more than $100,000,
compared with 22% of the population.
•  In terms of education, 69% of NPR listeners have a college degree or higher,
compared to only 26% of the general population.

Who Listens to NPR?
•  Fully 70% voted in a federal, state, or local election in 2008, compared to 44% of
the U.S.
•  Surveys show that the NPR audience is politically moderate overall – though a
smaller number are more likely to be liberal than the nation as a whole
•  The largest group of NPR listeners identify themselves as “Middle of the
Road” (26%), this is roughly the same as the general population (28%).
•  However, the listeners are twice as likely to describe themselves as liberal as the
population as a whole. Nearly a quarter, or 22%, describe themselves as
“somewhat liberal” and 12% say they are “very liberal.” This compares to 11%
and 5% of Americans as a whole.
•  Another 18% describe themselves as “somewhat conservative,” compared to
20% of the population. Self-described “very conservatives” represent 9% of the
audience, compared to 12% of the population.

All-News Format
•  In 1960, San Francisco area station KFAX (“K-
Facts) began presenting news 24 hours a day.
•  KFAX followed a “newspaper of the air” format
which was like reading an entire newspaper from
front to back, including sports, cooking features,
and a “comics page,” consisting of comedy
recordings, but the format was a financial failure.
•  In 1964, Chicago’s WNUS (“W-News”) adopted an
all-news format with top stories, sports and features
in regular rotation. WNUS was a success and today
all-news is one of AM radio’s most popular formats.

Television News
•  TV executives skeptical believed that people would
continue to rely on radio news, TV would be used as
an entertainment medium.
•  Edward Murrow at CBS believed otherwise.
•  By 1947, television network newscasts had regular
sponsors. The Camel News Caravan, on CBS, was
sponsored by Camel Cigarettes and forbade news
subjects, except Winston Churchill, to be shown
smoking cigars. Camera operators and editors had
to ensure that no “No Smoking” signs would be
seen on screen.

•  By the early 1950s, TV networks were maintaining film
crews in important locations and relying on stringers in
other places. Film, however, remained expensive to process,
so coverage was limited.
•  TV’s reliance on newsreel-type footage meant that news
events occurring in places where film crews were not
available would not be covered.
•  pseudo-event: an event that would not have happened if the
media had not been invited
•  By the mid 1970s, videotape, which required no processing,
would help free television news from its reliance on film.

Murrow and the Television Documentary
•  In the early 1950s, Edward Murrow and Fred
Friendly of CBS started a television documentary
unit that produced such classics as:
•  “Harvest of Shame,” about the mistreatment of
migrant farm workers.
•  “The Case Against Milo Radulovich A0589829,”
which examined McCarthyism through the story
of a U.S. airman who had been discharged from
the Air Force because his father and sister read
“radical papers.”
•  Murrow’s programs became the predecessor and
model for TV news magazines such as 60 minutes.

Coverage of Assassinations and Civil Unrest
•  America’s first see-it-as-it-happens national news
event occurred two days after the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald,
the prime suspect in JFK’s murder, was shot on live
television by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
•  The Kennedy assassination marked the beginning
of a turbulent decade that would include the 1968
assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King, as well as a number of urban riots that
were sparked by protests against racial
discrimination and the Vietnam War.

Coverage of Vietnam
•  For fear of being considered unpatriotic, the
networks refused to criticize the Vietnam policies of
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. In
1966, CBS news president Fred Friendly resigned
after the network abruptly switched from
broadcasting a Senate hearing on Vietnam to
showing reruns of I Love Lucy and The Real McCoys.
•  Eventually, in-depth on-the-scene TV reporting
from the Vietnamese battlefield began to include
bloody footage of young soldiers being maimed and
killed. This created a credibility gap between the
Johnson administration’s attempts to manage the
news and what the public believed to be true.

Cable News
•  Ted Turner adapted the format of all-news radio
and launched Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980.
•  Several 24-hour-a-day news stories made CNN into
a true competitor for the networks:
•  The 1986 explosion of the space shuttle
Challenger.
•  The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
•  Comprehensive coverage of the first Gulf War in
1991.
•  In 1997, Fox News was launched by Rupert
Murdoch and Roger Ailes as a conservative
alternative to what they felt was a liberal CNN.

Understanding Today’s News
Industry

Industry
News Values
•  News is information about events that are currently
happening, or have happened so recently we haven’t
heard about them yet. The industry’s obsession
with being first with breaking news, and the
pressure to make news “new,” often results in the
reporting of rumors and incomplete information.
•  News has to have an impact on its intended
audience. It might be important because it will
have some consequence on them or because it is
useful.
•  News peg (or angle) makes important, timely
information interesting to the audience.

Industry
The Players
•  Anchor: the newsreader who occupies the seat in the
studio. This person has traditionally spent decades
as a field reporter and correspondent.
•  On-camera reporters in the field are known as
correspondents. They travel in vans with prominent
SNG (satellite news gathering) antennas on the roof.
The cameraperson videotapes the correspondent
with portable ENG (electronic news gathering)
equipment.
•  For larger stories, television correspondents are
backed up by field producers who do interviews,
research, and writing for the on-screen
correspondent.

Industry
•  Broadcast news consultants, who are ratings
specialists brought in to increase a newscast’s
audience appeal, do research and suggest changes
in areas including:
•  Lengths and types of stories.
•  Consideration of the newscaster’s popularity.
•  Graphics, music and set design.
•  Technical specialists in Radio, TV and online
work with digital and computer-based technology.
•  Everyone in the newsroom has to have some
computer skills because everything is
computerized from copy to graphics, footage,
logos, and in-depth audio visual databases.

Controversies
•  Conservatives, through organizations such as
Accuracy In Media (AIM) claim journalists have a
liberal bias because they are anti-business, pro-
big government, anti-family, anti-religion and
anti-Republican.
•  Liberal organizations, such as Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) claim the media
often have a conservative bias because they are
big business and big business is inherently
conservative.
•  Some critics insist the media have a centrist bias
because mainstream media will not report on
radical points of view from either extremely liberal
or extremely conservative sides.

Controversies
•  Creeping bias is a subtle form of slanting that
manifests itself in understated ways such as:
•  The placement of stories.
•  The choice of photos and the captions that go
with them.
•  Conscious or subconscious language choices.
•  In 2003, during the War in Iraq, embedded
journalists were given equipment and minimal
training and considered a semi-official part of the
military. Proponents believe the practice would
provide accurate information about the war.
Opponents believe such journalists would slant the
news from the military’s point of view.

Controversies
•  Television news has been guilty of creating news
stories whose sole purpose is to promote
entertainment programs elsewhere on the schedule.
CBS, for example, covered its program “Survivor”
extensively on its morning news show.
•  Electronic news organizations use polls for
entertainment. On September 13, 2001, 62 percent of
respondents to a CNN/Time poll said Congress
should declare war. But 61 percent said they didn’t
know against whom war should be declared.
•  The public’s reaction to perceived political bias and
entertainment values in the news have caused the
public to lose confidence in the news media’s
credibility.

Mass Media: Understanding the Evolution of Television News

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Mass Media: Understanding the Evolution of Television News