Broadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are broadcast by electronic methods instead of the older methods, such as printed newspapers and posters. It works on radio (via air, cable, and Internet), television (via air, cable, and Internet) and the World Wide Web. Such media disperse pictures (static and moving), visual text and sounds.
Contents
History
Pre-1945
Silent news films were shown in cinemas from the late 19th century. Pathé started producing weekly newsreels in Europe in 1909, and in the US in 1911.
News broadcasts in the United States were initially transmitted over the radio. When radio first became popular, it was not used as a source of information; rather, people listened to the radio solely for entertainment purposes. NBC (National Broadcasting Company) began broadcasts in November 1926, with CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) entering production on September 25, 1927. Both initially discussed similar topics, such as election results, presidential inaugurations, and other matters of concern to the general public. However, NBC soon emerged as the dominant force for entertainment talent. In response, CBS President William S Paley focused on giving CBS Radio an upscale reputation with better news as well as commentary programs with well-regarded hosts such as Lowell Thomas. Both broadcasters faced stiff competition from the newspapers.
The outbreak of World War II led to a great increase in the quantity of news programming, consuming as much as 20% of the schedules of the major networks. Chief among these reporters was Edward R. Murrow, whose reports from London kept the American public focused on a war far from home. He stayed in London throughout the war and was the first to report on events such as bombings in London and updated the people on Hitler's reign. Murrow gained his fame mainly after reporting on Hitler's German army annexing Austria. Many Americans relied on his broadcasts to gain information about the war.
People found out about the attack on Pearl Harbor through President Roosevelt's broadcast interrupting their daily programming. It set Americans on edge, and people began to rely more heavily on the radio for major announcements throughout World War II.
In 1945 The FCC forced NBC to sell NBC Blue because of antitrust concerns, and the new independent network was renamed ABC (American Broadcasting Company); thus the networks that would later become known as the "Big Three" were in place.
1945–2000
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s television news sources grew, but radio still dominated. It wasn't until John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 that television newscasting took off. Radio could only capture the sound of the event, but television showed people the true horror of the assassination. This was one of the first major events in which news companies competed with each other to get the news out to the public first. CBS News was the first to report that Kennedy had been shot and was killed. News crews spent the next several days covering everything happening in Washington, including Kennedy's funeral. This set the standard for news stations to have to cover major events quicker and get them out to the public as they were happening. The JFK assassination helped to transform television journalism to how it is today, with instantaneous coverage and live coverages at major events. Television offered faster coverage than radio and allowed viewers to feel more as if they were experiencing the event because they could visualize exactly what was going on.
Women had a hard time immersing themselves into radio news seeing as most of the radio broadcasts were men. There was a small number of women who hosted programs that were for homemakers and were on entertainment broadcast. After World War II, the doors for women in broadcasting opened up. This was also due to the shortage of men that were home during the war, so news outlets looked to women to fill those gaps of times. In the 1960s and 1970s larger numbers of women began to enter into broadcast news field.
A general shift over time happened in the style of the evening newscasts in most countries. In the 1950s, television was novel enough that it was considered entertainment. In the 1960s and 70s, television newscasts tended to be unusually "serious" by later standards, featuring more "hard news" and less light entertainment mixed in. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite is one famous example, although similar styles took place on the BBC in the United Kingdom, on shows in the Eastern Bloc, and so on, with high viewership concentrated in just a few prestige newscasts. This was something of an artifact of both technology and media culture: few channels were available, and those that did tended to take news casting seriously, even if lighter news could potentially have gotten more viewers.
Government regulation also affected the news landscape: in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission forced networks to abide by strict public-interest requirements that required broadcasting news, while television in the Soviet Union was strictly regulated by the government which looked on frivolous topics with disfavor. In the 1980s and 90s, this tended to fall away as a consequence of cable and satellite technology allowing a more fragmented market and government reluctance to interfere as closely. Increased choice in channels led to viewers declining to watch overly serious newscasts; successful network news shows tended to be ones that either focused on entertainment or at least mixed it in, such as morning talk shows or news magazines such as Today and 60 Minutes. Audiences that prefer more serious news have migrated to news-focused stations such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for American examples.
21st century
From 2000 to 2010, overall viewership of television broadcast news continued to decline. Some news-adjacent cable programs gained fame and success in this era (such as the comedy-focused The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and the commentary-focused The O'Reilly Factor). However, their gains did not offset the continuing steep decline in viewership of mainline network news. This era saw diversification and fragmentation proceed even further as new niche networks gained prominence such as the business-focused CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Fox Business. Instead, people used the Internet for news rather than television broadcasts, both in mainline sites such as ones runs by newspapers as well as independent blogs and message boards with other Internet-users sharing opinions and news Internet news, while a competitor, tended not to use live broadcast as a style, except when streaming existing television programs. Another change in news broadcasts in the 2000s, at least in the United States, was a rediscovered interest in health news and consumer news – areas of special interest to women that had traditionally been written off as too minor for the evening newscasts, but proved to be steady sources of viewer curiosity and ratings.
Both radio and television are major sources for broadcast journalism today, even with rapidly expanding technology. Television still focuses on covering major events, but radio broadcasts focus more on analyzing stories rather than reporting breaking news. Although the history of broadcast journalism has its origins in the early days of radio transmission, it is television with its attractive visuals and rapid dissemination that has empowered broadcast journalism to emerge as the most influential form of journalism until the rise of the Internet and the new forms of journalism associated with digital technologies. The internet often beats out broadcast journalism in terms of reporting breaking news, and the field of broadcast journalism is constantly having to adapt to the changing technology of today.
Broadcast journalism by nation
Canada
Unlike in the United States, most Canadian television stations have license requirements (enforced by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) to offer locally produced newscasts (or any local programming, for that matter) in some form. Educational television stations are exempt from these requirements as are multicultural television stations, however some stations licensed as multicultural outlets do produce local newscasts in varied languages (such as the Omni Television station group). Canadian television stations normally broadcast newscasts between two and four times a day: usually at noon, 5:00, 5:30, and 6:00, and 11:00 p.m. (there are some variations to this: stations affiliated with CTV usually air their late evening newscasts at 11:30 pm, due to the scheduling of the network's national evening news program CTV National News at 11:00 p.m. in all time zones; most CBC Television-owned stations formerly carried a 10-minute newscast at 10:55 pm, following The National, these were expanded to a half-hour and moved to 11:00 p.m. during the fall of 2012).
Some stations carry morning newscasts (usually starting at 5:30 or 6:00 am, and ending at 9:00 am). Unlike in the United States, primetime newscasts in the 10:00 p.m. timeslot are relatively uncommon (three Global owned-and-operated stations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan – CKND-DT, CFSK-DT, and CFRE-DT – and Victoria, British Columbia independent station CHEK-DT are the only television stations in the country carrying a primetime newscast); conversely, pre-5:00 a.m. local newscasts do not exist in Canada.
Like with U.S. television, many stations use varied titles for their newscasts; this is particularly true with owned-and-operated stations of Global and City (Global's stations use titles based on daypart such as News Hour for the noon and early evening newscasts and News Final for 11:00 p.m. newscasts, while all six City-owned broadcast stations produce morning news/talk programs under the umbrella title Breakfast Television and its flagship station CITY-DT/Toronto's evening newscasts are titled CityNews). Overall umbrella titles for news programming use the titling schemes "(Network or system name) News" for network-owned stations or "(Callsign) News" for affiliates not directly owned by a network or television system (although the latter title scheme was used on some network-owned stations prior to the early 2000s).
CBC Television, Global, and CTV each produce national evening newscasts (The National, Global National and CTV National News, respectively), which unlike the American network newscasts do not compete with one another in a common timeslot; while Global National airs at the same early evening time slot as the American evening network newscasts, The National's 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time slot competes against primetime entertainment programming on the private broadcast networks, while CTV National News airs against locally produced 11:00 p.m. newscasts on other stations. The National, which has aired on CBC Television since 1954, is the longest-running national network newscast in Canada. All three networks also produce weekly newsmagazines: CBC's The Fifth Estate (aired since 1975), Global's 16x9 (aired since 2008), and CTV's W5 (aired since 1966 and currently the longest-running network newsmagazine in Canada).
United States
For most of the American public, local news and national TV newscasts are the primary news sources. Not only the numbers of audience viewers, but the effect on each viewer is considered more persuasive ("The medium is the message"). Television is dominated by attractive visuals (including beauty, action, and shock), with short soundbites and fast "cuts" (changes of camera angle). Television viewing numbers have become fragmented, with the introduction of cable news channels, such as Cable News Network (CNN), Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
Local TV stations in the United States normally broadcast local news three to four times a day on average: commonly airing at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30, or 6:00 a.m.; noon; 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. in the early evening; and 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. Some stations carry morning newscasts at 4:00, 7:00, 8:00, or 9:00 a.m., midday newscasts at 11:00 or 11:30 a.m., late afternoon newscasts at 4:00 or 4:30 p.m., or early evening newscasts at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. Many Fox affiliates, affiliates of minor networks (such as The CW and MyNetworkTV), and independent stations air newscasts in the final hour of primetime (i.e., 10:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones or 9:00 p.m. in the Mountain and Central time zones in the U.S.). Stations that produce local newscasts typically broadcast as little as one to as much over twelve hours of local news on weekdays and as little as one hour to as much as seven hours on weekends; news programming on weekends are typically limited to morning and evening newscasts as the variable scheduling of network sports programming (if a station is affiliated with a network with a sports division) usually prevents most stations from carrying midday newscasts (however a few stations located in the Eastern and Pacific time zones do produce weekend midday newscasts).
From the 1940s to the 1960s, broadcast television stations typically provided local news programs only one to two times each evening for 15 minutes (the normal length for many locally produced programs at the time); usually these programs aired as supplements to network-supplied evening news programs or leadouts for primetime programming. Reports featured on local and national television newscasts during this time were generally provided via film or still photography; eventually, videotape began to be used to provide live coverage of news events. The 1950s also saw the first use of airborne newsgathering; most notably, in 1958, Los Angeles television station KTLA began operating the "Telecopter", a helicopter equipped for newsgathering use that was the most advanced airborne television broadcast device of its time.
Israel
In some countries, radio news content may be syndicated by a website or company to many stations in a particular region or even the entire country. A notable example is Israel, where there are groups of radio stations that broadcast the same hourly news capsule by an Israeli news website and television station. There are currently two groups of local Israeli stations: one broadcasts news from YNET, the other broadcasts them from Channel 10. Israeli Army Radio general public stations broadcast the same news capsule every hour, and IBA's Kol Israel stations broadcast theirs.
Education
Many young journalists start out by learning about broadcast journalism through high school courses. They learn how to navigate the newsroom and equipment, and they learn the ethics and standards of journalism. Although learning the responsibilities of a journalist is important, education is required to work in broadcast journalism. A bachelor's degree in journalism, broadcast journalism or interactive media can lead to a career in broadcast production. However, a large amount of the education they receive is via hands-on activity through internships and working for on-campus broadcasting stations. This real world view of the field combined with classes that teach students the ins and outs of writing, capturing video, interviewing and editing creates a developed and prepared journalist. Finding a job in the broadcasting field can be tough due to the decreased viewing and limited number of stations in each location; however, thanks to the online media presence, it was predicted that employment would grow by 6% from 2020 to 2030.
News jobs
News anchors (formerly "anchormen") serve as masters-of-ceremonies and are usually shown facing a professional video camera in a television studio while reading unseen teleprompters. The anchors are often in pairs (co-anchors), who sit side by side and often alternate their reading. Meteorologists stand in front of chroma key backgrounds to describe weather forecasting and show maps and pictures. Reporters research and write the stories and sometimes use video editing to prepare the story for air into a "package". Reporters are usually engaged in electronic field production (EFP) and are accompanied by a videographer at the scenes of the news; the latter holds the camera. The [ videographer] or assistants manage the audio and lighting; they are in charge of setting up live television shots and might edit using a non-linear editing system (NLE). Segment producers choose, research and write stories, as well as deciding the timing and arrangement of the newscast. Associate producer, if any, specialize in other elements of the show such as graphics.
Production jobs
A newscast director is in charge of television show preparation, including assigning camera and talent (cast) positions on the set, as well as selecting the camera shots and other elements for either recorded or live television video production. The technical director (TD) operates the video switcher, which controls and mixes all the elements of the show. At smaller stations, the Director and Technical Director are the same person.
A graphics operator operates a character generator (CG) that produces the lower third on-screen titles and full-page digital on-screen graphics. The audio technician operates the audio mixing console. The technician is in charge of the microphones, music and audio tape. Often, production assistants operate the teleprompters and professional video cameras and serve as lighting and rigging technicians (grips).
Business changes
Broadcast journalism is changing rapidly, causing issues within the business as well. Many people can no longer find jobs in broadcast journalism because much more is online and does not even need to be broadcast by a person. Others are being laid off to invest more money into new technologies. Other changes include innovations allowing TV stations to better alert viewers in emergencies and have higher quality services.
Online convergence
Convergence is the sharing and cross-promoting of content from a variety of media, all of which, in theory, converge and become one medium. In broadcast news, the internet is a key to convergence. Frequently, broadcast journalists also write text stories for the Web, usually accompanied by the graphics and sound of the original story. Websites offer the audience an interactive form where they can learn more about a story, can be referred to related articles, can offer comments for publication and can print stories at home. Technological convergence also lets newsrooms collaborate with other media, broadcast outlets sometimes have partnerships with their print counterparts.
Social media
Citizen broadcast journalism is a new form of technology that has allowed regular civilians to post stories they see through outlets such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. It has become a new trend that some allegedly fear will take over broadcast journalism as it is known. News companies, like Fox News, are employing citizen journalists, which is a new phenomenon in journalism.
Fake news
The terms "fake news" and "yellow journalism" have taken over broadcast journalism throughout the years. Its impact on broadcast journalism played a role in how news about the election was spread. Fake news defines how viewers see news that may be misleading or false. The main aim of yellow journalism is to gather the attention of people in the society.