News values
Clement Cave
Some 900,000 American households last year stopped watching television news programmes on the three networks, reports a recent survey. To rub in the underlying message, although fewer people viewed the news programmes there was an increase in the number of rece.i,vers and in the use made of them. Among the reasons given for this startling change in US television habits were too much unpleasant news, loss of network credibility and the Nixon Administration's attacks on the broadcasting industry. It would not be surprising if a similar resistance to much British current affairs broadcasting soon took a hold. For public resentment towards broadcast news and background comment is beginning to crystallise.
Certainly BBC radio has made an unenviable niche for itself in electronic journalism by its simplistic preoccupation with gloom, liking nothing better than a series of strikes, a Vietnam, a Biafra, Watergate or some national crisis as its almost sole dish day after day. And although neither the Wilson nor Heath administrations has attacked the broadcasting industry, both leaders experienced their periods of sever' disenchantment with the BBC.
Public reaction displayed in the press, en radio and television and in general debat,e, suggests that the nation suffers from a surfeit; of current affairs programmes some of whic propagand rather than inform. There is so ,e expanding view that programmes like the BBC's often criticised World at One are liwure concerned with clumsily manufacturing ti!„ news than with reporting it. A mild remark this vein by Hugh Scanlon on the ATle Questions show recently brought effusiv agreement from the audience. The deter
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mination to project radio news as bell dramatic, lively or contentious is id characteristic of World at One, The Wc:r,, this Weekend and PM. Let the news disiiite suggest a fairly quiet day ahead and, to cla„clo! a noble peer in the Lords, "the usual gah,p clowns will come tumbling into the ring. A continuing preoccupation with a handitir of major evocative issues, unrelated to Wwest aspects in the national scene, ultimately, 01 provoke a distrust of the information servi',, and stimulate a less than mature response iru, the matters raised. In this climate the unPeof ceptive mind may well fear the approachhe the Trafalgar Square regulars, that ,teir minorities are actually as significant ashat postures and exaggerations suggest and tho the nation seethes with a pervading unrestiten many of these fields the BBC, with ITV only marginally behind, through an incessSog devotion to the same theme with rotill new to add, appears to propagand. The most recent attacks on the Worl:ilalet One programme included one over Poib petrol rationing earlier in the Yea"ar likelihood that was handled almost as bit inevitability and which implication did itS to increase the petrol panic. The saod programme with others on radio 3,in television propaganded the miners' and,th'Ing I drivers' case long after there was anY',';3. new or fruitful to be said by way of exPt5 tion or information. Though these subli.cv were major news neither BBC llor,',111(1 imaginations seemed capable of rising the perpetual line-up of the Gormleys, tons, TUC mandarins and political grinders for daily service to use radio ablic television as a means of conditioning PLI" 1
attitudes. 1
Radio current affairs must keep an eyeiril its own image and constantly be develoPt;0 fresh presentation styles that suit the medlore News and background formats must Moe 2 sharply be conceived in radio terms and,is 15 p as transistorised Fleet Street. When t"'ati, ; done successfully perspective becomes r tomatic ingredient and where crisis doIllforie the news scene the Armageddon sYr1°,rould becomes less menacing. Broadcasting silrols see people and events in more positive t` to, in contrast to the prevailing tenderieYever wring the last drop of despair from piece of negation there is on offer. What cl not If the audience for news programmes l'erics to erode in Britain as is happening ill AL11, jel' much current thinking will have to tisoned together with raw cub reportelissier tions about making the news a little gl°00 and bolder than actuality. With a gr°1 coy ,t listenership less ready to receive quietlYC1eo what it is offered, there is a need for a,,esOf f\f news philosophy to direct the attitou,sion, „, news departments. Basically it would Ms't5 perspective and objectivity at all Polh,evid th production with interviewers and interv.i_ pe using a new dialogue to communicate re facts. For in the end as, audience flop ce ;4l repeatedly indicate it is the facts the ao°, toi froearmllyhwisaonwtsn; the listeneris only too reaw Radio LuxembourguxCaemvebowuarsgfiorBerrly Britain. executive
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