The Broadcast Journalism Handbook

Gary Hudson, Sarah Rowlands

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429664625
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This exciting and comprehensive text takes students, trainees and professionals into the world of the modern-day newsroom, covering both key techniques and theory in detail. The second edition has been revised and updated to include all the technical, regulatory and theoretical advances in recent broadcast custom and practice and is influenced by newsrooms around the country.

Main features:

• Complete coverage of all the key skills: news gathering, interviewing, writing and story-telling, live/location-reporting, online, editing, graphics and presentation.
• Expert advice and contributions from leading broadcast journalists from the BBC, ITV and Sky News.
• The Essential Guide, a section on how to get a job, the law and an up-to-date glossary of broadcasting terms.
• Workshops and Exercises, which provides the opportunity to practise key skills.
• Case Study, A Closer Look and Thinkpiece boxes help put the theory into context.
• Remember and Tip boxes summarise key concepts and offer guidance.
• Downloadable resources demonstrating filming techniques and editing ideas.

New for the second edition:

• Greater emphasis on online elements of broadcast journalism and the role of social media in news gathering.
• A focus on the interactive nature of the contemporary news process - how to find user-generated content, empower audiences and engage listeners and viewers.
• The key skills required for students taking the new NCTJ Broadcast Journalism exams.

Ideal for students on journalism courses at all levels, this text is also useful for professionals and trainees working in broadcast, print and other media, and those looking at broadcast journalism in the wider context of media studies.

PART ONE THE JOB

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

WHY BROADCAST JOURNALISM MATTERS

We live in an age of information overload and instant gratification. News bulletins and programmes that used to be available only on television and radio sets are now available on your phone or computer. News reports that were once presented to viewers and listeners only at certain times of day in a running order decided by editors and producers now appear on social networks, blogs, micro-blogs, email alerts and specialist websites, whenever you want them. We thought about calling this book Download it to Your Fridge – except it wouldn’t have shown up on a Google search for broadcast journalism. But even if your fridge is not web-savvy, you are probably as likely to learn a breaking news story on Twitter as on the radio, and as liable to watch a TV news report on YouTube as on the evening news at home. Despite all these innovations, almost all the most reliable, authoritative and accurate news content is still produced by broadcast journalists.

Technological developments in news – such as cheap video production and the opportunity for anyone to share information on the Web – did not spell the end of journalism, nor mark the death of the news story, as one senior editor suggested. Instead they place a higher premium on a quality to which all professional journalists must now aspire – trust. Without trust, journalism is worthless; with it, journalism stands above the maelstrom of competing online voices and continues to perform its role of informing and explaining. This is one of the lessons of a decade that has seen historic change in the journalistic world.

Andrew Marr, the TV and radio presenter, and a former national newspaper editor at the Independent, said in the 2006 Hugh Cudlipp lecture (named after the great editor of the Daily Mirror in the 1950s and 1960s) that we are witnessing ‘the replacement of a largely written culture – the Gutenberg-Caxton culture, if you like – by a culture largely composed of spoken words and moving images’. Marr said the change was happening because of ‘the convergence of television and the Internet delivered to tiny portable screens’:

‘All kids download film clips and television clips; they quite like the newspaper that is delivered to the front door, but they find it increasingly weird. They find it old-fashioned and nostalgic. They are used to manipulating pictures themselves on computer screens.

‘We’ve all observed how television and even newspapers are adapting the aesthetic and the style of broadband Internet culture. Digital television has the red button, the drop-down menu, the familiarity of moving images in one part of the screen, words in another part of the screen, and perhaps a moving banner at the bottom as well.’

Never before have so many people had access to the means of producing video and audio content that was once the preserve of professional broadcasters. The media has become more fragmented – and interactive. News and ideas are no longer delivered from the top down – from an empowered elite to comparatively passive consumers. Everyone can comment on and engage in the news-making process; news production is less of a lecture and more of a conversation.

But we’re not – as some have claimed – all journalists now. The idea of the ‘citizen journalist’ flourished as the Web enabled people to contribute words and pictures to audiences worldwide without them being scrutinised first or mediated by professionals. But not everybody wanted to be ‘journalists’ in the traditional sense. Instead, plenty of people were able to contribute to and comment on the coverage of events and issues that affected or interested them. Connectivity and participation have led to ‘networked journalism’ – a blend of online and traditional, professional and amateur, full-time and part-time media. The new media landscape has added value to all journalism, with professional journalists playing a key role in striving to maintain standards of accuracy and authority and where necessary acting as facilitators of the new ways of engaging with events.

Most of the World Wide Web’s content has tiny audiences. Andy Warhol’s idea that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes has been modified by the idea that anyone can be famous for 15 people (a phrase, incidentally, that was coined in 1991 by Momus, a Scottish punk techno artist, talking about the fragmentation of the music industry). The digital revolution means almost anyone can produce a video report and put it on a website for anyone to view. It’s a great way to spread opinion and information, but it should not be confused with journalism.

Nick Pollard, the head of Sky News for ten years, explains:

‘You shouldn’t mistake the advance of technology for journalism. It’s not. All it does is allow you to get stuff on air quicker, perhaps in better quality and more cheaply, in a way that you just couldn’t possibly years or decades earlier, but you still have to have people who understand what the story is, and ideally who’ve been around the block a bit and can put it in context.’

His successor John Ryley sums up how that affects their output: ‘People need to view Sky News as a brand that offers dynamic news content on television, radio and the Internet across a variety of platforms, however and wherever they want it.’

Journalism is gathering, writing and publishing news and factual information. How that information is gathered and published – in print or electronically – changes with the times. But there’s no sign in the modern media landscape that there will be any less demand for professional journalists. Instead, the number of outlets for the work of broadcast journalists has multiplied. The economics of the commercial news media – and a worldwide recession – meant a reduction in the number of people employed in traditional newsrooms at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. But there were more opportunities for freelances and those on short-term contracts. And a new entrepreneurial journalism emerged, with self-employed multi-skilled operators micro-blogging and contributing words and electronic content to mainstream media. Andrew Marr describes journalism as ‘the industrialisation of gossip’. The industry is global and the need for traditional journalism skills is still expanding in China, India and much of Africa. These are exciting times.

Remember

• We live in a culture of spoken words and moving images

• The media has become increasingly fragmented

• The advance of technology is not journalism

• Journalists gather and publish news and information.

Millions of people – many of them the same people who will access occasional online content or put their own work on the Web – still want professionally produced news content. They want journalists to interpret the world around them and tell them what’s going on, because they don’t have time in their busy lives to work it out for themselves. That is why the role of the broadcast journalist is more important than ever. It’s why the traditional skills of the journalist – engaging with people (either face to face or remotely), uncovering information, interpreting it, and presenting what is truthful and relevant to as many people as possible – are more valuable than ever.

Journalists … have to gather, check and order facts. They weigh arguments. They make judgements. And they tell stories.

Presenters, reporters and correspondents are supported by researchers, producers and editors. There are many jobs in broadcast journalism other than broadcasting.

The professionals are no longer the gatekeepers – the only people who have access to the means of distributing news. But they have become the arbiters, the ethical guides and the role models for the many amateurs using the new technology. Journalists have to be authoritative content providers and collectors for the multiplicity of delivery platforms available for news and factual information. They have to deliver compelling information to engage audiences. They have to gather, check and order facts. They weigh arguments. They make judgements. And they tell stories.

Story telling is at the heart of good journalism. The stories journalists tell are true stories, not fantasy. Journalists present factual information in a way that audiences can relate to and understand. They do it in an ethical, moral and legal framework.

To suggest that bloggers and video diarists, or people who take video shots of news events, are replacing broadcast journalists is like suggesting anyone with a pen can write like Shakespeare or Dickens. The technology of story telling should not be confused with the art of story telling.

The growth of so-called ‘citizen journalists’ – people putting their own news online – was a challenge to professional broadcast journalists. But access to a microphone or camera crew has never been the defining characteristic of a professional broadcast journalist.

BBC radio producer Chris Vallance, who created a weekly radio feature for BBC Five Live, using podcasts and blogs from around the world, says being a journalist is not about qualifications: ‘There’s probably a mindset, an attitude and a commitment to a certain set of practices that makes you a journalist.’

By engaging with people on social networks, Chris was able to generate content and ideas for programmes. He developed a community of sources online:

‘It’s about communicating with people – getting to know them. Journalists used to spend a lot of time in the pub developing sources and contacts. Maybe this is a less fun way of doing that, but it’s certainly more productive. If people know you and trust you, they’re more likely to want to be engaged in the finished product.’

The American TV producer Michael Rosenblum, who has trained thousands of people in video journalism, including hundreds of BBC staff, has a broad view of what makes a journalist:

‘Anybody who’s a cameraman is a journalist. Anybody who came to work for the BBC is a journalist. This notion of separating journalists from craft people is entirely specious and a misnomer.

‘Most of what you see on most news organisations is incomp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Guided tour
• Authors’ acknowledgements
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• PART ONE: THE JOB
• PART TWO: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE
• PART THREE: WORKSHOPS AND EXERCISES
• Glossary
• Index