Who Decides What to Put on TV News?

spen666

Some people have strange ideas of what is important.

Take tonight, the BBC main stories included:

a) The evictions at Dale Farm

b) the death of some student in a night club

c) the Vincent Tabak murder trial

d) The Greek debt crisis etc



Yet neither the BBC or ITV devoted any time to the most important story of the day - Lindsay Lohan has had her probation order revoked and is facing a prsion sentence

Get your priorities right TV editors

DonDaddyD

The news almost never reports American stars dalliance with Prison ( like Wesley Snipes going to jail) it is always hiddeously under-reported.

While I accept it isn't major news I see a problem: the media always glamorises said stars, while they (rappers mostly) often talk as though they are above the law. I cannot help think that this (as part of the heavy influence from America on our youth) often influences their contempt for our own laws/legal systems - (obviously at this point Im going to reference the riots and say that this is a contributing factor).

If for example the press actually showed the damaging effects of prison:

D'Angelo


Or a news article about Big Lurch eating parts of his girlfriend while on drugs it may go a long way to helping bring the more wayward blighters back in line.

Just saying...

Anyway, Lohan in that yellow jumpsuit.... phwaor.... wonder if she has a prison girlfriend...

rolf_f

DonDaddyD wrote:

Anyway, Lohan in that yellow jumpsuit.... phwaor.... wonder if she has a prison girlfriend...

....and if there is a video......

notsoblue

DonDaddyD wrote:

Or a news article about Big Lurch eating parts of his girlfriend while on drugs

Jesus H Christ.

moonio

I've heard about a lot of those PCP induced behaviors, just look up michael the mirror man pcp on google, he cut off his own face and fed it to his dogs!! Plus there was a guy who ate his own sons eye balls whilst high on PCP

totally shocking..dont do drugs kids!!

bails87

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/facepeel.asp Interesting but blergh!


Anyhoo, who decides what's in the news in general? PR people, see Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. Just like the Giant slipper story that's been in the papers today.

As for TV news, they might be more picky due to the time limits, 24hr rolling news obviously does away with this and we still get the 'puff pieces' at the end of the bulletins.

suzyb

It's not really PR people who decide. It's the journalists and editors of the papers / programmes.

The PR people are the ones who provide the news, it's the editors and journalists who decide whether it is worthy to be included.

bails87

suzyb wrote:

It's not really PR people who decide. It's the journalists and editors of the papers / programmes.

The PR people are the ones who provide the news, it's the editors and journalists who decide whether it is worthy to be included.

Seriously, read Flat Earth News.

Like I said, TV may be different (BBC News apparently have a rule that a story has to be on the website within 5 mins of it breaking, don't know how that extends to TV news) but for newspapers they have very few staff so have to get as many stories out as possible, without time to check them. Their news is mostly taken straight from news agencies. The news agencies are also under severe time/personnel restraints so they take an easy story when they can get one. PR is easy copy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnalism

In his book Flat Earth News,[2] the British journalist Nick Davies reported a study at Cardiff University by Professor Justin Lewis and a team of researchers[3] which found that 80% of the stories in Britain's quality press were not original and that only 12% of stories were generated by reporters.[1] The result is a reduction of quality and accuracy as the articles are open to manipulation and distortion.

BBC journalist Waseem Zakir has been credited for coining the term churnalism.[4] According to Zakir, the trend towards this form of journalism involves reporters becoming more reactive and less proactive in searching for news - "You get copy coming in on the wires and reporters churn it out, processing stuff and maybe adding the odd local quote. It's affecting every newsroom in the country and reporters are becoming churnalists."[5]

An editorial on the matter in the British Journalism Review saw this trend as terminal for current journalism, "...a harbinger of the end of news journalism as we know it, the coroner's verdict can be nothing other than suicide."[6] Others, such as Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian, see the issue as over-wrought, saying that there was never a golden age of journalism in which journalists were not subject to such pressures.[7]

In 2011 the Daily Mail reported that under former editor of The Sun and News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, "Scores, if not hundreds, of front-page stories were written by the PR men

suzyb

bails87 wrote:

suzyb wrote:

It's not really PR people who decide. It's the journalists and editors of the papers / programmes.

The PR people are the ones who provide the news, it's the editors and journalists who decide whether it is worthy to be included.

Seriously, read Flat Earth News.

Like I said, TV may be different (BBC News apparently have a rule that a story has to be on the website within 5 mins of it breaking, don't know how that extends to TV news) but for newspapers they have very few staff so have to get as many stories out as possible, without time to check them. Their news is mostly taken straight from news agencies. The news agencies are also under severe time/personnel restraints so they take an easy story when they can get one. PR is easy copy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnalism

I wasn't saying the editors / journalists wrote the stories. I know they don't, I work for a PR company although I am in their internet division.

I do share an office with the PR people though and hear a lot of "I'm calling on behalf of xxx, would you be interested in running a story about yyy". It is however the editors / journalists who the decision whether to include the story about yyy.

To clarify a potential misunderstanding, I meant "what's in the news" as in who decides which stories are chosen, regardless of who writes them. Aftre reading your other post again, I'm not sure you meant the same thing.

bails87

To clarify a potential misunderstanding, I meant "what's in the news" as in who decides which stories are chosen, regardless of who writes them. Aftre reading your other post again, I'm not sure you meant the same thing.

Maybe not. Obviously the choice to put it in the papers/on TV/online is the editor's. A PR firm doesn't actually make a choice to run the story, they just share it with news agencies. But the way newspapers and news agencies work means that a lot of their stories are (based on) PR, either from the PR companies themselves or lifted from a news agency or other papers. If it didn't then you wouldn't have a job
You can't criticise PR agencies for doing what they do, it's what their clients pay for. The problem is journalists not questioning it and reprinting stuff that's made up......like the giant slipper story.....which is great PR

spen666

Still no mention of Lindsay on tonight's news

All we get is some rubbish about travellers travelling and some old man dying abroad.

Neither of these is hardly news isn't it - travellers travel hence there name and old people regularly die

Oh and there is a story about a policeman lying - news? Some people would say it would be news if they didn't

Jon Snow, Jeremy Paxman etc get your acts together.

Also hardly a mention of westlife splitting on either main terrestrial channel in the 6pm news