The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the
words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on one page of a
newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page. Of course, there
is a compensation television offers pictures, and the pictures move. It is
often said that moving pictures are a kind of language in themselves,
and there is a good deal of truth in this. But the language of pictures
differs radically from oral and written language, and the differences are
crucial for understanding television news.
To begin with, the grammar of pictures is weak in communicating
past-ness and present-ness. When terrorists want to prove to the world that
their kidnap victims are still alive, they photograph them holding a copy of
a recent newspaper. The dateline on the newspaper provides the proof that the
photograph was taken on or after that date. Without the help of the written
word, film and videotape cannot portray temporal dimensions with any
precision. Consider a film clip showing an aircraft carrier at sea. One might
be able to identify the ship as Soviet or American, but there would be no way
of telling where in the world the carrier was, where it was headed, or when
the pictures were taken. It is only through language—words spoken over the
pictures or reproduced in them—that the image of the aircraft carrier takes
on meaning as a portrayal
of a specific event.
Still, it is possible to enjoy the image of the
carrier for its own sake. One might find the hugeness of the vessel
interesting; it signifies military power on the move. There is a certain
drama in watching the planes come in at high speeds and skid to a stop on the
deck. Suppose the ship were burning: that would be even more interesting.
This leads to a second point about the language of pictures. The grammar of
moving pictures favors images that change. That is why violence and
destruction find their way onto television so often. When something is
destroyed violently its constitution is altered in a highly visible way:
hence entrancing power of fire. Fire gives visual form to the ideas of consumption,
disappearance, death—the thing which is burned is actually taken away by
fire. It is at this very basic level that fires make a good subject for
television news. Something was here, now it’s gone, and the change is
recorded on film.
Earthquakes
and typhoons have the same power: before the eyes the world is taken apart.
If a television viewer has relatives in Mexico
City and an earthquake occurs there, then she may
take an interest in the images of destruction as a report from a specific
place and time. That is, she may look to television news for information
about an important event. But film of an earthquake can still be interesting
if the viewer cares nothing about the event itself. Which
is only to say that there is another way of participating the news—as a
spectator who desires to be entertained. Actually to see buildings
topple is exciting, no matter where the buildings are. The world turns to
dust before our eyes.
Those who
produce television news in America
know that their medium favors images that move. That is why they despise
"talking heads," people who simply appear in front of a camera and
speak. When talking heads appear on television, there is nothing to record or
document, no change in process. In the cinema the situation is somewhat
different. On a movie screen, close-ups of a good actor speaking dramatically
can sometimes be interesting to watch. When Clint Eastwood narrows his eyes
and challenges his rival to shoot first, the spectator sees the cool rage of
the Eastwood character take visual form, and the narrowing of the eyes is
dramatic. But much of the effect of this small movement depends on the size
of the movie screen and the darkness of the theater, which make Eastwood and
his every action "larger than life."
The television
screen is smaller than life. It occupies about 15 percent of the viewer's
visual field (compared to about 70 percent for the movie screen). It is not
set in a darkened theater closed off from the world but in the viewer's
ordinary living space. This means that visual changes must be more extreme
and more dramatic to be interesting on television. A narrowing of the eyes
will not do. A car crash, an earthquake, a burning factory are much better.
With these
principles in mind, let us examine more closely the structure of a typical
newscast. In America ,
almost all news shows begin with music, the tone of which suggests important
events about to unfold. (Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would be entirely
appropriate.) The music is very important, for it equates the news with
various forms of drama and ritual—the opera, for example, or a wedding
procession—in which musical themes underscore the meaning of the event. Music
takes us immediately into the realm of the symbolic, a world that is not to
be taken literally. After all, when events unfold in the real world, they do
so without musical accompaniment. More symbolism follows. The sound of
teletype machines can be heard in the studio, not because it is impossible to
screen this noise out, but because the sound is a kind of music in itself. It
tells us that data are pouring in from all corners of the globe, a sensation
reinforced by the world map in the background clocks noting the time on
different continents.
Already, then,
before a single news item is introduced, a great deal has been communicated.
We know that we are in the presence of a symbolic event, a form of theater in
which the day's events are to be dramatized. This theater takes the entire
globe as its object, although it may look at the world from the perspective
of a nation. A certain tension is present, like the atmosphere in a theater
just before the curtain goes up. The tension is represented the music, the staccato beat
of the teletype machines, and the sight of newsworkers
scurrying around typing reports and answering phones. As a technical matter,
it would be no problem to build a set in which the newsroom staff remained
off camera, invisible to the viewer, but an important theatrical effect would
be lost. By being busy on camera, the workers help communicate urgency about
the events at hand, which it is suggested are changing so rapidly that
constant revision of the news
is necessary.
The
staff in the background also helps signal the importance of the person in the
center, the anchorman (or woman) "in command" of both the staff and
the news. The anchorman plays the role ofost. He
welcomes us to the newscast and welcomes us back from the different locations
we visit during filmed reports. His voice, appearance, and manner
establish the mood of the broadcast.
It would be unthinkable for the anchor to be ugly, or a nervous sort who
could not complete a sentence. Viewers must be able to believe in the anchor
as a person authority and skill, a person who would not panic in a crises, someone to trust.
This
belief is based not on knowledge of the anchorman's character or achievements
as a journalist, but on his presentation of self while on the air. Does he
look the part of a trusted man? Does he speak firmly and clearly? Does
he have a warm smile? Does he project confidence without seeming arrogant?
The value the anchor must communicate above all else is control. He must be
in control of himself, his voice, his emotions. He
must know what is coming next in the broadcast, and he must move smoothly and
confidently from segment to segment. Again, it would be unthinkable for the
anchor to break down and weep over a story, or laugh uncontrollably on
camera, no matter how "human" these responses may be.
Many
other features of the newscast help the anchor to establish the impression of
control. These are usually equated with professionalism in broadcasting. They
include such things as graphics that tell the viewer what is being shown, or
maps and charts that suddenly appear on the screen and disappear on cue or
the orderly progression from story to story, starting with the most important
events first. They also include the absence of gaps or "deadtime" during the broadcast, even the simple fact
that the news starts and ends at a certain hour. These common features are
thought of as purely technical matters, which a professional crew handles as
a matter of course. But they are also symbols of a dominant theme of television news: the imposition of an
orderly world—called "the news"—upon the disorderly flow of events.
While
the form of a news broadcast emphasizes tidiness and control, its content can
best be described as chaotic. Because time is so precious on television,
because the nature of the medium favors dynamic visual images, and because
the pressures of a commercial structure require the news to hold its audience
above all else, there is rarely any attempt to explain issues in depth or
place events in their proper context. The news moves nervously from a
warehouse fire to a court decision, from a guerrilla war to a World Cup
match, the quality of the film often determining the length of the story.
Certain stories show up only because they offer dramatic pictures. Bleachers
collapse in South America : hundreds of
people are crushed—a perfect television news story, for the cameras can
record the face of disaster in all its anguish. Back in Washington , a new budget is approved by
Congress. Here there is nothing to photograph because a budget is not a
physical event; it is a document full of language and numbers. So the
producers of the news will show a photo of the document itself, focusing on
the cover where it says: "Budget of the United States of America ."
Or sometimes they will send a camera crew to the government printing plant
where copies of the budget are produced. That evening, while the contents of
the budget are summarized by a voice-over, the viewer sees stacks of
documents being loaded into boxes at the government printing plant. Then a
few of the budget's more important provisions will be flashed on the screen
in written form, but this is such a time consuming process—using television
as a printed page—that the producers keep it to a minimum. In short, the
budget is not televisable, and for that reason its
time on the news must be brief. The bleacher collapse will get more minutes
that evening.
With priorities
of this sort, it is almost impossible for the news to offer an adequate
account of important events. Indeed, it is the trivial event that is often
best suited for television coverage. This is such a commonplace that no one
even bothers to challenge it. Walter Cronkite, a revered figure in television
and anchorman ofthe CBS Evening News
for many years, has acknowledged several times that television cannot be
relied on to inform the citizens of a democratic nation. Unless they also
read newspapers and magazines, television viewers are helpless to understand
their world, Cronkite has said. No one at CBS has ever disagreed with his
conclusion, other than to say, "We do the best we can."
Of course, it is
a tendency of journalism in general to concentrate on the surface of events
rather than underlying conditions; this is as true for the newspaper as it is
for the newscast. But several features of television undermine whatever
efforts journalists may make to give sense to the world. One is that a
television broadcast is a series of events that occur in sequence, and the
sequence is the same for all viewers. This is not true for a newspaper page,
which displays many items simultaneously, allowing readers to choose the
order in which they read them. If a newspaper reader wants onlya summary of
the latest tax bill, he can read the headline and the first paragraph of an
article, and if he wants more, he can keep reading. In a sense, then,
everyone reads a different newspaper, for no two readers will read (or
ignore) the same items.
But all television viewers see the same broadcast. They have no
choices. A report is either in the broadcast or out, which means anything
which is of narrow interest is unlikely to be included. NBC News executive Reuven Frank once explained: A newspaper, for example,
can easily afford to print an item of conceivable interest to only a fraction
of its readers. A television news program must be put together with the
assumption that each item will be of some interest to everyone that watches.
Every time a newspaper includes a feature which will attract a specialized
group it can assume it is adding at least a little bit to its circulation. To
the degree a television news program includes an item of this sort ... it
must assume that its audience will diminish.
The need to "include everyone," an identifying feature of
common television in all its forms, prevents journalists from offering length
or complex explanations, or from tracing the sequence of events leading up to
today's headlines. One of the ironies of political life in modern democracies
is that many problems which concern the "general welfare" are of
interest only to specialized groups. Arms control, for example, is an issue
that literally concerns everyone in the world, and yet the language of arms
control and the complexity of the subject are so daunting that only a
minority of people can actually follow the issue from week to week and month
to month. If it wants to act responsibly, a newspaper can at least
make available more information about arms control than most people want. But
commercial television cannot afford to do so.
This illustrates
an important point in the psychology of television's appeal. Many of the
items in newspapers and magazines are not, in a strict sense, demanded by a
majority of readers. They are there because some readers might be interested
or because the editors think their readers should be interested. On
commercial television, "might" and "should" are not the
relevant words. The producers attempt to make sure that "each item will
be of some interest to everyone that watches," as Reuven
Frank put it. What this means is that a newspaper or magazine can challenge
its audience in a way that television cannot. Print media have the luxury of
suggesting or inviting interest, whereas television must always concern
itself with conforming to existing interests. In a way, television is more
strictly responsive to the demands of its huge audience. But there is one
demand it cannot meet: the desire to be challenged, to be told "this is
worth attending to," to be surprised by what one thought would not be of
interest.
Another severe
limitation on television is time. There is simply not enough of it. The
evening news programs at CBS, NBC, and ABC all run for thirty minutes, eight
of which are taken up by commercials. No one believes that twenty-two
minutes for the day's news is adequate. For years news executives at ABC,
NBC, and CBS have suggested that the news be expanded to one hour. But by
tradition the half-hour after the national evening news is given over to the hundreds
of local affiliate stations around the country to use as they see fit. They have found
it a very profitable time to broadcast game shows or half-hour situation
comedies, and they are reluctant give
up the income they derive from these programs. The evening news
produced by the three networks is profitable for both the networks and the
local stations. The local stations are paid a fee by the network to broadcast
the network news, and they profit from this fee since the news—produced by
the network—costs them nothing. It is likely that
they would also make money from a one-hour newscast, but not as much, they
judge, as they do from game shows and comedies they now schedule.
The result is
that the evening news must try to do what cannot reasonably be done: give a
decent account of the day's events in twenty-two minutes. What the viewer
gets instead is a series of impressions, many of them purely visual, most of
them unconnected to each other or to any sense of a history unfolding. Taken
together, they suggest a world that is fundamentally ungovernable, where
events do not arise out of historical conditions but rather explode from the
heavens in a series of disasters that suggest a permanent state of crisis. It
is this crisis—highly visual, ahistorical, and
unsolvable—which the evening news presents as theater every evening.
The audience for
this theater is offered a contradictory pair responses. On the one hand, it
is reassured by the smooth presentation of the news itself, especially the
firm voice and steady gaze of the trusty anchorman. Newscasts frequently end
with a “human-interest story," often with a sentimental or comic touch.
Example: a
little girl in Chicago
writes Gorbachev a letter, and he answers her, saying that he and President
Reagan are trying to work out their differences. This item reassures viewers
that all is well, leaders are in command, we can
still communicate with with other, and so on.
But—and now we come to the other hand— the rest of the broadcast has told a
different story. It has shown the audience a world that is out of control and
incomprehensible, full of violence, disaster, and suffering. Whatever
authority the anchorman may project through his steady manner is undermined
by the terror inspired by the news itself.
This is where television news
is at its most radical—not in publicity to radical causes, but in producing
the impression of ungovernable world. And it produces this impression not because
the people who work in television are leftists or anarchists. The anarchy in
television news is a direct result of the commercial structure of
broadcasting, which introduces into news judgments a single-mindedness
more powerful than any ideology: the overwhelming need to keep people
watching.
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