Friday, 22 June 2012

News Analysis

In news reports on TV they use many different devices to put across the piece of news, add bias and encourage the audience to watch their news program or channel. These can be from the angle of the camera to the sound that the audience hear but how does it differ between a news program or a news channel. To look at the this I am going to take a piece of news from BBC News 24 and  from the News at 10. I will be looking at the camera angles, camera shots and editing among others. In the news program the story is about the riots that affected the Tottenham area of London last year and the news channel story is the last flight of the Enterprise space shuttle on the back of a 747.


First off I will compare the use of camera angles, shots and editing techniques. In the news program it starts off with a medium shot of the reporter with them looking straight at the camera, this gives the audience the impression that they are talking directly to them making it feel more of one to one conversation. Next there is some edited footage from the night of the violence taken from the perspective of the police. This uses a variety of camera angle and shots to give the viewer a feeling of what happened and the scale. After this there is footage from the aftermath  using high and low camera angles giving a view of the scale of destruction and showing its location right in the middle of a highly populated area. Then there is a statement from the metropolitan police witch uses the medium shot at eye level to make it feel as though he is talking to you. After this more aftermath footage using the same techniques continuing with a statement from the local MP. After a little more footage from the night it cuts back to the studio where the reporter introduces the next part of the story which gives the context of the event and how it came to occur. This part mainly contains  interviews or statements from people in the area using the medium shot at eye level with a small narrated clip about the context of the event. The last of this report is they go live to the correspondent at the scene who gives the latest bits on information. In the other news report from the 24 hour news channel it starts with live footage of the space shuttle Enterprise on the back of a 747 as it is flying over Manhattan. This is the footage of the whole news story and uses cuts between cameras in the area to always maintain a view of the shuttle. The shots used are mostly middle and long also using panning and tilting to keep the shuttle in the frame. The angles is nearly always low as it would be difficult to film from the air.

Next I will look at the audio in the footage. First off the news program starts with the reporter introducing the stories of the day with a bold tone. After this she introduces the story in more depth giving context and a summary of what happened. Then we have footage with a voice over commentating on the footage. The interviews and statements of people only includes their voice and the reporters with a small amount of background noise. This is all the audio types in the report. In the news channel report the footage just has the voice over of the reporter gibing some facts and a bit of chit chat with the other people in the studio.

Last I will look at bias in the reports using the above as evidence. In the news program report it appears to be quite a balanced report with lots of information and context of what happened also interview with people from the area and from poorer background. Possibly the footage only being from the police's view gives people only their view of events. In the news channel report it is difficult to find bias as the report only really contains a few facts and the view of the shuttle with point of view trying to be made other than it being big news the end of the shuttle era where as some may thing that it allows the way for better space flight.

In conclusion there is a great difference between a news channel and program. In the news channel the news is happening live and thus it is difficult for the channel to add bias, edit the footage well or have all the context and information. On the other hand in a news program all the stories are planned before hand making it easy to edit clips well, add bias and gather all the information and context on the story allowing for a single short time to give all the information to the audience where as the news channels give the information as  they receive it.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you, Stefan, for following the instructions correctly. I'll print and check your work.
    Miss Carla

    ReplyDelete