An Introduction to the News

I watched BBC News at 10:00 on the 13th June, 2016. The topics that were discussed in order were the Orlando shooting, EU referendum, the scandal between Goldman Sachs and the BHS and finally the Euros. The visuals at the start are important as it shows the whole globe and in the background main cities within dominant countries, also around the globe are what could be seen as sonar which goes well with the audio they play over top of it as when they are flowing and bouncing is goes well with the beat of the music.
The newsreaders that were presenting when I watched it were Huw Edwards, male, 54 and Kate Silverton, female, 45.The role of the newsreader/presenter is to be the authority for the audience watching, so that they are the ones proving the audience with the information about current affairs hat are going on. The skills necessary to be a newsreader/presenter is to be able to quickly read what is shown in front of you in a way that the audience can easily understand you, another skill is to be able to change the tone in your voice depending on what the story is you read, such as a happy or sad event and another skill is to be able to adapt in case any of the stories originally on the schedule get replaced by ‘breaking news’ headlines.
The stories that are being presented in the news in a particular order is called the ‘running order’. The story that is chosen to be the first story out of the many is called the ‘lead story’ or ‘lead’ and is chosen as it is the most important current topic to talk about, the order in which the following topics are chosen is due to the interest that they will get from the audience. The final news story discussed is often known as the ‘and finally’ which is normally a more positive topic to end on after most topics discussed are often more negative.  It’s important to act quickly with the news as it is always changing so you need to be ready to change as well to the newest story that had come in. The term ‘slow news day’ is when there is a lack of interesting and engaging topics for the audience to hear about. News values means how much prominence a news story is given by a media outlet, and the attention it is given by the audience. Galtung and Ruge’s news values include: immediency, familiarity, amplitude, frequency, unambiguity, predictability, surprise, continuity, elite nations/people, negativity and balance. Current news stories that include these news values are EU Referendum (immediency, familiarity, amplitude, personalisation and unambiguity), the Euros (elite nations/people, frequency and continuity), the Orlando shooting (negativity and surprise) and Glastonbury (balance).
There are many different types of bias in the media. The first is bias through selection and omission, which is when an editor can express bias by choosing whether or not to use a specific news story. Within a story, some details can be ignored, others can be included to give readers or viewers a different opinion about the events reported. Only by comparing news reports from a wide variety of sources can this type of bias be observed. The next is bias through placement which is, where a story is placed which influences what a person thinks about its importance. Stories on the front page of the newspaper are thought to be more important than stories buried in the back. Television and radio newscasts run stories that draw ratings first and leave the less appealing for later. The next is bias by headline which is where headlines are the must-read part of a newspaper because they are often printed in large and bold fonts. Headlines can be misleading: conveying excitement when the story is not exciting; expressing approval or disapproval. The next is bias by photos, captions, and camera angles, which is where pictures can make a person look good, bad, sick, silly, etc. Which photos a newspaper chooses to run can heavily influence the public's perception of a person or event. On TV, images, captions, and narration of a TV anchor or reporter can be sources of bias. The next is bias through use of names and titles, which is where news media often use labels and titles to describe people, places, and events. In many places around the world, one person's friend is another person's enemy. The final one is bias by choice of words which is where, people can be influenced by the use of positive or negative words with a certain connotation. People can also be influenced by the tone that a newscaster uses when saying certain words.