How does the public Access the News
The news is a form of the media which updates the public on new stories to do with current issues, events, crises – local and international. More often than not the stories that most broadcasters report are local news, in that they concern the public and the country, yet they do also report on events happening elsewhere on the globe. Any news story which appears in a type media is selected by the producer/chief-editor/director and the selected material is usually chosen due to possibility of bringing in the most viewers. For example a popular news programme (BBC News) will not report on stories like village fates as they would be of no interest to the rest of the country, however if they were to tell of an event, like an American election, that would pull in more viewers and as a result increase the ratings. Personally, I feel that the majority of stories they report on are mostly negative – and I believe that this is due to the fact that a negative story will likely entice viewers to watch the entire story because without the entire story they can’t gather all the details of the event, whereas a more positive story can be summed up rather quickly and consequently it would lose the audiences interest.
In total there are five most watched News programmes in the UK on television. On the terrestrial channels: BBC News, ITV News, Channel 4 and 5 News and on Satellite News (Sky, CNN, FOX, etc). Yet there are several newspapers in the UK which also report on the news all aimed towards different audiences – Broadsheet papers are mostly aimed at a literate audience due to the educated content and the style of vocabulary – Tabloid papers are mostly aimed towards a less educated audience as the style of stories are mostly gossip and subjective. Although to some degree nearly all papers are subjective in some respects, for instance mostly all the papers have a select political audience like the Daily Mail which is strongly right wing, unlike the Guardian which focuses on mostly left wing reports. Furthermore any News posted on the internet is usually posted on a specific company’s site like the BBC site, which is constantly updated with new stories.
After a series of research I drew some conclusions as to how the news (in general) focuses on different reports. For example I looked at how different ages are represented in the news (youth and elderly), how minorities are portrayed and how celebrities are reported. All of my conclusions have been drawn from recent news stories, for instance a large number of reports on the youth of Britain have had a rather negative focus – sex attacks, pensioner rape, three arrests in group attack, assault on taxi driver, these are just a few of the stories and a counted zero positive bulletins. So, clearly there is a pattern that the news often chooses to include stories related to troubled children, and it’s no wonder that in today’s society the youth have such a bad reputation. The elderly, on the other hand, seem to have a rather opposite type of story. For example a few of the stories I encountered depicted the elderly to be vulnerable – most of the reports were related to the current financial crisis and how most of the aged weren’t entitled to pensions and thus made it seem as though they were going to struggle more than anyone else. Also I found that any story related to a celebrity, they primarily focused on their personal problems like relationships and physical appearances. In my opinion any news to do with a celebrity, mainly from broadsheet papers, it isn’t news, its gossip.
To continue my research I also carried out a survey to find how people I know access the news. I created a survey with eight questions, a few personal and a few related to how they access the news. I felt that to gather information on their personal life I could incorporate this into my conclusions of how they receive the news. For instance finding out their social background and their class could tell me instantly a lot about how and what they take in from the news. I also wanted to see how often the accessed the news, to tell me whether they are kept updated with the news. All questions were multiple-choice, this way the survey feels less threatening and less imposing on the personal life and also it seems more private (all the questionnaires were anonymous). All be it two were written answers as they were personal answers and couldn’t be categorized.
Straight away I could see that the most popular way people preferred to access the news was through newspapers. They did also say that they get the news from the television and the internet, but newspapers were the favoured choice. There was a mixture of responses as to why it was the preferred choice, but overall I can see that people favoured newspapers because they can select which stories to read, its accessible anytime and they can read at their own pace. The last point is perhaps the most important as it says a lot about news programmes. Perhaps they run stories to quickly or maybe certain areas of the story is rushed and so parts of the information are missed. Which proves my idea that the public like to get a complete overview of all the information, but perhaps the news programmes don’t always deliver. Furthermore reports on the television are often interrupter and consequently the narrative of the story can be lost and as a result people could lose interest.
Moreover the majority of people I surveyed were at a similar age, most were either seventeen or eighteen, although a few adults were included, which does balance out the survey. This is rather an interesting find, I would have predicted that a large number of students aged seventeen would access the news through the TV as it’s a popular activity for teenagers (to watch TV) although they most get the news from papers. This could be related to their social class – for instance most of the people ticked the ‘middle-class’ box indicating that they come from a middle class family, and of course many middle class people are well education so ultimately their literacy ability is much higher than those of working class (stereotypically) and thus they enjoy using newspapers as a way of reading the news.
Finally I found that a numerous count of people access the news on a regular basis, if not everyday then at least three times a week. Although a reason wasn’t stated in the questionnaire I can guess that most of them take in the news to keep up to date with current affairs, for the own interest. And also my own knowledge of school can say that in many areas of the school staff encourage students to read newspapers as it improves reading ability and also the head of year tests students on their knowledge of the news, so in way student may feel under pressure to read.
The news is a clever way to keep the public knowledgeable of the current state of the globe and also it could be suggested that the news makes the public feels safe. As broadcasters report of crises and disasters it’s comforting to know that people and leaders are aware of the situation and that developments are being made.
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