Is TV News a Window on the World?

TV News has to be completely neutral in order to gain its viewers' trust, but just how possible is that?

It certainly talks the talk. In just their opening sequences alone, we can see that various news networks really pull out all the stops in order to appear as unbiased as possible. For instance, in a lot of news starting sequence we get either shots of various world landmarks or some nice globe-based imagery:

This gives the vague idea that we are getting news from all over the world and from all walks of life. We are, but it's still only a very limited selection of the countless millions of events that transpire across the globe daily, so it's tricky to say that this is still totally unbiased already. Also a good thing to note is the use of transparent objects. There's transparent stuff everywhere, in most news networks.

This here is from Five News. You can see that other shape
from behind the first one, so they're transparent.

The transparency is to give the viewer the idea that they are just 'looking through' the network at the stories, and that the stories are being presented 'as-is'. This is probably the most overt argument for TV News to be considered a 'window on the world', as windows tend to be transparent more often than not.

You may be noticing a lot of the colour blue on these images. With the exception of BBC News, a lot of news networks choose blue as their primary colour:

It's been scientifically proven that blue is an easing/relaxing colour, and it is the reason why a lot of brands and companies use a blue colour scheme, so much so that it's become somewhat of a challenge to guess which shade of blue is for which brand.

Another way that these news programmes try to remain unbiased is with their newsreaders.



Especially in the UK, these newsreaders are mostly steely-faced, plain and to the point. This is to make sure that they do not impress their own opinion onto the stories being discussed and only give the information. We don't see many celebrities reading the news because that would mean that their public personality would be subconsciously associated with any story being read and that would again detract from the news' supposed honesty and transparency.

They also talk directly to the camera, giving the viewer the sense that there is nothing between the readers and the viewer, the stories are being read directly to the viewer.

As mentioned earlier, no one network could possibly begin to cover every single event happening on Earth, so the stories getting shown have to jump through a certain amount of hoops to get on air, known affectionately as 'The Gatekeeping Process':

Firstly, the event itself happens. Then, certain sources of news find out about the event. This could include the police, or social media such as Facebook or Twitter. Even now things are being narrowed down because not everything is posted to social media in the first place, and even if it were, the news can't possibly find and report everything that is posted anyway.

After that, certain stories are valued over others through what is known as the News Values, coined by Galtung and Ruge:

1. Frequency: News networks have a routine; a very specific order of doing things, and if an event happens at the wrong time then it is less likely to be covered.

2. Threshold: The amount of people that an event involves also has an effect on whether it gets news coverage or not, for example a natural disaster affecting thousands will be reported over a smaller flood affecting less people.

3. Ambiguity: If a story is unclear or vague it is less likely to be covered. For instance, the case with Rolf Harris being accused of being a child molester is fairly explicit and straight-forward; it's not likely that people would misunderstand the circumstances here.

4. Meaningfulness: Is the story relevant to the people it is being shown to? An example of this is that the story of innocent man Jean Charles de Menezes being wrongfully shot and killed by police back in 2005 was widely reported in the UK for weeks, whereas in the US it was barely touched upon. This is because it's more meaningful to those in the UK because it happened at a UK airport.

5. Unexpectedness: News networks love shocking or surprising news, such as freak accidents, or a child stabbing and killing a teacher.

6. Continuity: Sometimes stories get elevated to a special status wherein they will be followed for a number of weeks as they develop, like the altercation between MP Andrew Mitchell and a couple of police officers back in 2012.

7. Elite Nations: A story concerning developed countries such as the US will be more likely to get coverage than one concerning a developing country like Baghdad, for instance the Sandy Hook school shooting in the US.

8. Elite Persons/Celebrity: If a person is wealthy or well-known, then things that happen to them are more likely to be covered, i.e a celebrity suddenly dying like Rik Mayall would be reported over someone less known dying.

9. Negativity: Bad news is more popular with news networks than positive ones just because a smaller negative event can affect more people than a positive event of similar magnitude.

If a story fits one or more of these criteria, then they still might not get put out due to legal issues or technical difficulties. Monetary issues are also a factor, as if a story is breaking in another country then the network might not be able to fly a reporter out to cover it, such as what happened with Tiananmen Square, where the BBC got much better coverage because they had more money.

If a story is covered by one news team then unless it is of a certain size then it is less likely to be covered by other networks.

Technical issues during broadcast can also determine whether a story will make it to the audience, as communications might be lost with a roving reporter etc.

But after that, the story will have finally made it to the broadcast, and the audience will have seen it.

That's certainly quite the rigorous selection process. How can we really say that the news is a 'window on the world' if we only see such a small part of it?

Furthermore, does it even matter? Nowadays we have so many different news outlets, both traditional and not, that we should be able to form our own opinions on what is going on and seek out news relevant to us if appropriate.

Is that a problem? Maybe. We might be approaching a social climate in which various groups of people are contained within their own social 'filter bubble', and this is happening already with sites like Facebook and Google, whose algorithms return stories that are relevant to the user based on past history and interest. What's the issue with this? Well, people will eventually be contained within their own ideological and cultural bubbles, and they won't be exposed to anything that opposes their view. This is a real issue as it's important for people to be exposed to multiple sides of an argument in order to form their own opinions and then change those opinions if appropriate.

So, to answer the question, no. TV News isn't a 'window on the world', no matter how hard it tries to be. But in the Information Age, that really isn't that much of a problem in certain respects. Other respects may need a little tending to, but won't be too difficult to fix.