Telling the news
TELEVISION STUART HOOD
A crucial moment in the history of television news in this country was the escape from the conventions of radio. Not surprisingly
it was ITN, which had no dead hand of tradition to hold it back, that first put on the screen the new patterns of style and
presentation which, with minor changes, are
now accepted by both BBC and ITV. The fundamentally revolutionary thought behind
rtri's presentation was that television news is different from radio because it has pic- tures. It is an illustrated paper. Pictures are important, interesting and very often illu- minating in a way that the spoken word is not. It followed that given a choice for the lead between two equally solid and im- portant stories, one with film and the other without, the editor would lead with the film.
Above all, the fact was acknowledged that a human being reading news in front of a television camera must speak some- thing more nearly recognisable as the lan- guage men actually use than the remote, mandarin style which had become the hall- mark of BBC radio bulletins. Starting from diametrically opposite positions of radica- lism and conservatism, ITN and BBC have, in the course of the years, met somewhere in the middle. Both exploit the potentialities of television news with professional skill; both use great ingenuity to circumvent the limitations imposed by the medium and, more importantly, by the difficulties of news gathering for television.
It is with the difficulties that John Whale is concerned in his recently published exam- ination. The Half-shut Eye (Macmillan 35s), of television and politics. He is a practi- tioner of very considerable experience, hav- ing been ITN'S political correspondent and subsequently its correspondent in Washing- ton. What he has to say—in essence his judgment is a negative one—commands res- pect and attention. It rests on the insoluble nature of a problem familiar to anyone who has worked in television news—the fact that certain subjects, which may be among the most important in a day's news, are not susceptible of illustration. A big fire, a flood, a demonstration, an air-strike will provide interesting and vivid pictures; but what can one find to illustrate an economic crisis, an industrial struggle, an international situation where peace and war may hang in the scales? Merely politicians arriving at 10 Downing Street or Transport House, nod- ding or waving to the camera, perhaps tos- sing a conventional phrase fo the micro- phones as they come and go, delivering little set pieces about what has happened in those conference rooms where the camera can never penetrate, and prepared phrases that conceal more than they reveal.
John Whale makes his point from tele- vision reporting on both sides of the Atlan-
tic. He argues, rightly I believe, that the question as to whether the bulletins are transmitted by a public corporation or a commercial company is a matter of indif- ference; the limitations are the same. Nor is he more optimistic when he discusses the wider coverage of political events, inter- views of politicians, panels on the lines of Meet the Press, face to face confrontations. They, do not, in his estimation, offer any- thing but the most superficial view of poli- tical happenings. They are not providing the voter with the kind of information on which he may base well-founded judgments.
This is a Manichean view of television newsgathering and reporting which seems to me, on the one hand, to give insufficient weight to the diversity of programmes deal- ing with topics and the amount of sober exposition that has been provided over the years by Panorama, This Week, Twenty- Four Hours and elsewhere, and, on the other, to underestimate the viewers' capa- city for grasping the conventions of tele- vision broadcasting. When Mr Wilson gave his polished performance with Robert Mackenzie the other week the number of viewers of any party who viewed it with other than sceptical .admiration for a pro- fessional performance must have been small.
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