How do the news channels choose what to report?

Lysander

Lysander

Lysander

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It's not a long OP, so try and read it all. I have BBC News 24 on most of the working day. This has been the way for months and it's become quite clear to me that they're a] very selective about what they report and b] they sweep a lot of other more pressing stories under the carpet. For instance, when the Jimmy Savile story broke they spent days and days on it, and they're doing the same again today, whereas I'm sure there are loads of other stories going on in the world which are far more newsworthy. The lack of public knowledge regarding the disaster in the Philippines last month is one excellent example of this. When they were spending time on Jimmy and less pressing issues, over a thousand people were dying on the other side of the world and no-one here knew about it.

Yesterday they spent most of the day on the Oscars, and though it is quite interesting, I'm sure there are loads of other things going on which are far more important which we'll never get to hear about as a result.

Another example is the amount of time they spent 'plugging' the upcoming Lance Armstrong interview on Oprah, which was nothing but a massive advert, and even though though it's happening on another network I'm sure both are in cahoots somewhere along the line.

So what criteria do the networks employ when choosing what stories to report? With loads of things going on in the world every day there must be a selection process and most of it seems bent on not what we need to know but what they think we need to know. So how exactly is this done?
 
No idea :D



But it can seem very random for example the man shot dead at the new years eve party in Thailand received a lot of publicity and yet another shooting, a stabbing and I think it was a rape case in Thailand of British Nationals never made the news?
 
This has bugged me for ages.

In this day & age, with instant global communication, I fail to see how the news we watch at 6pm or 10pm is exactly the same as the news stories from 6am. Does nothing else happen in the world during the day?:confused:
I suspect all the "journalists" do is trawl the major news sites and simply re-edit parts.

And the BBC's obsession with minor political non-newsworthy items bores me to tears....
 
gillywibble said:
MI5. For decades.
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Really? Not sure if you're being serious but please elaborate if so.

enkoda said:
This has bugged me for ages.

In this day & age, with instant global communication, I fail to see how the news we watch at 6pm or 10pm is exactly the same as the news stories from 6am. Does nothing else happen in the world during the day?:confused:
I suspect all the "journalists" do is trawl the major news sites and simply re-edit parts.
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Precisely. As anyone who watches this channel will know, the same reports and features get reused and recycled several times throughout the day.
 
There's no way I'd have 24 hour news running in the background all day. It's usually one story of any importance, one foreign story I don't care about and the rest filler but overly dramatised to make up for how boring it actually is.
 
I always thought BBC News was a bit lightweight tbh, much the same as ITN and Sky News. The Today Programme on Radio 4 is a much better current affairs broadcast and for televised news I think Channel 4 is underrated.

That being said, they're all better than the US garbage like Fox, MSNBC or CNN.
 
[FnG]magnolia;23537497 said:
Tell me that you understand that this is common across all channels/networks and not just the BBC.
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I'm using the BBC as a microcosmic representation of a wider problem.
 
Yes, news channels are selective about what they report and do have a short loop to their content, that is why I get all my news from youtube videos I see linked on above top secret and david icke's website.
 
There are two totally seperate issues here.

The first is how 24/7 news channels work. They don't spend all day reporting on Saville. They spend all day repeating the same pre-recorded content for cost issues.

The second is how its decided whats relevant to the audience. You and me would be more interested in the Phillipenes disaster than Jimmy Saville but for most of the British public, the Phillipenes is the other side of the world and of little interest or consequence to them, whereas they perceive Jimmy Saville to be both of interest and consequence to the the UK.
 
Lysander said:
I'm using the BBC as a microcosmic representation of a wider problem.
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Can't we use shorter words? "This channel shows crap, why?"

You might even be able to get some haiku out of it if you're particularly clever.

Skidder said:
Yes, news channels are selective about what they report and do have a short loop to their content, that is why I get all my news from youtube videos I see linked on above top secret and david icke's website.
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Starred and flagged, brother.
 
Flick between different news channels, BBC world news has some different stuff on it, as do the american news channels, Bloomberg is excellent for finance stuff. Occasionally Russia today and al jazeera have interesting stuff too.
 
Celebrity culture too. Morons love to look at retarded reality tv stars and aspire to be them as that would lead to an easy way through life. "It's okay if people laugh at me for being dumb I get paid for it"
 
Least we aren't at US level yet where every minor detail get's show from dogs biting the postman to small fender benders on the interstate with no serious injuries.

I agree with this comment I don't have loads of time to watch news and would like the main news bulletin to at least cover major world events after all we have local news on bbc after the main programme.
 
Lysander said:
It's not a long OP, so try and read it all. I have BBC News 24 on most of the working day. This has been the way for months and it's become quite clear to me that they're a] very selective about what they report and b] they sweep a lot of other more pressing stories under the carpet. For instance, when the Jimmy Savile story broke they spent days and days on it, and they're doing the same again today, whereas I'm sure there are loads of other stories going on in the world which are far more newsworthy. The lack of public knowledge regarding the disaster in the Philippines last month is one excellent example of this. When they were spending time on Jimmy and less pressing issues, over a thousand people were dying on the other side of the world and no-one here knew about it.

Yesterday they spent most of the day on the Oscars, and though it is quite interesting, I'm sure there are loads of other things going on which are far more important which we'll never get to hear about as a result.

Another example is the amount of time they spent 'plugging' the upcoming Lance Armstrong interview on Oprah, which was nothing but a massive advert, and even though though it's happening on another network I'm sure both are in cahoots somewhere along the line.

So what criteria do the networks employ when choosing what stories to report? With loads of things going on in the world every day there must be a selection process and most of it seems bent on not what we need to know but what they think we need to know. So how exactly is this done?
Click to expand...
BBC are pretty bad when they come to choose what to put on air, i remember the riots in Norway, it was pretty bad, the BBC did not cover it.
BBC was set up by the government as a propaganda machine, which it still is to this day, hence i avoid watching it.
 
Can't remember where I heard it a couple of weeks ago, but it went something like this. Hope it sounds right :).

"Unless it's something that someone, somewhere really doesn't want the world to know about, then it's PR."
 
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