Media Formats and Television News Coverage

 

A media formats analysis deals with how media producers, like journalists and photographers, construct reality through their selections and interpretations. Characteristics of the television medium, routines of news production, commercial pressures and accessibility all play a part in the constructions of this reality. For example, the need for a photographer to showcase their talent can affect the way in which their photographs are taken, or can even affect what they take pictures of. This could lead to the “artistic” picture of someone who we might think is a starving refugee, but it not, therefore distorting our view. The norms and values of news can also influence due to the nature to focus on elites.

 

Taking the aspects of media formats into consideration, I wanted to know what the coverage characteristics of Australia on NBC news is during 2003-2006. I started my research by taking a sample of all the news stories on NBC mentioning Australia during this 4-year period. Stories averaged only 5 per year, thus making my sample span so many years; the total sample size equaled 20.

 

To summarize my findings by the most significant first, I would like to highlight that out of all 20 stories 85% of the stories were reported from the station’s studio. Out of the 3 that were not in the studio 2 of them were reported in Europe during the Olympics, the remaining story was reported from the U.S. Convenience was most likely the factor for the on-site coverage of the Olympic games and did not actually have much to do with the country, just the athletes.

 

Only 35% of the stories were accompanied by visuals, but from a media format perspective it is hard to believe that some of the stories would not have any visuals due to length and subject matter. This is most likely a flaw in the abstracts and a place where I will need to make assumptions. Out of the 35% with visuals, one compared the discovery of Tyrannosaurs bones to that of the film “Jurassic Park,” and another most likely dealt with file footage.

 

70% of the stories had speaking sources, but out of those stories only 3 stories included native Australians speaking. As for reporters during this 4-year period only 6 reporters covered stories mentioning Australia, 65% of these stories don’t even focus solely on Australia as the primary country.

 

Some balancing was found during my research as well. For the most part the stories shared an equal time from 1^st to 3^rd place in the newscast, as well as length. There were only 2 long segments, both of which did not focus primarily on Australia.

 

            Budget and rising costs are mostly likely the reasons behind the dominant trend for in studio coverage. In Hachten and Scotton’s essay, “New Ways to Report the World—or Not,” they mention, “rising costs and inflation have made maintenance of a staffer overseas quite expensive,” page 119. This relates to an accessibility issue and could persuade the piece to be covered differently. Without a correspondent in the country, there could be an influence to report only the news that has a bias to safety, and westernized culture. Cultural understanding would be a key goal to strive for if they actually did have a correspondent in Australia. Looking at my small sample, it seems that it would not be worth the money for NBC to have a reporter stationed in Australia, but if there where a correspondent it is possibly that many more interesting and cultural stories would surface.

           

            The fact that so few stories where found on NBC makes me believe that Australia is of no significant interest to the U.S., even if it’s to cover commercial aspects.. When Steve Irwin passed away in September 2006, I only found one report broadcast on the day of his death. The NBC newscast, however, did mention and included coverage done by The Today Show, which is the same company. This type of factory built newscast could potentially distort the true story due to lack of accuracy because there is no personal investment in this story. We see this again in the newscast highlighting the archeological discovery and see how it is reduced to an understanding of blockbuster movies. Could this be considered a form of information sharing and a new type of file footage? It seems that this factory idea could be the result of the majority of samples I took because of no on-site coverage, discrepancy with the abstracts and no real driver (I’ve seen) for the U.S. to cover Australian stories.