Interest in News and the Selection of Sources

Abstract

Radio's pre-eminent position as a medium of news is one factor often mentioned as tending to ensure its continuing vitality. There are indeed no reasons for questioning radio's present advantages in that field. First among these, though perhaps only temporarily, is the elementary fact that radio, as compared with television, enjoys nearly universal coverage. Well over 95 per cent of all households in Canada have radios but not quite 50 per cent have television. Moreover, radio has a certain flexibility in reporting news. It can provide up-to-the-minute bulletins more frequently and more quickly than the newspaper, and it can be set up for on-the-spot coverage where access via television would be much more difficult, costly, and time-consuming. The greater flexibility of radio also stems from the way it is used: newscasters do not have to choose between news value and picture value when covering or selecting a story. Finally, there is the great advantage over print that radio shares with television: the listener is given less opportunity to evade the actual content of the news than the newspaper reader, who is free to ignore items dealing with “serious” news if these fail to interest him. Furthermore, the amount of attention given to items in radio news bulletins, even if exposure is casual and non-deliberate, is determined more by the presentation than by the dispositions of the listeners.