British Television News Research Articles

“Yes, We Do Want to Subvert and Corrupt Young People”

In 1992, the British television news program Dispatches aired clips from a video described as the first ever, eyewitness proof of satanically motivated child abuse. Days later, newspapers reported that the video was misrepresented. The clips were drawn from First Transmissions, an experimental video produced by Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (T.O.P.Y.) a geographically disperse occult collective committed to subverting mainstream media. This article provides a detailed history of this incident. First, it uses the event as an entrée into T.O.P.Y.’s magickal media activism. Second, it locates the groups’ inadvertent appearance on Dispatches within sweeping changes to the late-20th-century media landscape. Providing this context demonstrates how new possibilities in the production and circulation of audiovisual media provoked religious conflicts and concerns for radical occultists and conservative television journalists alike. While T.O.P.Y.’s uses of media were intended to enable individual self-actualization and to undermine established institutions, their detractors on Dispatches figured underground media economies as sites of satanic conspiracy and worked to discipline their creators.

‘Out is out and that’s it the people have spoken’: uses of vox pops in UK TV news coverage of the Brexit referendum

ABSTRACTThis article analyses vox pops in British television news programmes during the 2016 EU referendum. It is informed by a data set of 383 vox pops across the three main terrestrial TV news programmes: the BBC and ITV’s News at Ten and Channel 4 News. A quantitative overview confirms two points made by [Greg Myers (2004). Matters of opinion: Talking about public issues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, namely that in vox pops the majority of respondents are anonymous, and their exchanges with journalists are minimal. However the argument here is that it is not appropriate simply to criticise vox pops as inadequate forms of political expression; rather a qualitative discourse analysis focuses on their use as illustrations in journalistic narratives, informed by changing news agendas. In the EU referendum, this often involved visits to provincial locations where the majority of respondents were Leave voters; and it culminated in visits to the communities of Brexit voters which can be seen as paradoxical. On the one hand they illustrated the cultural distance of these voters from the metropolitan elite; but on the other they gave voice to a populist political rhetoric widely reproduced in the Brexit public sphere.

'Mr Malik, to Represent the People of Dewsbury Do You Need a 2600 Cinema System Paid for by the Taxpayer?' An Analysis of British Television News Coverage of the 2009 MPs' 'Expenses Scandal'

This article explores British television news coverage of the 2009 MPs' expenses scandal as part of a broader analysis of television coverage of politics. Drawing on an analysis of the content of the coverage and examples of interviews aired, it argues that routine journalistic practices closed down the space available for a thorough and open-ended exploration of the claims made by MPs. Instead, coverage concentrated on the moral and financial laxity of MPs and the allegations made against them.

Multimodal expression of authorial affect in a British television news programme

Quality journalism is expected to adhere to norms of objectivity and neutrality whereby the authorial reporting voice avoids expressing any emotive reaction to the events reported. Research (Martin and White, 2005; Bednarek, 2008 and Pounds, 2010) has shown that authorial affect is virtually absent in quality British print-media news reporting. In the case of television news reporting, however, the nature and distribution of authorial affect have not yet been investigated in any detail. This paper shows how the appraisal framework (Martin and White, 2005) and Montgomery's classification of authorial voices in television news reporting (2007) may be used as a basis for such an investigation. The analysis is applied to an episode of the British news programme BBC News at Ten. The findings show that, as might be expected, some authorial affect is, to some extent, always conveyed through the audio-visual and dialogic dimensions. It is further shown, however, how affective expression still appears to be subject to some constraints in relation to the nature of the authorial voices represented in the programme, even though the distinction is often blurred.

Dynamics of memory: Commemorating the 2005 London bombings in British television news

This article seeks to examine coverage of the 2005 London bombings’ first year anniversary commemorations vis-à-vis reportage of the attacks as a breaking news story. Adopting a multimodal discourse analysis approach, informed by both qualitative and quantitative methods, the study explores the thematic relationship between the two sets of coverage. Although our results show a number of dynamic processes at work, a key finding is the strong tendency for new themes to appear in the commemorative story. Our analyses also highlight the cathartic function that the event’s anniversary itself seemingly fulfils. Such empirical insights have important implications for the ways in which (catastrophic) past events are commemorated through the mass media, especially through the medium of television.

Recontextualizing participatory journalists’ mobile media in British television news: A case study of the live coverage and commemorations of the 2005 London bombings

This article examines contributions from members of the public featured in British television news coverage of the 2005 London bombings (‘7/7’). Specifically, it explores how images (photographs and videos) captured by ordinary people on their mobile devices were used in the live news reportage of 7/7 and, given the current salience of commemorative journalism, how these were (re-)used in the tragedy’s first year anniversary coverage. The analysis reveals broadcasters’ selection of uniform, repetitive and ‘sanitized’ mobile media footage, as well as a tendency towards non-attribution. This article contributes to the scant body of discourse analytic research into ‘participatory journalism’ practices, particularly their interaction with ‘traditional’ forms of journalism.

Comparing Russian, French and British Television News Commemorations of 9/11: Terror, Everyday Nation Building and the Struggle for the Universal

This article broaches the need of television-led nation building projects to frame the traumatic with the everyday, and to map that process onto the ongoing renegotiation of the relationship between the particular and national on one hand, and the transnational and universal on the other. Nowhere is this mapping more vividly revealed than in national mediations of 9/11 anniversaries. In their approach to 9/11 anniversaries, broadcasters convey this sense of the threat of an unprecedented, and continuing, danger to the “universal” human values embodied in the nation they represent, whilst “normalising” the situation as part of the fabric of that nation’s everyday life, differentiating “our” capacity to cope with, and properly contextualise it, from “their” tendency to ignore, or hyperbolise, its true meaning. The article compares Russia with Britain and France, concluding that all three engage in distinctive instrumentalisations of 9/11 for national purposes. But it is Russian Channel 1 whose abstraction of a universalised, post 9/11 terrorist “evil” renders it most transferable to other contexts, and most significant in terms of its potential for the nation building strategy.

Pre-mediating guilt: radicalisation and mediality in British news

This article offers an account to terrorism and security studies of radicalisation as a discursive phenomenon delivered and constructed by news media. In our mediatised lives the ubiquitous recording of our activities and opinions means we may be inadvertently pre-mediating a later category of criminality which can be imposed retrospectively on what we thought was an innocent life. A study of two instances of ‘radicalisation’ reported on British television news appears to demonstrate this. Family photographs, mobile cameraphone footage and other recordings may be used retrospectively to construct a single definition of a person as radicalised. Equally, such media materials can be used to achieve a coherent meaning of radicalisation. We identify three dimensions of British news media's relationship to radicalisation: (1) an unreflexive and possibly incoherent clustering of terms, phrases and discourses by journalists, policy-makers and security services to form a rhetorical structure of radicalisation; (2) the uncertainty around radicalisation may itself contribute to the term's connotations of risk and danger; and (3) media reporting of radicalisation constructs and presents a continuum of normality/safety and deviant/dangerous because of the medial continuity of ‘our’ media practices with those of ‘radicals’.

A JOURNALISTIC DEFICIT?

This article examines the extent and nature of British television news programmes’ coverage of European elections. A sample of national terrestrial prime-time television news programmes were content analysed during the 2004 Euro-election campaign, and compared with a previous analysis conducted on the same outlets’ coverage of the 1994 Euro-election campaign. The original study of the 1994 campaign identified a number of key characteristics of that election, including the dominance of domestic political issues and actors, and a marked lower level of news media coverage and editorial interest in the campaign relative to national general elections. This study examines whether those patterns of Euro-election coverage in British television news persisted in 2004, representing what could be called a journalistic deficit, compounding existing problems of limited activity on the part of the political parties, and a lack of knowledge, interest and participation amongst the British electorate when it comes to European elections.

In Search of Europe

This study is a cross-national comparative content analysis of the coverage of European Union politics in British, Danish, Dutch, French, and German television news. The study identifies key characteristics of the coverage and investigates influences shaping the coverage. In the majority of countries studied, EU politics was marginally represented in national television news. EU officials, too, were absent in the news. However, if the EU was covered, EU politics was more prominently presented than other political news. Three influences were found to positively contribute to the amount and prominence of EU news: it was more prominent in public broadcasting news programs, in countries with higher levels of public satisfaction with democracy, and during periods around EU summits. The visibility of EU officials in television news was highest in public news programs. The findings suggest that, with EU coverage being of limited visibility and without protagonists, the Europeanization of television news coverage is more an illusion than reality.

The Media Representation of Public Opinion: British Television News Coverage of the 2001 General Election

This article examines the ideological assumptions and consequences of the media representation of public opinion through a study of television news coverage of the 2001 British general election. It discusses how a certain type of poll (the voting intention or ‘horse-race’ poll) is privileged, while other types of opinion surveys are ignored. But it also identifies less obvious means through which public opinion is invoked. First, casual and often unsubstantiated assertions about the attitude of the public are regularly made by anchors, reporters or politicians. Second, the views of individual members of the public are made to stand in for public opinion overall, either through vox pops or through the interaction of members of the public with politicians on the campaign trail. The article concludes that the consequence of the media representation of public opinion in the 2001 British general election campaign is to legitimize the hegemonic definition of politics as a sport played by political and media elites, thus reducing citizens to the limited and passive role of spectators.

Rules of Engagement: television journalism and NATO'S "faith in bombing" during the Kosovo crisis, 1999

Every war from Crimea to Kosovo has been followed by a post-mortem into the failure of journalism to cover the conflict truthfully and courageously. William Howard Russell, Richard Harding Davis, and most recently Phillip Knightley have in their turn pronounced the profession dead. But these are subjective judgements and while they have some truth they are not always grounded in actual analysis of the evidence. This article looks at British and American television news reporting of NATO's bombing campaign in Serbia and Kosovo. It argues that the quiescent attitude of the NATO media pool in Brussels was not reflected across all sections of the news media and that the presentation of NATO material on news bulletins was in many cases treated with the scepticism expected of the profession. The analysis is based on a sample of British and American television news from 12 to 19 April 1999, and on interviews with a number of journalists present at the briefings and with NATO press secretary, Jamie Shea.

Keeping the Peace? Politics, Television News and the Northern Ireland Peace Process

This article looks at the communicative strategies adopted by the main political parties when dealing with British television news coverage of the Northern Ireland peace process. It examines the disadvantageous as well as advantageous impact of reporting on peace politics and highlights how political groups applied different communicative strategies when engaging with news. Drawing on original interview material gathered from politicians and journalists who were involved with the politics and reporting of the peace process from 1994–1998, this study invites a rethinking of the relationship between politics and news in the emerging climate of peace in Northern Ireland.

The Media Politics of the Irish Peace Process

This article examines British television news coverage of the Irish peace process from its public emergence in 1993 up to mid-1994. The analysis is undertaken in the context of the promotional strategies of the protagonists—especially those of the British government—and assesses their significance for understanding the role of the media in relation to negotiations and decision making.

Introducing the `gay gene': media and scientific representations

In 1993 a paper in the prestigious scientific journal Science announced the discovery of a linkage between genetics and male homosexuality. The linkage was promptly dubbed the `gay gene' by the media, and the paper was widely reported. This article examines the reporting of the `gay gene' in the British press and television news, and compares it with commentary in scientific journals. The article focuses on the representation of homosexuality and the representation of science. It considers the charges levelled at the media by some critics and finds many of them wanting. Finally, it concludes with some comments about the public understanding of science and the need for the scientific understanding of the media and the public.

Trade Unions in British Television News

During the past five years the idea that television may be biased has increasingly gained currency in political and journalistic discussion. The notion has particularly become attached to television news coverage of trade unions and the Labour movement. This paper aims to test for the possibility of political bias through close examination of one especially long and important transmission of BBC news, one which, having receded a few years into the past, enables a certain gain in critical perspective. On 14 May 1980 the TUC organized a 'Day of Action' to protest at government policies. It was reported on the BBC 9.oo pm news of that evening. Because of extra time in a football match the transmission did not go out until 9.56 pm. By a happy coincidence ITN was blacked out by a (wholly separate) strike action, so there is no problem about contrasting two versions of the news. Most people now regard television news as both their main source of news and their most reliable source of news: if they were to get a wider picture of the Day of Action on the evening of 14 May, it would be via BBC television news. The eleven minutes of air-time and I,46o words (see 'Appendix' for transcript) thus provide an unprecedented and extended text one not since matched in which one may consider how a sense of trade union activity is produced by British television news. Analysis will be concerned particularly with questions of genre, denotation versus connotation, and the deployment of what I shall call 'a regime of truth'. The conclusion argues that currently television news works through a form of 'balance' but a weighted balance which leans against the Labour movement. In addition to civil law, a particular statutory obligation to report news fairly and impartially is placed upon television news, both BBC and ITN. The IBA Act (1973) requires 'that due impartiality is preserved on the part of persons providing the programmes as respects matters of political or industrial controversy...' and the BBC's Licence, Clause 13 (7) (I981), requires that the Corporation 'shall at all times refrain from sending any broadcast matter expressing the opinion of the Corporation on current affairs or matters of public policy'.' This principle is invariably glossed and re-affirmed in the annual BBC Handbook, for example when it says that 'for the BBC to take sides in any controversial issue would ... be contrary to its own long-established policy of