Is T.V News a "Window on the World"?

It's often portrayed that the television news is a wide representation of the world, and ensures that viewers get a good insight into what is happening all around the globe. The analogy which is most commonly used that is the news gives us a "window on the world", suggesting that stories from all over are shown to us, and therefore presented in an unbiased and neutral way. However, we now know that this is not entirely true.

T.V News presents itself to be neutral in many ways- firstly, the starting sequence. Many news programs have starting sequences which include images from all over the world, often landmarks and political buildings. The starting sequence of any given news program is symbolic of the values and ideologies that a given station wants to represent and put forward in their own "window on the world" via the use of iconography and time references etc.. The starting sequence used in the ITN opening scene from the 1980's divides the screen into four sections, representing the "four corners of the world", each division containing an image of a different political and/or monumental building. The screen then wipes out slowly, with the face of a clock editing out each image in turn, to represent the different time zones in the multiple places of the world. This connotes that the news station is in contact and up to date with the happenings of situations all over the world, giving the audience a false sense that they are really getting news from all over the world.

These factors give the viewer a false sense of trust towards the news broadcasters, in the form that they are only being shown a small representation of news from around the world on that given day. The presenters themselves are somewhat pressured into being neutral and unbiased in the way that they present the news, whether it be their tone of voice, or their facial expressions and body language- it is important that they give no indication of their own opinion when presenting any given story. Another way in which the news presents itself to be unbiased is as a result of the laws put in place to ensure a neutral representation of particular narratives. These laws ensure that newsreaders present the news with a sense of impartiality and in a neutral tone.

The hierarchy of truth is another factor which contributed to a way in which the news is presented to be a "window on the world."  The hierarchy of truth is an implication of a typical news structure. It suggests that the first, most common, structure is the newsreader and studio being shot in the same frame, reading the news to an audience in an impartial manner. Usually, this is followed by footage of the location of the incident that happened, or at least very near it- this is presented by a field reporter with more in-depth information on what happened exactly. Finally, 'actuality' footage is depicted to the audience. This provides evidence that the event being presented actually happened and is a crucial and essential stage of the hierarchy of truth.

However, as we have more recently discovered, this is not the case. All news corporations are required to undertake a process aptly named 'The Gatekeeping Process.' This particular process is comprised of an average of 8 stages;
1 - The event itself, whether it be a bomb threat in a local area or a lion escaping from a zoo. This is then followed by;
2 - News Sources; these are where the news stories themselves are looked for, such as police stations and political buildings. Reporters will stand outside the building and try to gain a further insight and more information on the latest breaking story.
3 - Galtung and Ruges' News Values; frequency (short term events like murders are preferred over long term developments such as global warming), threshold (the size of an event indicates its importance- a bomb threat is a lot more sizable than most other news), unambiguity (does not have to be simple, but must be identified by the public), meaningfulness (cultural proximity and relevance), consonance (also known as correspondence), unexpectedness (element of surprise), continuity (once a story has achieved importance it will covered for some time), composition (sense of balance, foreign with domestic and gloomy alongside happy) , elite nations (more likely to be mentioned if part of the developed world), elite persons (famous and wealthy are more newsworthy than ordinary people- The Royal Wedding over any other couple), personalisation (events are seen as acts of individuals), negativity (bad news is good for the press; threshold is much lower for bad news).
4 - News Gathering Routines; legal constraints such as "views and facts must not be misrepresented", late breaking stories and technical problems can lead to stories being binned.

5 - Finances can determine whether stories are covered or not- the example of Tiananmen Square is often used to describe this stage in the process. As the story broke out near the beginning of the BBC's financial year, they were able to send out broadcasters to deliver and receive information on this breaking thus influential story. In contrast however, ITV missed out as a result of not having the financial means, and having covered another large story earlier in their financial year.

6 - Competition between news teams. Although this stage happens throughout the process of broadcasting a news story that has been created, this has a large risk of being placed into the 'dustbin of history'- which not only means that a story won't be broadcast on a particular day, but not at all.
7 - The broadcast itself
8 - The final story at the end of production.


All media is a representation of reality. All representations involve choices. All choices are made according to the beliefs. Therefore it is the beliefs of the news creators that are encoded.

However, does any of this really matter? It's not as if we are going to suddenly change the world on the basis of learning a different news story about a different part of this corrupt world. Us, as a society, are intelligent enough to know that other major things are happening throughout the world every single day, without a news broadcast to tell us so. The claim itself is barely recognised by the audience of news programs anyway, and even if it was, we focus on the information delivered and not the process it has to go through.