My students dont have TVs
CBC News wants to attract younger viewers with its recent relaunch, but as Carleton broadcast journalist instructor Marilyn Mercer found out, many of her students don’t have TVs or cable subscriptions.
CBC News wants to attract younger viewers with its recent relaunch, but as Carleton broadcast journalist instructor Marilyn Mercer found out, many of her students don’t have TVs or cable subscriptions.
One thing that my third-year television j-school students at Carleton University don’t ask about is the new “look” at CBC.
I began this course assigning weekly analysis of the flagship nightly newscasts at CTV and CBC. At first, some students panicked. “I don’t have cable,” said one. “Nor TV,” said another. Knowing this was about marks, they went online to cbc.ca or ctv.ca and started watching stories that often begin with Peter or Lloyd.
Each week a couple of them gave their show-and-tell analysis. This sparked debate on journalistic policy like independence, balance over time, and what ethical dilemmas newsrooms face.We watched a tenth anniversary story on the Columbine school massacre and debated whether CTV replaying archival footage of the teen killers mugging for their own camera was serviceable journalism for a Canadian audience. For any audience.
My students’ analysis assignments ended just prior to the CBC News Network (formerly Newsworld) branding launch. They appreciate the usefulness of visual broadcasting especially on the Internet and I asked them at the end of last week what they thought of the new look of CBC NN.
None of them had yet watched CBC NN, but said they’d heard about “how people don’t like it.” My teaching assistants commented on how the new blue tones look like those of an opening computer. One found the new graphics tougher to discern but generally likes the new style. I do too. I figure the CBC meteorologists have been coaching the news anchors in a sort of line-dancing demo on how to stand and move around a bit because they’ve been doing this in front of maps for years.
I like the greater sense of activity on set. It reflects a busy multimedia newsroom. As time passes, some of the initial problems like over-lighting are being adjusted. If journalism is an art, as journalism professor G. Stuart Adam has effectively argued, then CBC NN has created an interesting multimedia “gallery” with some new “curation.” But dueling tastes in set design really misses the point that some of the works have been problematic and need grounding in journalistic principle.
As a former producer and manager at CBC, I answered myriad letters from audience members accusing the public broadcaster of lacking independence. And as I try to demonstrate for my students what’s at stake when their work lacks independence, I’m finding examples on CBC for illustration, some subtler than others.
“Our” troops or “our” armed forces is something I’m hearing some CBC journalists say, for example. Rather than “Canada’s” troops. It becomes difficult to report independently on the Canadian military when its footage is used extensively, albeit labeled accurately. This was the case in September when a CBC foreign correspondent narrated a piece, shot in Cyprus. This isn’t about reporters having so little time that they need the military to shoot their stories. This is about references that conflict with journalistic policy standards written by the CBC itself to serve viewers in a democracy. My students looked confused when I first told them to use the third person when referring to military, but who can blame them when CNN and Fox News slip into using “our” troops, and when the CBC occasionally does too?
CBC’s The National can probably forget about getting my class demographic, even if they are j-school students. This generation wears the news in their clothing and won’t make an appointment to view it late in the evening. They monitor their hand-held devices throughout the day often after texts from friends to check out something, on YouTube, or cbc.ca like the boy in the balloon. This story “broke” during my Thursday class. One of my students said last week that this coverage made him madder than any he’s seen in a long time because it lied rather than reported, manipulated rather than explained. But it provided another good teaching opportunity on why reporters need to be independent of police, not just on a single story, but on the general theme of crime.
One of the changes I’ve noticed on local CBC TV during the last year is the emphasis on crime stories. It may be a quick way to get viewers’ attention and grab ratings, but it distorts community portrayal. It also distracts journalists from their essential role to monitor centers of power like police, overbearing members of a family, or government-run clinics.
CBC News’ new look was revealed on Monday Oct. 26 when many in the country needed clearer advice on the efficacy of H1N1 flu vaccine, as science journalism instructor Peter Calamai notes. This crisis and the launch of a new CBC NN brand coincided in such a way that may not have been conducive to best practices in medical or health journalism on CBC. One wonders what auditor general Sheila Fraser might have added on the role of public broadcasting, to her report of Public Safety Ministry shortcomings, if her office had looked at the H1N1 flu outbreak in Canada.
CBC has been analyzing, on air, its own coverage of the pandemic, which is another opportunity for students to learn about media accountability in their reporting. But if a real emergency strikes the country, let’s hope that all those meteorologists on CBC News Network’s staff know how to report more than the weather.
One of my student teams rushed back to class with a story on a line-up for H1N1 vaccine Oct. 29. My critique was that it was yesterday’s heavily reported news, until I turned on The National that evening and saw that it was essentially repeating its previous night’s story on people waiting for needles at public health clinics. My students didn’t re-argue their case on the news worthiness of their piece. They could have, if they’d been in the habit of watching The National for reasons other than grades.
(Image by autowitch. Used under Creative Commons license.)
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November 10, 2009
So… these kids want to be
So… these kids want to be broadcast journalists but don’t even own/watch TV?
This is a joke, right?
November 10, 2009
Alas, not a joke at all. I
Alas, not a joke at all. I got the same general response a few years ago from a class of graduate-level broadcast journalism students here on the west coast. Many didn’t watch TV news unless it was assigned.
A number of them said “it isn’t relevant” although they thought that Jon Stewart and George Stroumboulopoulos were cool.
Two weeks ago, I asked a class of 4th year communications students at the U of Windsor what they thought of The National’s new look. Not a single one had watched. “You are exactly the demographic that the CBC is courting,” I told them. They shrugged.
November 10, 2009
You are only just now
You are only just now figuring this out?
This is exactly why mainstream news is in such trouble.
You don’t have a clue about the shifting landscape because you are too busy protecting your old interest instead of growing new markets.
Yeah sure. It’s the consumer’s fault youth abandoned you long ago.
Sounds an awful lot like the music industry. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Apparently it’s not a joke. It seems they don’t want to be broadcast journalists. They just want to be journalists.
November 10, 2009
You miss the point, Maurice.
You miss the point, Maurice. They wanted to be broadcast journalists, they believed in the power of the medium . . . they weren’t being creatively subversive, they just thought that consuming news in general (and TV news in particular) was less useful to them than other extra-curricular activities. As a consequence, most couldn’t tell me the name of the president of Pakistan, or what a Patriot missile was. I guess that’s the “old interest” I was trying to teach: It helps to know about the things that happen every day in the world, and I’m not talking here about Balloon Boy.
November 10, 2009
For journalists, especially
For journalists, especially students, it’s a good practice to be getting the news from a variety of sources — TV, radio, Internet, print, magazines, and in person.
Relying just on the blogosphere for information is as narrow as relying on any other singular source.
November 10, 2009
I’d like to add in a few
I’d like to add in a few words here. I am in Professor Mercer’s class, and the class is a requirement for everybody here at Carleton’s J-school. There are very few students in the class who actually want to become television broadcast journalists, as much as we enjoy gaining the skills necessary to do so. If I remember correctly, during the first class, Professor Mercer asked the class how many of us were interested in television, and not more than two people raised their hands. We’re not just a class of aspiring broadcast journalists who don’t watch television news.
While I do see the benefit of gathering news from a variety of media, as a student, I cannot afford a television. I cannot afford cable. I get the news where I can–and I would like to point out that even when I do watch TV, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, and read Google News, I find most of the stories are repeated in all of these means.
Finally, thank you Maurice, I would agree with your comments. I cannot think of anybody my age who watches television news on a daily basis. With so many more efficient ways of getting the same information, this medium, in its current form, seems to be becoming obsolete. I applaud CBC’s efforts in changing their style to appeal to a wider audience, but when I can spend 10 minutes on Google News, which compiles stories from newspapers all around the world, or I can watch an hour program that will show me less stories…I’m going to go for the first option.
November 10, 2009
You don’t have to be a “kid”
You don’t have to be a “kid” to not watch TV news. Some of us older people also lack time or patience to schedule 30-60-minute blocks to sit on a couch before a box.
As a journalist for three decades I have not, with few exceptions, found TV “news” essential. I adore good documentaries and may watch breaking news on a TV. But by the time scheduled programs hit the air, little is really “new” – at least for those of us who voraciously read newspapers, listen to good radio and scour the Internet for quality journalism online (for which I’m willing to subscribe and pay).
I’m a huge fan of the CBC — it’s definitely one of the quality organizations cited above. CBC is bookmarked on my browser. But I can’t recall the last time I watched a CBC news program on a TV. I do watch parts of shows, anywhere, anytime, on my desktop, my laptop or, when out and about, my iPod Touch.
November 11, 2009
Has there ever been a time
Has there ever been a time when the National or any other TV newscast was required watching for the average 18-35 demographic? Would students in 1993 have noticed the format changes when Prime Time News launched?
I thought the format changes were aimed at growing the 35+ demographic.
November 11, 2009
I agree with Deborah Jones.
I agree with Deborah Jones. I’ve gone through phases in my life when I cut the cable or satellite. The current “no TV” phase started two years ago. I don’t miss many news programs, although I miss live sporting events (surprising to me because I’m not a big sports fan). Naturally, TV coverage of breaking news can be hard to find online, recently for example, the discovery of Tori Stafford’s body. Although I have to add that local radio (AM980) and newspaper (The London Free Press) did a great job of covering the news online by streaming audio & video, blogging and twittering, as it broke.
November 11, 2009
My broadcast students also do
My broadcast students also do not watch TV News Regularly. Most of them are hardly at home to watch anything. What they do watch are links to TV News video reports posted to them by their social networks. I still watch a lot of TV News, but mostly during the day. By 6:30pm I’m saturated. By 10pm I’m usually asleep.
Like a lot of people, I suspect, my news watching habits changed during the last U.S. election. First thing I’d do in the morning was read, Real Clear Politics, Politico, Huff Post etc. Then watch CNN to see how they were tracking the story.
In other words, my watching of network news became a way of double checking to see how far behind or caught up the were with what had been on the Internet hours before.
This is the new world, and a lot of what we’re teaching is obsolete.
November 12, 2009
If not for weekend trips to
If not for weekend trips to my mother’s house, I would not have seen the CBC redesign at all. I think the NewsNetwork redesign is good, but the National redesign is obnoxious.
I’m a twenty-year-old university student, and I agree with some comments above about not having enough time to watch 30-60 mins of television per night. That said, I do have the CBC At Issue panel sent to my iPod as a podcast.
November 13, 2009
What’s wrong with “our
What’s wrong with “our troops”?
Are journalists godlike figures reporting from Mt Olympus, belonging to no nation? No? Then Canadian reporters talking about Canadian forces are quite right to say “our troops”
Didn’t the BBC get flack for saying “British troops” in the Falklands war?
November 19, 2009
Why is it necessary to have
Why is it necessary to have commercials during the news? Are they there to pay for the time ? I am not familiar with how the news is “processed ” in order for it to be ready for airing , but the too frequent interruptions by commercials say the news has a reduced value in our society…..is it not ( the news ) important enough to be presented without cereal companies and the like coming between a segment on war followed by a segment on a national disaster ? These commercials cause the true impact of the events of the day to just pass us by ,making us to be less than spectators in which case , why take the time to “watch” anyway?1st
November 22, 2009
I rummaged around and found a
I rummaged around and found a small, old (but color) TV in a family member’s basement. Plugged in an old antenna (bunny ears). Yep.
I get two channels: CBC and Global. Perfect. Costs me nothing. I get to compare newscasts, and I even get to watch Coronation Street.
I wish more people realized they don’t need a cable to get reception; then perhaps more of them would be urging the CRTC not to switch air transmission to digital like the U.S. did last year; then perhaps more people would be protesting that the CRTC plans to cut off all air transmissions outside of major urban areas.
I’m not an old curmudgeon, by the way; I just love free analog signals, and I wish Canada would keep them.
November 23, 2009
As a member of the class in
As a member of the class in question, I’d like to say that not having televisions does not make us incapable of producing quality broadcast journalism. Most of us consume online news regularly, and much of this news comes in the form of programs similar to the ones many people watch on their TVs.
However, in spite of the fact that we watch many of the same news programs broadcast on TV, there are a variety of other online sources which our generation has come to rely upon and actually prefer. Perhaps we should be looking at why traditional forms of broadcast journalism are becoming outdated as opposed to why today’s journalism students don’t watch TV.
On another note, many of us do not appreciate the new CBC NN and take great pleasure in watching and LEARNING FROM the CBC archives, available ONLINE.