The Aesthetics of the Anchor...

Cult-of-celebrity seems to not only be influencing the content of news bulletins (I believe I received a breaking news bulletin this eveing to tell me Ms Spears is in suicide watch) but also their context. That is, the friendly face delivering my murder, crime and corruption is increasingly more likely to be a Botticellian angel - and currently staring back at me, not only from my tv screen, but from the glossy gossip magazines at my nearest newstand. Next, they'll be on my cornflakes packet...
So I thought you might like to read someone else's thoughts on the matter as well.
At least the problem (if you could call it one) doesn't seem as endemic in Britain as it does in the US. They do have to do everything bigger and better across the Atlantic. X.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dragging-anchors-i-made-the-news-today-455993.html

This may be of interest....

After you get a chance to read it - let me know what you all think

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2245977,00.html

Technical advances - Are they to blame?

Fears that British television has become less intelligent or informative over the past few years have been growing recently. Many TV pundits have criticised the rise of populist television and, in particular, the number of so-called ‘docusoaps’ which threatened to replace the renowned and revered British tradition of in-depth documentary making by people such as Nick Broomfield.

It is certainly easy to blame the rise in dumbing down on technical advances such as the Internet. Many people now get their daily news from online sites such as the BBC and Sky. With online journalism it is necessary to write in a more readable style, those who use the internet have so much information at their fingertips that they will skip on if a story doesn’t grab their attention immediately. Comparisons with dumbing down on television news can be easily made with red top papers such as The Sun.

The Sun has always aimed at giving the reader the bare “facts” in a sensationalist style, and with sensationalist stories becoming more popular with the “masses”, it is only natural for broadcasters to follow a similar path.

I liked this definition of dumbing down. there's some really good bits in the article.


http://nomuzak.co.uk/dumbing_down.html

'The concept “dumbing down” can point to a variety of different things. It can, for example, mean programming to avoid any intellectual challenge to one's audience (a classical music radio station that plays individual movements, or no contemporary music, no or little vocal music, etc.). It is a term that is also commonly used used to criticise attempts to reach a wider audience through some kind of presentation gimmicks (laser light shows to accompany classical music, crossover pop/classical shows such as the Three tenors, Andrea Bocelli, etc.)'

Tabloid or Broadsheet?

Who prefers which style of news?


Tabloid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid


Broadsheet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadsheet

What is dumbing down?

Here's a good link for information on what it is and it's role in education and the media etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_down

BBC news at 10 v ITV news at 10

With the relaunch of ITV's news at 10 this week the Guardian have approached the head of BBC news to find out how it's going to affect their output (see link).

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/10/bbc.itv?gusrc=rss&feed=media

This week's going to be the crucial week when we see if 2 ten o'clock news can survive and which one works best.

Is news being dumbed down or are we getting dumber?

Many people say that the news is being dumbed down, and it is possible to argue very strongly that it is partly because of the modern generation. Take the coverage of "celebrities" for example, we can now find out just as much about Nicole Ritchie as what's happening in Iraq. When Bill Bryson wrote that a survey "had found that most American teenagers were as stupid as pig dribble" he was on to something, do these people want to be kept informed of the Australian elections? No, they want to know what Madonna or Brad Pitt is up to. The same can be said for modern Britain, "celebrity" programmes litter television now, and it's starting to get annoying. In short the news is getting dumber, we are.

Dumbing down the news?

I think this is a really interesting topic that we have been given.

Here is a link to a debate about news being 'dumbed down' and also being 'tarted up'.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/06/12/2007-06-12_dan_would_rather_not_see_katies_changes.html


Personally I watch Sky News a lot. I like the style of Sky and find BBC news in a word - boring.

Do you think that dumbing down the news is part of the progression of television programming or a reaction to the publics lack of interest in current affairs?

dumb news?

I was thinking about this whole concept of dumb news and why we're dumbing down the news, if we actually are.
are we, as a nation gettin dumber? because that could definitely be implied. Personally i think it's more to do with busier lifestyles etc and we need the news quick and to the point so we can take in what we need to know but there's no need to bog us down with unnecessary facts and figures just to pad it out.

On this note it got me to thinking about Newsround. Don't know if any of you watch it but it's actually quite informative. I wouldn't class it as 'dumb news' either because it's made simpler because it's for kids but still has the main parts of the story. Maybe we could use this? perhaps compare what they show on Newsround and their order with the 6 o'clock news for a week, see how they differ?

plus is anyone up for a meeting sometime soon. think we could probably do with one. maybe monday or tuesday?

Dumbing down the news... For starters I find this topic particularly interesting as the first thing I noticed about British news output was out intellectually stimulating it was (compared to Australian news bulletins). To be munching over my cornflakes in the morning and watching a report on C-Difficile on BBC Breakfast (while slightly unsettling for my stomach) was good for the brain and entirely foreign to the calibre of breakfast programming I am used to. The most taxing breakfast debate I would get back home would probably the jovial banter between some glamazon presenter and the weatherman about what brand of tooth-whitener gets the best results.
That was the second thing which struck me about British broadcasting - the presenters don't all appear to have osmosised from the pages of Harper's and Vogue. This is refreshing and, on a superficial level, goes some way to convincing me that (in Britain, at least) dumbing down the news is not quite so extreme.

possible idea

I did have one possible idea for something we could look at for our presentation. When we were looking at Newsbeat before something was said about it being more accessible and not necessarily too intellectually stimulating so maybe a comparison between it and something like Radio 4 news? perhaps a similarities and differences chart or something?

the first of many...

Just so we all remember our topic and question are:
Dumbing down the news -
To what extent must news dumb down as audiences fragment and decline?