Electronic News: Information As
Entertainment
Chapter Outline
History
Industry
Controversies
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Newsreels
 Short films, covering news of the day.
▪ 5-6 items of current news, human interest and sports
 From WW I until 1950s,
▪ Shown with the feature attractions in movie theaters.
 Covered expected events
▪ and Residual news
▪ Long-lasting events such as floods
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Radio News (Newspapers felt threatened)
 1933 - Newspaper industry forced radio into Biltmore Agreement:
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No morning newscasts before 9:30am or evening newscasts before 9:00pm.
No breaking news bulletins from the wire services.
Newscasts could not be sponsored.
Radio commentaries (discussions about the news) were permitted.
▪ Why would the newspapers seek out an agreement like this?
 The Biltmore Agreement lasted less than one year.
 Newscasters, such as
▪ NBC’s Lowell Thomas, H.V. Kaltenborn at CBS,
▪ Gossip columnist Walter Winchell became radio stars.
 Radio
▪ Used on-the-spot news & eyewitness reporting of breaking news,
▪ Including the 1937 explosion of the German dirigible The Hindenburg
 Radio helped newspapers
▪ By building the audience’s appetite for in-depth newspaper coverage
of breaking news heard over the radio.
 Radio audiences heard live reports such as…
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Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria
The 1939 invasion of Poland,
The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Radios advantage in these cases
 In 1946, 63 percent of Americans cited radio as their primary
source of news.
 What is YOUR primary source of news?
▪ Why is that your primary source?
 1948, radio proved its advantage over slower-moving print media.
 Early editions of newspapers erroneously reported
▪ Republican Thomas Dewey defeated Democratic incumbent Harry Truman in
the presidential election
 Radio accurately flashed the news that Truman had won.
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All-News Format
 In 1960, San Francisco area station KFAX (“K-Facts) began
presenting news 24 hours a day.
 KFAX followed a “newspaper of the air” format
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Like reading an entire newspaper from front to back, including
Sports,
Cooking features,
A “comics page,” consisting of comedy recordings
 The format was a financial failure.
▪ Why would a format like this would fail?

Television News
 After WW II, TV execs thought people would still rely on radio
news,
▪ TV would be used as an entertainment medium.
▪ Edward Murrow at CBS believed otherwise.
 TV news had difficulty getting footage until deals were made with
newsreel companies

Coverage of Assassinations and Civil Unrest
 JFK death marked the beginning of a turbulent decade
▪ The 1968 assassinations of
▪ Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
▪ Urban riots sparked by protests against racial equality & Vietnam War.
▪ 1965 Watts Riots
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Coverage of Vietnam
 In-depth on-the-scene TV reporting from Vietnam battlefield
▪ Began to include bloody footage of young soldiers being maimed and killed.
 This created a credibility gap between
▪ Govt attempts to manage news & what public believed to be true.
▪ Are you more likely to believe what you hear or what you see
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Cable News
 Ted Turner adapted an all news format & launched (CNN) in 1980
 Several 24-hour-a-day news stories made CNN into a true
competitor for the networks:
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The 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
Comprehensive coverage of the first Gulf War in 1991.
Any CNN Watchers in here? What draws you to it?

Cable News
 In 1997, Fox News was launched by Rupert Murdoch and
Roger Ailes as a conservative alternative to what they felt was
a liberal CNN.
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Online News (What are the top online news services)
 The web in the 90’s
▪ Encouraged papers to establish online editions for:
▪ Search functions, Archiving, Linking articles, reader feedback.
 By 1995 there were some 150 papers online.
▪ Today there are thousands.
▪ What options are there
if people only want certain news
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Online TV News
 By 2000 most network & local TV news organizations were
online with well-designed sites.
 Were leaders in video on demand
▪ Enabled users to call up video clips of news events, current and archived.
 What is News?

News is
 Information about events that are currently happening,
 Have happened so recently we haven’t heard about them yet.
 Obsession with being 1st with breaking news, & pressure to
make news “new,”
▪ often results in the reporting of rumors and incomplete information.

News
 Has to have impact on its intended audience.
▪ Important because it will have some consequence on them or is useful
 Has to grab the audience’s attention,
▪ Professional will find a peg, or angle, to make it important, timely
information interesting to the audience.
 Everyone in the newsroom has to have some computer skills
because everything is computerized
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Copy to graphics,
Footage, logos,
In-depth audio visual databases.
Editing
 More than 50 percent of Americans get their news from TV
 There are so many news sources people can pick
▪ Only news that interests them or expresses reinforces their views
▪ Critics believe this narrow perspective increases intolerance & bigotry
 What are specialized news sources you can think of?
 Television news has been guilty of creating news stories whose
sole purpose is to promote entertainment programs elsewhere on
the schedule.
▪ CBS, for example, covered its program “Survivor” extensively on its morning
news show.
 The public’s reaction to perceived political bias and entertainment
values in the news have caused the public to lose confidence in the
news media’s credibility.
 What news sources do you think are most credible?
 Least Credible?
▪ Why?