Original scientific paper
EDITORIAL SELECTION OF TV NEWS – A CHOICE BETWEEN VIEWERS, COMMERCIAL INTERESTS AND POLITICS
Tena Perišin
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This article is an enquiry into television news selection, which scrutinizes the question of journalists’ professionalism in selecting, producing and presenting the news, by putting it in critical relation to the issues of reception, the influences of politics and of commercial interests. Taking the route of identifying the key production, technological, and representational vectors, the study offers the elemental scope of professional criteria applied in news selection and production. On the basis of the main theories of news selection, including the key theory of Galtung and Ruge, and on the basis of her own research of news selection in the main television newscasts in Croatia (with special attention given to the central public service television news program “Dnevnik”), the article suggests that the structures of programs, journalistic forms and individual news texts correspond to the values ingrained in the classical postulates of television journalism theory, in the form of applied news factors. The article discusses the influence of political and commercial interest on TV news content and the ways in which technology changes the news flow. This study recognizes the need for a continuing redefinition in the realm of news theory, if it is to meet the serious institutional and production changes that news selection undergoes in the present age. Finally, further research is recommended in the direction of elevating the professional standards of Croatian television journalism to a higher level.
Keywords
television; journalism; politics; commercial interests; news factors; news values
Hrčak ID:
29026
URI
Publication date:
18.11.2008.
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