of broadcast journalism. Broadcast journalism is the transmission
of news on television or radio. The great strength of broadcast is, of
course, its immediacy—its power to give a viewer or listener the feel-
ing that “I’m there” as news is happening. Television gives viewers the
sights and motions of an event. Radio gives listeners sounds: the crack
of the bat at a baseball game or the boom of an explosion.
Broadcast news segments are limited by time, not space. Many sto-
ries must be told in 30 seconds or less. That’s not very long to cover
a story in any detail. In fact, if you took all the words spoken during
a 30-minute television news show and printed them in a newspaper,
they wouldn’t even cover the front page. Generally speaking, print
journalism provides greater substance in its reporting. Broadcast jour-
nalism, however, often lends itself better to our fast-paced lives and
short attention spans.
Writing to Pictures and Sounds
Television news broadcasting combines words and video images.
In television, as one observer notes, “you can show the sunset.” That
means that most of the time, television news reporters write their
stories to fit the pictures, a process that generally involves “underwrit-
ing.” In other words, reporters don’t try to describe what viewers can
see for themselves but rather provide brief snippets of supplementary
information. Typically, the pictures carry the story, and the words serve
mainly to complement what the viewers see. “One always writes with a
picture in mind,” explained longtime television reporter and CBS cor-
respondent Charles Kuralt.
Video images dominate television news. A high school broadcasting
class, for example, decided to do a story on winter activities in the area.
The students began with the normal interviews—talking to students
who enjoyed skiing and ice skating, plus local merchants who rented or
sold winter sports equipment. But one of the students thought the story
wasn’t exciting enough. He suggested they try a “sled cam.” One of the
students in the class had a toboggan, and the students made arrange-
ments to meet at a local hill on a snowy afternoon. The student who sat
in the front of the toboggan held a camcorder while the others pushed
and steered. Before long, the students had enough thrilling sled cam
videotape (complete with swoops and spills) to build their story. They
used sound bites from the interviews to provide supporting information
but made their trips down the slope the main visuals for the story.
Radio news broadcasts, like television news broadcasts, consist of
more than just words. In radio news, reporters use natural sound to
present a story. Natural sound, or nat sound for short, refers to the
noises and voices that can be heard at the scene of a news event.
Elizabeth Arnold of National Public Radio (NPR) says natural sound
can be used to make a point or establish a mood. In print news, for
example, you can’t capture the rasp in an old man’s voice when he
says he doesn’t want a cut in Medicare. Typically, radio news reporters
work moments of natural sound into their reports every two or three
sentences.
BROADCAST NEWS 437
broadcast journalism
the transmission of news on
television or radionatural sound
the noises and voices that can
be heard at the scene of a
news event, which radio news
reporters work into their
reports; also called nat sound