Languages of news in newspapers and the way texts of news are written on television cannot follow the same style and standards. This is connected with an important aspect in journalism, which is audience perception. There are different aspects to be observed to see how special the television news writing is in terms of linguistic and stylistic features. First of those aspects is the audience perception: Writing for the broadcast journalism is different from writing for the print journalism, as it is about forming texts for the ear, while print journalism represents writing for the eye. Second angle we can have a look at the language and style of TV news from is its structure: The news story completely and radically differs from other types of pieces of writing. Such genres as a short story, a narrative, a drama, a play, a film script or book incepts along with an introduction of the general information — background or with the “curtain raising” of various characters and conditions. Plot of the story concludes after the piece of writing reaches the climax. On the other hand, a conventional news story begins with the climax and details are usually left for the closing sentence. The story in all other genres reveals step by step and the most important part of the information comes in the middle, while in information genres, it opens with the cream of whole story, gradually counting out relevant details. Finally, TV news writing is specific due to its requirement of consideration further process of news production and broadcast. Upon preparing texts for television news programs, along with linguistic aspects, some para-linguistic factors must be taken into account, such as intonation, pronunciation, graphic support, non-verbal compound, etc.
Coming to the first and the most important aspect, which is audience perception, many scientific works as well as practical manuals, professional handbooks of American and European specialists can be scrutinized. The reason this aspect gains more privilege and significance is that news casting in a foreign language raises the issue of making sure whether audience is perceiving the news in the way the newsroom aims.
According to The News Manual developed by leading news writing specialists Peter Henshall and David Ingram, “whether you write for newspapers, broadcasting or the Internet, you should always aim for words and sentences which provide the maximum amount of understanding with the minimum risk of confusion.” [2]
Mervin Block’s Writing Broadcast News has a careful look at even small details in writing scripts for news reporting, calling every newsroom staff who works with words to be confident that the listener or viewer does not misunderstand the sentences. Experienced newsroom pundit, Block, explains the process of perception in many examples, one of which is given below:
“A lead that backs into a story with a participle is weak and murky. And it requires too much of listeners. The participle, or participial phrase as in the example, takes a verb and turns it into an adjective by tacking on ing. The participial phrase with secondary information that listeners hear at the start means nothing until they hear the next cluster of words and discover the subject of the sentence. Then they have to rearrange the word clusters to make sense of what they just heard. How many listeners have the time, energy and aptitude to do that while the wordathon rolls on and on?” he writes, when he explains the urgency of avoiding participle phrases in TV news in “Don’t start a story with: a participial phrase or a dependent clause” chapter [3].
When we put the structure of news stories under the lens, we see that for TV it must be kept precise, short and not distractive maximally.
There is another way of news reporting, according to some of the specialists — a story or a narrative. A story or a narrative is a report about events. However, one cannot say that it is just any sort of account of any events. A story is an assortment of happenings into one content. Speaking in more simple tone, narrative structure is how a story can be structured or set together.
Linguo-stylistics of news programs on television can be different depending on the formats they utilize. American TV news evolution includes many stages, giving a birth to plenty of various formats.
Anchoring gives the first impression and imagination about the news that is going to be told. Imagine a news program where an anchor is connecting with the reporter through so-called “spacebridge”, letting the news story begin with the peace to camera of the correspondent on the ground of happenings. All these process prepare the viewer for the news viewing.
It’s important to mention that graphics are now vital part of any news story, especially economic and relevant types. Modern TV newsrooms prepare infographics for viewers to make their products more comprehensive and perceivable. “It’s particularly difficult to visually depict a lot of numbers using video, but it’s fairly easy to do so with a graphic. Your story might be about crime figures: assaults are down, armed robberies are up, property crime is down, other types of crime have remained constant. You probably won’t be able to get your hands on video of each of those crimes taking place, but you can ask a talented (and VERY valuable) graphics person to put together a full-screen graphic (FSG) titled “Crime Statistics” that shows the numbers of each type of crime as compared to a previous period of time”, writes C. A. Tuggle and Forrest Carr in their Television News Story Forms [1].
Graphics and subtitles support the story and are directly relevant to TV news writing, as for example, if you keep in mind that you write the name of the interviewee on the lower third, you may skip that information in your text.
News programs show the headlines — the most highlighting information of the news stories on the lower third to keep the viewer on track of news discovery.
Image of news presenters, as well, affect on the way viewers percieve the delivered information. Whether presenters take long speeches to introduce the topic or they keep their anchoring statements compact and precise. Whether they stand in the studio or have a sit with a TV box in the set. Whether traditional studio hosted the shootings or virtual sets used to give a sense as if an anchor is speaking not in a “green studio”, but in a cozy, comfortable news studio. All these in their own turn deals with audience perception. Specialists state that ignoring all these factors, segregating them from the language and style factor, it is impossible to analyze the linguo-stylistics of news casting.
Though indirectly, these paralinguistic factors influence on the content and perceptibility of news. If we imagine the linguistic and stylistic compounds of news reporting as a dish, paralinguistic features, such as how the news story is anchored or supported with graphics resemple the way a dish is served on the table. Once news casters think about influencing and manipulating the minds of public, they most probably think about using “apitizers” as much as possible, and take advantage of different news “serving” techniques to maximize the influence of prepared media materials. To optimize news reporting and forming a public opinion, all compounds, consisting of the language, style, “tone of voice”, visual effects, graphic and textual information on the screen must work as one mechanism, details of which must cowork together to give the final positive result. Thus, editorial offices of media are equipped with the latest technologies. Teams consisting of professionals of different fields, starting from linguistics to information technologies operate in these newsrooms.
References:
- Tuggle, C.A., Carr, Forrest C. D. Television News Story Forms.
- Henshall, Peter and Ingram, David. The News Manual. — 1991.
- Block, Mervin. Writing Broadcast News — Washington, D.C., 1992
- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sweep
