How TV learned to tell the news
When television started in the United States, just after the war,
the two big networks, CBS and NBC, had to hire people with no
broadcasting experience to work on the news. Their own radio news
journalists didn't think television would last and refused to
leave their jobs.
Breaking the News (BBC2, Sundays, 7.50 pm) tells the fascinating
story of television news in America, Russia and Britain. Last
week's opening programme (in a series of four) told of this
inauspicious beginning.
The news shows promised `Today's News Today', but the film
footage was often several days old. The journalists didn't mind,
because they knew their viewers had already read the stories in
the newspaper, and were now just looking at the pictures.
But by the 1948 US election, when the television stations covered
the all-important party conventions, people started to become
aware that the medium was more powerful than merely radio with
pictures. Now, some stars of radio crossed over to the new
medium.
In Britain, the BBC just didn't get it. In 1948, when BBC
television started, instead of showing film of an event the
station would often show still photographs.
d in the Soviet Union, with Stalin still running things, the
television news didn't even come on at a regular time, just
whenever the Communist Party wanted to make an announcement. The
station used pretty actresses to present the news.
``We had to give out as much positive news as possible, to ensure
people had no reason to be unhappy,'' one former newsreader says
now.
By the early 1950s, the US was gripped in near-hysterical
anti-communism, and television played its part. One broadcast
about how to spot a commie began: ``In recognising a communist,
appearances count for nothing.''
Hilarious now, chilling then.
The pervasive atmosphere of fear was worsened by the publication
of Red Channels, a booklet claiming the broadcasting industry was
being heavily influenced by the Communist Party, and listing 150
of the country's top writers, directors and performers suspected
of being Reds.
But just as television contributed to the Red Scare, so the
medium destroyed it. The cameras of a new programme, `See It
Now', tracked Senator Joe McCarthy for months, then simply showed
the viewers what a nasty, vicious bully he was.
Ending the broadcast, the journalist Edward R Murrow looked
straight at the camera and said: ``He didn't create this situation
of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather well. Cassius was
right. `The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in
ourselves.' Goodnight''
It ended McCarthy, and showed the real power of television for
the first time.
Britain was catching up, slowly. And as usual, the British
discovered that their social and political conscience happened to
be as far away as possible from home.
Nonetheless, the new Panorama programme sent the former Labour
MP, Woodrow Wyatt, to South Africa. The film he sent back showed
black children singing and dancing, but also had his comment.
``Maybe they'll be content to accept the government's idea that
they're inferior to the white man, and they'll be happy to grow
up as second class citizens in their own country. Or perhaps
things will go the other way. In a few years time there could be
a giant African revolt and these children will be part of it,'' he
told the viewers.
For the Suez crisis, the BBC was braver, refusing to back the
Tory government's line and giving airtime to the Labour
opposition. The exposure destroyed Anthony Eden's career.
Then came ITN, and really shook things up with what was then
considered a brash, informal approach. The BBC lost 70% of its
news audience in 18 months.
In the USSR, Stalin was dead, and Kruschev's hand was lighter.
There was still censorship, but television news began to show
what was going on in other countries. When Kruschev visited the
US, the cameras went with him.
``For the first time, we saw the Americans were people - like us!''
commented one broadcaster.
Breaking The News is mostly uncritical in its approach to its
subject. There has been no suggestion so far that television's
great dramatic strength, its pictures, is also its central
weakness: images are always more important to a producer than
words, but words are what give news its context, and news without
context is merely entertainment.
It is, however, shaping up to be an interesting series, with
rather a lot of time and money spent on the research. Also, let's
see how they cover themselves covering Ireland.
By Michael Kennedy
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