From Behind and Under the News Desk

From "Broadcast News"

Print and broadcast media have always been on two sides; the same but not quite. Though they share the same journalistic desire to uphold truth, they aren't necessarily the same in any other respect. The movie "Broadcast News" exemplified these differences and dilemmas in a romantic comedy that doesn’t just tug at the heartstrings, but also the mind.

In the movie, Jane is a neurotic producer who initially, accompanies field reporters out on locations. She has a strong moral compass, especially for her work in Journalism. This was reiterated in her initial conversations with Tom, an anchor who admittedly doesn’t have much experience and got through his audition by pure charm. She tells him that it’s not enough that he knows he’s inexperienced and that he should go out and do something about it. She even says outright that she doesn’t like what he’s doing, and that it’s not good ethics to not understand completely the news he tells the nation.

This is perhaps where the line between print and broadcast media is drawn: in the visibility of the journalists that cover it. Newspaper writing isn’t a glamorous profession; one’s face is rarely seen in it albeit for the times the paper decides to publish headshots with editorials. For a long time, people have gone without putting faces to their reporters, and now TV has made it so that it is also a visual experience. They do this in a very interesting way, by going on the field and conducting their interviews on camera or by filming the anchors in the studio.

This need for a visual experience poses a major dilemma for TV newsrooms, in that they can’t put just anybody in front of the camera. Anchors not only have to be composed, but they also have to be visually appealing, or in other words, handsome/beautiful. In the age of TV, stations are not only selling the news, but also how it’s delivered and who delivers it. But there’s always a catch to everything. Though it might be understandable why they have to hire beautiful people, they also might go as far as hiring someone without much experience for It, which is exactly what happened to Tom.

Anchors can easily get away with this because they have their executive producers feeding their lines, as well as Teleprompters to read from. From the get-go, It may not seem like much the chivalrous profession that newswriting or even field reporting exemplifies. But one also has to think that even those on the field can get swept up in selling a story so much so that they stage the scenes they were supposed to document.

It’s easy to chalk up anchoring as an easier role than field reporting. In fact one can even say that there’s discrimination between the two. However, there’s much more to the former than this perception, one has to consider that to sit in front of a camera, simultaneously talking, listening and reading can be an equally taxing job as being on location and chasing the story. The scene where Aaron was given an on-camera debut exemplifies those difficulties well enough. Not everybody can do it with composure and wit, because the role requires one to say the news as well as engage the reporters live.

A newspaper and TV newsroom have the same organized chaos to them. There are always people behind the scenes, scrambling for time. Newspapers have to do it the evening before, while TV, although sometimes preparing their stories beforehand, can also be doing it on-air. They only have one opportunity for this, and if they err, they err on camera for all to see. Along with this, news reports are rarely ever made to be rewinded. Newspapers are physical and can easily be reread, whereas TV news really only have the hour or so and then never again.

The two types of media both have their good and bad parts, but neither one is better than the other. They co-exist in the media sphere, with a station sometimes deciding to forgo a story and letting the newspapers pick it up or vice versa.

There’s more to TV broadcasting than an anchor sitting on a chair and reading. A story has to be captivating enough for watchers to stay. In most cases, money always becomes the excuse for journalists to break their code ever so slightly. “Broadcast News” exemplified the types of journalists in that one is steadfast about keeping to their ethics while the other doesn’t abide wholeheartedly. The third type is always in between about it. The best part about the movie is the realization that you don’t need to pick one or the other, you just have to do what’s right by your craft and code, and that’s exactly what Jane did.