The Cognitive Impact of Television News

The Cognitive Impact of Television News

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The Cognitive Impact of

Television News

Production Attributes and Information

Reception

Barrie Gunter

© Barrie Gunter 2015

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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence

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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication

may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2015 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,

registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,

Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,

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and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

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processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the

country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gunter, Barrie.

The cognitive impact of television news : production attributes and

information reception / Barrie Gunter.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Television broadcasting of news. 2. Television—Production

and direction. 3. Mass media—Psychological aspects. 4. Television

viewers. I. Title.

PN4784.T4G84 2015

070.1

95—dc23 2014038407

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-46881-9

ISBN 978-1-349-50031-4 ISBN 978-1-137-46882-6 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9781137468826

Contents

Preface vi

1 How Much Do We Value Television News? 1

2 Do We Remember Much from Television News? 15

3 How Does Television Compare with Other Media? 38

4 Are Some Television News Stories Easier to Remember? 53

5 Does Television Tell Stories in a Memorable Way? 71

6 Do Pictures Help or Hinder Our News Memories? 96

7 Is Television News Presented Too Fast? 117

8 Is Television News Packaged Helpfully? 133

9 Do We Need to Receive Television News More Than Once? 145

10 Can Television News Be Entertaining and Memorable? 156

References 170

Index 197

v

Preface

This book is about the news on television and its audience. Its focal

point is whether televised news effectively gets the news across to the

public or not. We might think that the news is informative – after

all, isn’t that what it is made to be? When we look more closely at

what people actually take away with them from specific news broad￾casts, however, this common sense view is challenged. Looking more

closely at the news on television, in the sense taken by this analysis,

entails assessing through formal tests how much viewers can remember

of what they have seen and heard in news bulletins. What do view￾ers learn from single bulletins and from multiple bulletins over time?

On some occasions, these ‘memories’ can be measured in terms of rec￾ollections of factual information and on other occasions as impressions

or perceptions that news consumers hold about specific public figures,

objects, organisations, events or issues. As we will see, if we ask viewers

whether they learn from televised news, most will usually claim that,

of course, they do. When we test more formally for the types of infor￾mation they have acquired following their exposure to news broadcasts,

independently measured learning and memory outcomes do not always

confirm these personal claims.

Major opinion polls conducted over many decades in countries such

as the UK and the US, for example, have revealed that most people nom￾inate television as their most important source of news. In these polls,

members of the public also often observe that news provision is one of

the most important functions of television. Most people believe they

receive ‘most of their news’ from television. Most regard television as

their most trusted news source. Hence, in developed democratic soci￾eties at least, the public attach great credibility to televised news. They

value it for its perceived accuracy, its balance of coverage of major issues,

its impartiality and objectivity in the way specific stories are reported,

and for the immediacy of its coverage that not only keeps them up to

date with the latest news developments in the world, but can also make

them seem like eyewitnesses to some events as they happen.

News professionals will acknowledge these attributes as well. They

will claim that the news outputs they produce are objective, designed

to bring to people information about events and issues that is current

and relevant; and that their storytelling techniques are designed not just

vi

Preface vii

to provide accurate accounts of news events but also to enhance wider

public understanding of the important issues of the day.

This book will not claim that television fails to deliver on what the

public expects and the professionals claim. There is ample evidence

that people benefit greatly from their exposure to televised news. The

public – especially in open, democratic societies that value freedom of

speech and allow the news media the latitude to report without govern￾ment constraints or censorship (beyond the boundaries of reasonable

‘public interest’ legislation) – are kept informed by sources that can

largely be trusted to get the facts straight. Such news sources usually

adhere to codes of professional practice that require them to place objec￾tivity in news reporting above all else. In countries with more autocratic

political regimes, the news diets fed to people can be both selective

and biased from the outset. Even in open democracies, selectivity and

bias in news broadcasting can still occur but tend to be underpinned

or shaped by professional and commercial reasons rather than political

imperatives.

The subjective perceptions of viewers, however, can sometimes give

a misleading impression of the informational effectiveness of televised

news and even one that is completely wrong if we set a strict benchmark

of ‘learning’ based on viewers’ abilities to produce accurate personal

accounts of the reports of events they witnessed in specific bulletins.

We might also frequently discover that most people lack a sound knowl￾edge of topics that have been covered in the news. As we will see, in

surveys where viewers were telephoned at home within an hour or two

of an evening’s televised bulletin, most of the stories that were reported

were forgotten. Even when viewers were forewarned that they would be

called, they did not fare much better.

We can, of course, challenge the validity of this type of research by

arguing that such ‘recall tests’ put viewers unfairly on the spot and do

not provide a sufficient opportunity to explore the full extent of their

news memories or of their wider current affairs knowledge. This crit￾icism has some currency. We do not simply remember isolated facts,

which we then place in a storage device in our brains that we might

label as ‘news memory’ and from which we can then pluck answers to

questions in news quizzes. It is sometimes necessary to use more subtle

approaches to coax complex memories to the surface. Such knowledge

can then be utilised to ensure we tick the right boxes in a news knowl￾edge test or to articulate in our own words descriptive and explanatory

accounts of news stories we witnessed on television.

viii Preface

The evidence for the failure of news stories to penetrate our brains

in subsequently usable ways becomes more compelling when memory

lapses still occur despite careful prompting and probing. More serious

still is the evidence that facts can get mixed up from different stories

and a richer understanding of events that goes beyond simple facts fails

to emerge. Indeed, the news can sometimes even create false memories

of what actually happened in specific reported events if presentation

practices lead viewers away from the core aspects of a story.

Of course, it is important to recognise what might be happening to us

when we watch the news on television. It is a gross oversimplification to

think of watching a televised bulletin as some kind of completely new

learning experience every time we tune in. Instead, broadcast news pro￾vides us with updates on topics about which we might already possess

some knowledge. This knowledge might have been obtained through

a variety of sources. Televised news does not operate in an informa￾tion vacuum. It forms part of a much bigger environment in which the

flow of news occurs through a variety of information channels that also

include newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts and, these days, other

sources of information that can be located via the internet. Our knowl￾edge of topics that get reported in the news might also derive from our

more formal educational experiences at school, from private reading and

from conversations we have had with other people.

Pre-existing topic knowledge has emerged as an important factor in

relation to the richness of new memories that are forged out of televised

(and other media) news experiences. If a televised news story concern￾ing the impact of a new government policy on the performance of the

national economy is presented, it might contain technical elements that

have meaning only for those viewers who possess some prior working

knowledge of economics. For viewers lacking this knowledge, the tech￾nical terms contained in a news report will lack meaning and if they are

central to the comprehension of the story, they could render it relatively

meaningless to those viewers. Viewers who have studied economics,

however, might possess a rich knowledge base within which this new

information can be embedded and interpreted. Hence, much stronger

memories can be laid down about the story that can also be more easily

retrieved at a later time when needed.

Some losses of information from televised news, therefore, can

undoubtedly be pinned at the door of viewers themselves and their

lack of broader relevant knowledge that could enhance their abilities

to process complex new information delivered to them by broadcast

Preface ix

journalists. As we will see, there is corroborative evidence from for￾mal research inquiries to confirm this last observation. What has also

emerged from the much wider body of scientific research evidence on

audiences and broadcast news, however, is that when news bulletin

information fails to penetrate viewers’ memories, there are other reasons

for this outcome that have nothing to do with viewers themselves.

As already noted, news professionals – that is, the journalists who

report and write specific news stories and the editors who take deci￾sions about which stories to include in a programme and how the

programme itself will be organised and presented – take pride in their

professional codes of practice. In television broadcasting, there is often

legislation imposed by government, through regulators, that sets down

standards for news reporting. The necessity for such controlling codes

of practices is underpinned by the belief that television is a powerful

communications medium that can exert significant influence over pub￾lic understanding of current events and issues and over public opinion.

In addition, journalists learn practices that are designed to ensure that

the highest standards of news reporting are maintained. Their profes￾sional and trade bodies usually devise their own ethical codes of practice

that are in turn designed to ensure that qualified journalists do not stray

from the standards expected of them.

All news reporting follows a cycle. This means that news outputs,

regardless of the news medium, must meet delivery deadlines. These

deadlines can vary with the frequency with which specific news outputs

are usually published. Hence, monthly magazines have longer timelines

for delivery than do weekly magazines. Weekly newspapers have longer

delivery timelines than do daily newspapers. With news broadcasting,

timelines might be weekly, daily or even hourly depending upon how

frequently specific broadcasts are transmitted.

Inevitably, internal working practices of news organisations are

designed to enable effective delivery of published outputs according to

their usual delivery timeline. For those news outputs that operate within

short time cycles, specific organisational practices must be adopted to

ensure the news is delivered on time. News broadcasters that are tasked

with delivering news bulletins several times a day operate with tried￾and-tested working practices that facilitate fast decision making and

observe specific rules concerning news story selections and styles of

delivery.

Broadcast newsrooms are confronted on a daily basis with many more

news stories than they have the airtime or space to cover. Such limits to

overall news outputs from broadcast newsrooms have been dissolved

x Preface

with the onset of accompanying news websites, but apply to standard

televised bulletins just as much in the digital era as they did in the

analogue era. News editors must therefore make quick decisions about

which stories are to be chosen for that day’s programmes, how much

time will be allocated to each one, the running order of stories in the

bulletin and the nature of each specific news story package in terms of

style of presentation.

An initial decision about a news story centres on whether it is deemed

sufficiently important or ‘newsworthy’ for coverage. This decision in

turn is influenced by a range of factors that characterise the story itself.

These factors could include whether the event being covered is local,

national or international in terms of its implications, whether geograph￾ically it occurred close to home, whether it involved an incident that

could evoke strong emotions in the audience and, in the case of televi￾sion, whether it is something that can be visualised and for which visual

imagery (preferably moving video footage) is available.

The importance of the people involved in the news event could be

another influential factor and this can require newsrooms to call upon

personal knowledge of public figures and their current standing in terms

of ‘public interest’. Indeed, ‘public interest’ is a commonly used notion

to determine whether or not a story should be reported. This tends to be

a highly subjective judgement on the part of news editors that derives

from self-accredited expertise they possess as specialists who spend their

working lives embedded in the news.

It is perfectly understandable that newsrooms operate according to

long-established professional practices that are designed to ensure the

news is delivered on time. What can cause more difficulty in the context

of the public’s understanding of news is that some newsroom practices

are grounded in subjective beliefs about the way people learn informa￾tion. News editors often deploy a kind of naïve psychology to justify

their production decisions. Television is a highly visual medium and

failure to utilise this intrinsic aspect of the medium to the maximum

is regarded as a wasted opportunity. As we will see, however, the use of

pictures in televised news must be thought about carefully from the per￾spective of how they could bias the memories that viewers take away

with them of specific stories. The pictures must support the words.

Often, the pictures dominate the story and capture viewers’ attention

to a point where key information that is presented in the spoken narra￾tive of the news gets lost. Where pictures bear little direct relevance to

the story being told, they can result in viewers leaving the bulletin with

misleading impressions about what actually happened.

Preface xi

News bulletins are not simply random sequences of news reports.

They are carefully constructed creations that adhere to rules of televi￾sion production aesthetics which are underpinned by intuitive theories

about how to engage audiences. Hence, the running order of broadcast

news does not come about by accident. Editorial decisions are made

about which stories the bulletin will lead with, which stories will follow

each other, which stories will get the most airtime and which stories

will be headlined at the top of the bulletin and summarised at the end.

Each of these decisions is driven by professional practice values, some

of which are based on ideas about how to help audiences remember key

points from the news. These production features can indeed influence

how much viewers learn and remember from news broadcasts, but not

always in the ways news professionals believe.

News broadcasters know they must attract and retain audiences as

well as inform them. This means that news broadcasts must be found

sufficiently interesting by viewers so that their attention is captured and

maintained all the way through to the end of the programme. In addi￾tion, viewers must remember the gratifications they obtained from that

experience to a point where they are motivated to return time and again

to specific news bulletins.

Over the years, the news environment has become more crowded and

the battle for news consumers has grown more competitive. On tele￾vision, news broadcasters are not only competing with each other but

also with other types of programming that have increased in number in

multi-channel television environments. This has encouraged television

executives to think more and more about audience capture and market

share and to adopt production techniques that place news broadcasts

on a more equal footing with entertainment shows. There is nothing

intrinsically wrong with thinking about ways of making televised news

more interesting. A bored audience is unlikely to pay a news broadcast

much attention and may eventually stop watching altogether. Having

acknowledged this point, it is also important to recognise that there

could be a price to be paid in terms of audience memory and com￾prehension of televised news when production techniques are adopted

that are driven by entertainment imperatives or by the need to engage

audiences purely at an emotional level.

Whenever we are confronted with a learning task, we need to be

sufficiently aroused so that we pay attention, but we should not be

excessively aroused because this could impede our ability to take new

information in. The optimal level of arousal for effective learning

can vary with the complexity of the learning task and also with the

xii Preface

pre-existing subject area knowledge of the learner. Given that most news

viewers may lack detailed background knowledge about complex news

stories, not only does the language used need to be simplified but the

use of production techniques designed to engage viewers emotionally

should be controlled to avoid excessive distraction and interference with

learning.

It is a difficult balancing act to achieve and all the more so when

operating within news cycles that have short timelines. Perhaps what

is most important is that news professionals have some awareness of

the possible repercussions for audiences of using specific production

techniques in terms of their learning, retention and understanding of

the news. In saying this, it is not the purpose of this book to dictate

news production practices. Instead, it represents an attempt to provide

research-based insights into how audiences react to and process tele￾vised news that might then be taken into account during editorial, visual

production and scriptwriting decision making.

This book is designed to examine these issues and provide insights,

based on scientific research, about the information uptake from tele￾vised news by audiences and how it can be influenced by the decisions

and actions of news broadcasters. Nearly 30 years ago, the author wrote a

book titled Poor Reception: Misunderstanding and Forgetting Broadcast News

that examined this subject based on the research that was available

up to the mid-1980s. That book was an offshoot of the author’s doc￾toral research that was conducted in the late 1970s. It appeared about

the same time as another titled The Main Source, which was authored

by Mark Levy and John Robinson, two academics who at the time

worked at the University of Maryland. Both books reviewed evidence

which included original research by the authors themselves that focused

on the nature and potential impact upon news learning of broadcast

journalists’ practices.

Since these publications emerged, the news media have been trans￾formed through the expansion of broadcasting and the emergence of

the internet, and a great deal of further research has been carried out

and published about the public’s processing of information from news

media. The current book represents an attempt to bring these earlier

reviews up to date and to reflect on whether the changes to the media

landscape that have occurred since the 1980s have alleviated or exacer￾bated the information limitations of broadcast news that were observed

at that time.

Since the end of the 20th century, the world has been radically

altered in terms of its entertainment and information streams by the

Preface xiii

dramatic growth of networked computer systems and the associated

phenomenon of the ‘internet’. The internet has provided expanded

competition in the news industry and fresh opportunities for the news

establishment. All major and most minor news organisations have a

presence on the internet in the form of their own websites, and increas￾ingly in their use of micro-blogging and social media sites. The internet

and the various content platforms it connects together have created an

environment in which formerly distinct sectors of the news industry –

most notably the printed press and electronic broadcasters – now oper￾ate in direct competition. Moreover, both sectors produce news in each

other’s traditional presentation formats.

Online newspapers produce audio and video news streams while

online broadcasters publish readable news texts. The world of news has

therefore become a much more complex place since the mid-1980s.

The options for news consumption on the part of news audiences have

also expanded. In addition, interactive technologies have created two￾way flows of communication that have enabled news consumers to

contribute to news provision and production.

Despite the empowerment of audiences in relation to news provided

in online settings, there is still a reliance on mainstream news suppliers

that are for the most part the same news organisations that dominated

the industry before the days of the internet. Those news suppliers have

modified some of their professional practices in adapting to the new

requirements and expectations of the online world, but also retain many

traditional decision-making principles when it comes to ‘making the

news’. Hence, the attributes of news and its presentation that repre￾sented the focal points of the 1980s’ analyses still have relevance in

contemporary settings to any new and updated analysis of broadcast

journalism practices and their efficacies in relation to learning about

the news. In consequence, these features of news storytelling and visual

production provide structural lynchpins for this new review of evidence.

1

How Much Do We Value

Television News?

In its far-reaching survey of the communications market in the UK,

communications regulator Ofcom (Office of Communications) reported

that despite the overall diversification of the news supply system, televi￾sion remained the most important and most often used medium for

news consumption among the British people (Ofcom, 2013). Nearly

eight out of ten adults surveyed by the regulator (78%) said they used

television to get their news. Television far outstripped other platforms

that were used to access news ‘nowadays’, leaving newspapers (endorsed

by 40%), radio (35%) and the internet (32%) in its wake. What also

emerged however was that most people today use a range of news

sources, of which television is just one. The proportion of British news

consumers who said they used only television for their news was much

smaller (22%). Such people were more likely to be older and poorer.

Focusing on specific named news suppliers, the same research con￾firmed the continued dominance of television. Overall, more than six

in ten people (62%) named a television channel as their most important

news sources compared with one in seven (14%) that named a website

(Ofcom, 2013).

In similar research reported by the Pew Institute for the US, television

again emerged as the pre-eminent medium for news with many more

(55%) saying they got their news from it ‘yesterday’ compared with

online sources (39%), radio (33%) and newspapers (23%). Benchmarked

against the UK, television was not so widely endorsed. Nonetheless, it

still outstripped other news media, with newspapers in fourth place and

digital or online sources reaching the second spot for American news

consumers (Kohut et al., 2012). Perhaps more significant still were the

age differences of users of most widely used news sources. Among the

youngest adult news consumers, even television had been overtaken by

online news sources. For 18–24-year-olds, for instance, the most widely

1