News for hearing - music for listening!
In Letters to the Editor column (sometime in June) Melville Perera in
Kohuwela wrote on ‘Radio/TV News reporting and Ads’ and made no bones
about it when he clearly voiced his opinion viz:
“Be it anywhere, people are interested in reading or listening to
news, local as well as international, relayed over the electronic
media”.
“It is regretted to note however that one feature of this reporting
is the speed at which it is delivered. News is an important issue for
the general public and a part of everyday life. Therefore, it must be
reported and disseminated in a manner that will be receptive to the
listeners.”
Broadcasting of news which was once dominated by Ceylon Broadcasting
Corporation, later Rupavahini and ITN drew people to news bulletins.
Today we have car radios to listen to news and music while travelling.
News casting is another form of journalism which has been popular
since the early 20th century. Currently, the television is by far the
most popular news source media available the world over.
News programmes
A lot of hard work goes behind a news bulletin prior to its
broadcast. Behind the scenes work many whose contribution makes the
final programme complete. Primarily the anchor men and women feed the
network, the news director organizes and delegates the stories, sales
manager generates the programme’s income by selling advertising time and
promoting the programme and engineers supervise the camera crew and
sound technicians ensure that the broadcast runs smoothly. Newscaster in
particular has a tremendous impact on viewers as a ‘public face’,
face-to-face as it were, with the audience in either magnetising or
repelling an audience.
Another aspect is overloading a news bulletin with commercials which
reduces the allocated news time which in a way makes the news reader to
read at rocket speed to get through what is written on a script. In such
a backdrop all responsible staff for news programmes have to constantly
monitor the standard of their own news releases, observe and listen to
their own newscasters, monitor delivery, speed and style to ensure that
the hard work done by many behind the scenes is reaping benefits or
whether newsreader appears to be a pain in the neck to listeners.
There is no doubt, some of our newscasters (particularly English) are
not getting through to the public one hundred percent with clarity at
the speed which they read news. Rather they appear to read the script to
themselves! News reading is not like reading a book. People hear news
and listen to music. There is a vast difference between the two.
University graduates
Meville Perera’s analysis on the ‘madrush’ on the part of most of the
newscasters can be argued favourably. Some of our local newscasters are
trying to impress either on their command of the language with an
artificial, borrowed or an affected accent and swallowing words most of
the time which makes no sense or does not serve any purpose to the
listener. Surely no one wants to listen to a presenter just droning on!
Most people speak at three words a second. If one were to listen to
BBC, CNN or other similar international television news bulletins this
becomes crystal clear. News has to be read in a fashion (what is
normally accepted as BBC English) which is clear and soothing to the
ear.
Some of our newscasters seem to be quite ignorant on this issue, as
much as their management. The main criteria to adopt for newsreaders
would be to slow down in their delivery because one’s natural speaking
will be too fast for a listener to take everything a newsreader utters.
Therefore, the mantra for news reading is supposed to make every word
matter while reading a script with confidence and pronouncing every word
evenly without trailing off at the end of a sentence or swallowing at
the end of words. A presenter needs to put emphasis on certain words
accordingly and pretend that he/she is addressing a specific person and
not a wide audience through the network.
Western news media usually employ university graduates, preferably
with a degree in journalism.
When hiring a newscaster it becomes the News Editor’s responsibility
to give much weight to the applicant’s previous career and to assess the
applicant with a voice testing exercise and not to get overcome by the
looks of an applicant!
Quality and clarity
The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation adopted a strict formula (from
Radio Ceylon days) in selecting radio announcers was subsequently
followed by Rupavahini and ITN. The first qualification they sought was
to ensure an applicant had a ‘voice for the microphone’.
During this exercise, applicants had three samples to read from (a) a
commercial (b) a news script (c) an obituary notice, as it demanded
three different approaches and delivery styles to get through to the
listeners. Selected applicants were graded as A, B and C announcers.
Even after that, they were trained internally prior to pushing them into
the deep end of casting news. This maintained quality and clarity.
With the advent of private establishments coming into the scene such
procedures have flown through the window and the most suitable
qualification to become a presenter/news reader today is mainly to be a
female, attractive looking and the amount of influence one has with the
top hierarchy no matter whether the programmes or news casting go to
hell!
The most idiotic procedure adopted today by many broadcasting
institutions is to assign celluloid clan and politicos to be presenters
on TV with a view to increase their viewer ratings.
If that is their motive then they should pick teledramas or films of
such celebrities for their channels and/or politicos to discussion
programmes rather than placing them in a proverbial dog in the manger
situation.
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