NETWORK NEWS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

by Joanna Tsoukatos Submitted to the School of International Service of the American University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts in International Communication

INTRODUCTION

Television is the first development of consequence in modern history to reverse trends taking public matters away from the public. As other factors – population growth, bigness in business and labor, impersonalization of the printed media, growing sophistication of technology and decision making – tend to minimize individual man, television seeks to personalize government, politics, social change. For the average man, this is literally at his fingertips as he turns on the set. Individual man can get a better grasp of the forces that mold his social environment. 1
The present university students are the first humans to be reared by the third parent – television – which has given them hourly news of word events. Unlike any previous generation, the students think “world”. They will settle nothing less than justice and physical advantage for all, everywhere around earth. 2
Television has created a kind of intense political identification which, far from uniting men in human sympathy and tolerance, disperses and shatters into mutually hostile groups an erstwhile monolithic citizenry. 3
Television has been cast in the multitude of roles ranging from world savior, on the end of the spectrum, to the ultimate coersive weapon, on the other. There are those who claim television provides a window to the world for the average man and, in so doing, has expanded his awareness and stimulated his interest, and there are those who claim that television is the ultimate tranquilizer, and will make vegetables of us all. There are those who conceive of it as the glue that will unite the world and there are those who see it as the instrument that will fragment society, destroy civilization and make barbarians of us all. The controversy concerning television can only be equalled by that concerning nuclear weaponry – will it end all wars or, will it destroy humanity.
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1 William Small. To Kill a Messenger: Television News and the Real World. ( Hasting House N.Y., 1970), p.xii.

2 Buckminister Filter, in

3 Frederick D. Wilhelmsen and Jane Bret, Telepolitics: The Politics of Neuronic Man, (Tundra Books, N.Y., 1972),p.23.
This amounts to tenuous theorizing, however, since there is virtually no research on what television does to people, on a long-term basis. Whether stimulant or opiate, that which is known is Americans expose themselves to a heavy dosage of television. In the United States, over 60 million households own a television set. Of these, over 42 per cent own color sets, and, 34 per cent own two or more television sets. In the average American household television set stays on an average of six hours a day. In terms of average per capita viewing time, television viewing increased steadily until 1971, and in 1972, leveled off at two hours and 50 minutes per day.[1] According to a report on children’s viewing habits, the average child before entering kindergarten will have received more hours of instruction from television than he will have receive instruction in a college classroom getting his B.A. degree. [2] By the time the average American student graduates from high school, he, or she, has spent 15,000 hours watching television, compared with a mere 10,800 hours in the classroom.[3] Only sleeping time, and for the adult hours spent at work, surpass television as the top time-customer. It has been estimated that the average American male will spend the equivalent of 3,000 full days, roughly nine full years of his life watching television.[4] In short, television is important.
What is most important about television is television journalism. Is it in the field of journalism that television elicits the highest praises and evokes the strongest reprimands. It is appropriate that television be judged by its journalistic performance because it is television news and public affairs program that most consistently provide the public with information of direct political and social consequence. As one member of the FCC has pointed out, “Since it is the journalistic function which gives the principal social value to broadcasting, I would measure performance principally by the degree to which it performs this function.[5]
As indicated in the writing of former television network executives such as Robert Kintner, Frend Friendly and William Small, the primacy of television journalism is recognized within the industry as well. It is widely acknowledged that news and public affairs programs represent what U.S. television does best. This attitude is substantiated by the fact that hour for hour, news is the most expensive element in a television network’s budget.[6] The primacy of television journalism is reinforced by trends indicating that increasingly the bulk of a situation’s locally produced programming is news and public affairs.[7] In other words, if it were not for news – “the flagships of network prestige.”[8]
Television’s performance as journalistic medium is especially significant because the majority of Americans people regard television as their prime source of news.