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CHILDREN AND THE MEDIA

How are children, and childhood generally, presented in the media? How do the adult producers and directors of films and programmes about children and childhood present them? What do children get from films and programmes which are made for them (or towards which they are directed?). These are the sort of wide (and very open-ended) questions which I'd like to raise in this session. Before doing so, however, I think it's useful to make a few distinctions within the area so that we can be clearer about what we are looking for, and why.

• The representation of childhood. How is childhood portrayed? Is it shown to be a state of natural grace and innocence, a time of magic and wonder before "shades of the prison house begin to close about the dying boy?". Or is childhood shown to be a state of pre-adulthood, a time when the unruly and uncivilised child must or should be governed and led towards adult values and outlook? Is childhood a distinctive state in its own right?
• The representation of children. This raises further relevant questions. Are children shown to be "natural angels" or are they the "devil's spawn"? How do films and programmes deal with various aspects of children's behaviour: innocence, naively, cruelty, bullying, psychological awareness and insight, selfishness, abandonment, dreaming, etc.
• How do adults perceive and respond to childhood and children? And how do children perceive and respond to the adult world? Can you think of instances where a child's perspective is used to provide ironic or satirical commentary on the adult world and its values? Also, can you think of examples where adults have to come to terms with the fact that they once were children?
• What do children "know", and do they know that they know what they know? This, I know, sounds daft, but here I'm thinking of that school of thought which suggests that ostensibly straightforward and unsophisticated "tales for children" actually embody profound and potentially disturbing psychological and social issues. Bruno Bettelheim, in The Uses of Enchantment provides a fascinating psychological reading of fairy stories, and suggests that, in reading them, children are learning to deal with complex psychological issues. I'd recommend his book as an extremely valuable starting point for these discussions.
• The "right" and "appropriate" films and programmes for children? What issues does this raise? I'm thinking here of on-going arguments about the impact which certain films and programmes (or books, for that matter) have on children, whether in terms of morality and behaviour, social attitudes, "gender awareness", etc. Should certain films or programmes be regarded as insidious forms of propaganda, or do they seek to educate and raise awareness.

Some of these issues have been explored extremely well in Peter Coveney's Image of Childhood, a study of literary representation of childhood from 1750 to the present. Other studies have dealt with aspects of the above questions: see what you can find on the area!

For this session I want you consider some of these issues in relation to watching extracts from examples including Home Alone, The Snowman, Hook, Big, Snow White and The Innocents. Your task is to produce notes on where, and how, these examples (or other examples of your choice) provide answers to these questions. You might, finally, wish to consider the following perspectives:

(i)	Moral perspectives. What do the examples show about moral and ethical issues, and the difference between practical and theoretical morality? What moral perspective(s) does each example provide and how are they dealt with or resolved?
(ii)	Social perspectives. What do the examples show (or refrain from showing) about social issues - race, class, gender, age, poverty, social aspirations, authority and rebellion?
(iii)	Psychological perspectives. What psychological issues are raised by the examples (e.g. loss, abandonment, security, helplessness, marginality, dependence/independence, reason and emotion, anger, love, despair and hope, creativity, dreams and nightmares), and how are these resolved?

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THE NEWS

Consideration of television news raises a number of issues which run throughout Media Studies. Firstly there is the issue of "Realism", and the extent to which the news is, can or should be an accurate and complete account of reality itself: the fact that 'News' programmes package daily events into "news stories" is particularly important, because it illustrates just one way in which the "reality" of these events is mediated through the form, narrative modes and conventions of news presentation. Related to this is, of course, the issue of bias, selection and emphasis. This has proved to be one of the most controversial aspects of discussions of the News, nationally and internationally, and there is a wealth of material on this issue. Secondly, there is the particular history of British TV News, and the way in which Broadcast News has evolved since 1926. I discuss some of this material here.

The News: Realism, Narrative and Form

The News: Development and Contexts

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The News: Development and Context

[Notes indebted to Andrew Goodwin's "TV News: Striking the Right Balance")

In terms of the development of modern television news the first tendency to be noted is that, since 1948 (when the BBC first started to produce its own film newsreel), there has been a tremendous expansion in the amount of news broadcasting. Secondly, there has also, within the same period, been a tendency for the news to become increasingly popular (and populist) and controversial in tone, so that the News becomes itself a means of securing high viewer ratings.

In the early days, described by Asa Briggs as the "era of Radiovision", Film and Television news was produced by the BBC in a format of "radio with pictures": this tradition continued up until the mid-1950s and the establishment of ITN News. In mid-1930s film newsreels, produced by MGM and Gaumont, were shown twice-weekly but the main source of information about the News remained the Radio. It was not until 1948 that the BBC first started to produce its own newsreel, produced by the Film Division, and until 1954 the News output was restricted to a 10-minute "sound-based" bulletin. After 1954, due largely to the impact of the new commercial stations, the News Division of the BBC was allowed to produce its own newsreel programmes, but was bound by the long-standing traditional imperatives for sobriety, balance, objectivity and certainly no sensationalism. "The BBC's news at this time was gathered, selected, and presented using news values derived from radio - 'picture value' was not a consideration." (Goodwin) - and did its best to divide itself from the style and techniques of the popular press. The arrival of commercial television in 1955 changed this long-standing BBC tradition of announcer-read national news. The newly established ITN (Independent Television News), a separate organization set up by the commercial network, imported the American idea of "newscasters", who had personal styles and personal knowledge, who didn't simply read the news but was also a news reported and commentator. Furthermore, there was a distinct trend towards making the news more populist and entertaining, including the introduction of the humorous or "defusing" 'tailpiece' at the end of the News. The BBC was, inevitably, forced to follow suit: it acquired personality newsreaders and, whilst also remaining predominantly "serious" in tone, sought also to entertain and to preserve its audience. The tendencies towards populism and adding "entertainment value" were inevitable responses to the creation of a competitive market: the older BBC liberal values of public service broadcasting were challenged by the new realisation that audiences had to be "won". as a result of this, however, certain implications were inevitable. Firstly, the BBC had to move towards the recognition of "picture value". Pictures were more immediate in their appeal, but there remained the danger that abiding news values might be sacrificed if "sensationalist" film was available. This remains true even to today: a story's "news value" is considerably increased if it can be accompanied by sensational or dramatic film footage. The second implication was that the News, for both ITN and BBC, had to become more controversial in order to attract and interest viewers. More recently, with the advent of a deregularised media and the proliferation of new channels and media (Channel 4, Sky News, CNN), the demand to inform and educate viewers has had to be set against the need to retain viewers. Inevitably this has resulted in accusations of bias from either Left or Right as News programmes sought for the loyalties of its audiences, even at the risk of overturning the balance between dispassionate reporting and viewers' interest. For the older television news media it has not always been an easy balance to retain. One noteworthy development has been the complementary development of news feature and current affairs programmes - 'Newsnight', 'Weekend World', 'World in Action', which sought to provide in-depth explorations of news stories. Channel 4 news, (launched in 1982 and produced by ITN) was intended to provide precisely this form of news, debate and background.

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The News: Realism, Narrative and Form

The questions of Realism, bias and representation take us back to the material we looked at in the first two weeks of the course. As I have tried to stress, when we look at the issue of "realism" and the "representation of reality" in the media we have to be aware of the fact that the media always presents a "mediated" version of that reality, on its own terms. Sociological, political, cultural and ideological influences determine the way in which the media presents (or constructs) reality to us, as does the all-important influence of financial and economic factors. Also, in terms of the forms and conventions of media texts themselves, media texts re-package "reality", presenting events in terms of "stories", with a structure ("beginning., middle and end"), with characters and from a particular point of view. This takes us back to the work we looked at in the second week of the course, on Narrative. If we look at the News we can see that various political, social and cultural factors do impinge on the version of "reality" which the News presents to us. British News may well deal with international affairs, but its main focus is likely to be British in focus, as opposed to the News presented by CNN or the American TV news programmes. Furthermore, the News organisations (BBC, ITN, Sky News etc.), are bound by British legal and political constraints, as regards questions of taste, decency, balance etc. Various events have, in recent years, demonstrated the conflicts of interest which can arise here, as for example occurred in the 1980s with the Falklands War, the Miners Strike, or more recent coverage of the Gulf War and Northern Ireland. Because of the nature of the patterns of ownership, and mechanisms of control and moderation which govern British news broadcasting, the balance and fairness of British news broadcasting has come under question in recent years. The work of the Marxist Glasgow Media Group (found in their collections Bad News, More Bad News, Really Bad News) has looked at British news broadcasting over the last twenty years and, through a series of close analysis of individual broadcasts, has attempted to demonstrate that British TV news is systematically and structurally biased towards Establishment and Conservative interests, largely because of the nature of the ownership and political control which is exercised over the news and broadcasting organisations themselves. Alternatively, from the political Right, politicians such as Norman Tebbit have attempted to suggest that the bias works towards the Left, largely because of the background and education of media news professionals. The question of bias is a tricky one, and we need only think of the problems to see why news professionals conclude that if they are being criticised by Right and Left then they must be getting it right! Burglars or terrorists, for example, might complain that news programmes are biased against them and, to a certain extent, there is some limited credence to their argument. Alternatively, if news programmes are directed towards balance between the extremes of Left and Right, aren't they therefore biased towards the middle ground and the general area of the "consensus" and the status quo? Furthermore, certain news stories are so involved and complicated (Northern Ireland, for example, or the War in former Yugoslavia) that it proves well-nigh impossible to provide a totally impartial, balanced, full and accurate account of events without implicitly or explicitly imposing some form of interpretation or point of view on those events. These political and ideological issues are worth exploring when looking at news programmes in detail.

In addition to the role of outside influences, we also need to be aware of the ways in which news programmes, as media texts, present, construct or package "reality" through the forms, conventions and "codes" of the media text itself. TV news is, naturally, very different from the news in newspapers: the medium is different, the style is different, a different set of audiences is being addressed, the conventions are different. Take, for example, the 6 o'clock News on BBC1. This has certain conventions and styles. After the opening headlines, with news stories arranged into a hierarchy of "importance" (and think of the problem of deciding which stories are, on any one day, the "most important"): these headlines give attention-seeking snippets of information about the news items, although the main treatment of the items is left to later in the broadcast. After this introduction to the News, including welcoming and familiarising the viewer, individual news items are presented as stories with pictures (and on TV news pictures are everything!), with different allocations of time and depth to the news stories. At the end of the broadcast there is generally a "mood-lightening" story, and the programme ends with a repetition of the main "news headlines". Certain narrative conventions govern the programme as a whole, and the treatment of individual stories within the programme. It is, for example, only at the end of the programme that we the viewer know all that the "news reader" knew at the very beginning - we have been kept watching by the programmes control of the news "stories". Furthermore, the stories have to be (made) interesting, whilst also attempting to be balanced, fair and accurate, because News programmes are designed for a mass audience and so have to attract that audience. This may mean that important stories about European politics are downgraded to minor items, whilst major controversies about Liz Hurley's underwear are exploited to the full. It is a good exercise to see how individual news programmes present (or, rather, re-present) "News" through using the various conventions, styles and methods of story-telling. Close analysis of news programmes might well reveal (as the work of the Glasgow Media Group attempts to reveal) ways in which the form, style or narrative form of a news item leads towards a partial, biased or unbalanced version of events. It is often just as important to consider what news programmes choose to leave out, to skim over or to suggest in their treatment of individual news stories. Is this simply an issue of not having the time to tell us everything, or are there other reasons for omission. selectivity or elision of items. A further complicating issue is what goes on in the reader's mind when s/he watches a news item, and the extent to which s/he processed the programme in terms of individual preferences, prejudices, outlooks and interests: a member of Socialist Worker is very likely to watch a news item about Princess Di in a completely different way to a reader of 'Hello'. If we look at the psychological processes which are involved in the watching and interpretation of news programmes we can often be amazed at the speed at which the brain has to work to process all that visual and auditory information, and it is little surprise to find that one viewer can pick up something completely different from another viewer of the same programme.

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