News Production Conventions

How a journalist chooses to write or cover a story often influences how the audience perceives it.

There are four types of influences that I am going to discuss in my post today:

1. Personalized News.  This is when the journalist or reporter focuses on people.  You see this a lot when there is a natural disaster such as a hurricane or tornado.  Personalized news would focus on the families and how the event has impacted their lives.  
2. Dramatized News.  This is when the story is made to have a hero and a villain which typically means one has to "win".  We see this a lot in coverage of political races or political issues.  Coverage of "the wall" is a good example:  "The Wall" is personified as the hero that will solve all of our immigration issues.
3. Fragmented News:  This is literally what it indicates, doing stories in fragments.  Rather than doing all of the research, the journalist reports on very specific, small scope items.  They may give you a statement from one side of the story and a statement from the other side of the story to get your interest.  It is up to the reader to do more research to find out the whole story
4. Normalized News:  Reporters use the opinions and perspectives of the authorities to report on something.  This is typically used when agencies like the NTSB or FAA have to come in and do research before an official news report on something can be completed.

I used NBC Nightly News as my media outlet.  

My first example is of dramatized news where if President Trump does not get his way, he will shut the US Mexico border down.  Trump has to be the clear victor in this struggle.  He has called this a "national emergency" and has threatened to cut off all aid to some central american countries.  Democratic leaders are fighting him over this issue.  He has said it so many times, it seems hard to believe what he says about it.

An example of Fragmented news is the unsubstantiated news of a woman claiming that former vice president Joe Biden made someone feel uncomfortable with the way he was touching them.  It is fragmented because the news team is going to report on something they cannot verify.

A good example of personalized news was the story of the grandmother being the surrogate for her gay son and significant other.   They used the significant other's sister's egg, the son's sperm and carried by the grandmother. 

The news stories on the Ethiopian plane crash is an example of normalized news.  The reporters relying on information from the NTSB and FAA to report information.

NBC Nightly News