How to Present a Balanced News Bulletin
The Essential Elements of Scripting and Presenting for Radio News
The trouble with opinions is that everyone has one. Radio news reporting is as much about presenting an opinion or at least a viewpoint on current events, as it is about collating and transmitting facts. Some would argue this even if that opinion is only expressed in the style of presentation, as much as it is in the content of the bulletin.
Scheduling News
Radio news reports tend to be scheduled at the top of each clock hour whenever there is any kind of news bulletin scheduled. Most radio listeners will be familiar with this and expect news on most music based stations as well as talk orientated programming, featuring at the start of the hour. It has to be said this is not always the convention on all real time moving-media.
Every media channel develops its own pattern when their listeners expect to hear news. In daytime programming, top of the clock hour seems to be the norm, with regular shorter updates on the half-hour and especially on some talk stations more regularly. With the immediacy radio offers, most programming is also easily interrupted with any breaking news stories.
Skills and Knowledge
Over time experienced radio news editors and reporters amass the necessary skills and knowledge to consistently put together balanced, interesting and thoughtful news. These skills include:
- Choosing news stories appropriate for the station’s audience
- Determining a running order by importance to that audience
- Writing an appropriate headline to introduce the stories
- Knowing how and where to check the facts
- Introducing appropriate contributions to keep the stories interesting
- Ensuring the script complies with all broadcasting legalities.
- Producing a bulletin to an agreed time deadline
Radio journalists are also generally very aware they’re putting together a piece of audio and not a written news item. They will be skilled in scriptwriting, interviewing, often voicing the bulletin themselves and in producing audio relevant to the audience.
Selecting Stories for the Bulletin.
There are a number of criteria relevant to building a radio news bulletin, composed of a number of current news stories. Any news editor will consider the following:
- The style of presentation
- The overall fit to the station’s general programming
- The relative news worthiness of each story
- The balance of the facts
- The priority in terms of newsworthiness each story should be given within the bulletin
- And the running order of each bulletin as the news develops
A News Editor is required to make judgements about what makes ‘good’ news or at least news that’s both relevant and interesting to the audience the station is broadcasting to, as well as ensuring the facts are researched and balanced effectively. All sides in any story should be considered and the sources must be examined carefully. In essence news that is only rumour and supposition is more opinion than news and should be presented as such. Overriding all this activity is that the total news output complies with all the statutory requirement of both broadcasting and the country.
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