Trite, glitzy, superficial. No wonder television news is such a turnoff | John Harris | Comment is free | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ff-bbc-sky

I do struggle to watch it now; I really can't stand the presenters, usually. The content usually isn't too bad IMO, really good info and filming.

I tend not to watch local news short of a proper event, but even inbetween you get a lot of good visual context (bloody interesting some of the 'faces' who appear over here).

I'm not sure what else broadcast news can do other than ditch dull presenters.

Stop using mobile phone footage.
Stop using social media as their sole sources.
Put a little depth in to the reportage.
Vary the types of stories.

There's lots that can be done to improve broadcast news, above are just some of the ones off the top of my head.

Mark

Personally I think it's got a good balance at the moment, especially the Beeb all being relative. I suppose time allowance is the real issue, balancing bread and butter stuff with the OMJF moments.

This is the problem, in my opinion, with rolling 24hr news coverage. It gets samey, boring and repetitive, so they need new stories, or new opinions on old stories, and so a friend of a neighbour of someone who did something will be interviewed and asked the most inane questions, just to fill a few seconds.
If people want instant headlines, go to Twitter or Fb, but broadcast news should be about depth of reporting, getting under the issues that matter and presenting proper, well thought-out content in a manner that's easily understood.

I really don't think the current balance is good at the moment.

Mark

Ah, I don't touch rolling news - I'm strictly morning, noon and late night broadcasts. Street questioning etc is bloody awful short of a proper event.

They also need to ditch all the reporter's who are trying wither to be the new Paxman and think just repeating the same question over and over again isn't the a sign of a good reporter.
Also get rid of those that try and be super earnest and bob their heads all over the place and exaggerate their hand movements. Have they ever seen themselves?

Here we have a complex issue involving experts in their fields disagreeing after months of debate, let's ask Keith from Droylsden what his take is on this.

"Have you been bombed out of your home, had to flee in the night and have nothing left that you can't carry? Get in touch with us via our Facebook page."

The writer of the article is absolutely right about 'Outside Source'. It's the literal death of journalism, right up there on the screen.

I can't stand BBC breakfast news. The presenters spend all their time trying to be funny and laughing at their own jokes rather than just reading the news. And that's when they're actually trying to report the news rather than plugging some other BBC programme eg. Strictly..

I don't watch the news and I certainly don't have time to watch TV in the morning.

When I want to find out about news I go to a newspaper site.

If I can't get the news there I go to twitter. It was particularly handy in finding out what was going on during the London riots and the record warehouse near me was set alight.