ABSTRACT
The distinctive feature of television as a medium is, most obviously, its reliance on visual material. While a few news items are covered without this, generally speaking pictures of some kind are provided, if only as a backdrop to what the newsreader is saying, and these are often moving pictures. They may be drawn from a library archive of relevant material, sometimes clearly indicated as such, but often there is an attempt to cover stories via pre-arranged or live filming, whether simply of a correspondent speaking from an appropriate location or of relevant events. This is seen as providing ‘actuality’ (see Schlesinger 1987: 128-9). One of the problems that television journalists face is that providing accompanying film can be both expensive and difficult to arrange, particularly in the case of news items that relate to situations outside the usual run of locations covered by the media – those concerned with national politics – and where no video material is available from other sources. Filming relevant material may require several days’ advance notice. This was available in the case of the Review, at least for the BBC, and as we shall see they shot relevant outside broadcast material for their items dealing with the Review. Channel 4 also provided such material, though this seemed to be produced live, on the day after the Review was released.
