ABSTRACT
A television news report has an obligation to separate fact from opinion, to be objective in its reporting, and by selection, to emphasize that which is significant to its potential audience. These considerations therefore need to be borne in mind by a potential news cameraman as well as the standard camera technique associated with visual storytelling. Although news aims to be objective and free from the entertainment values of standard television story telling (e.g. suspense, excitement etc.) it must also aim to engage the audience’s attention and keep them watching. The trade-off between the need to visually hold the attention of the audience and the need to be objective when covering news centres on structure and shot selection. As the popularity of cinema films has shown, an audience enjoys a strong story that involves them in suspense and moves them through the action by wanting to know ‘what happens next’. This is often incompatible with the need for news to be objective and factual. The production techniques used for shooting and cutting fiction and factual material are almost the same. These visual story-telling techniques have been learned by audiences from a life-time of watching fictional accounts of life. The twin aims of communication and engaging the attention of the audience apply to news as they do to entertainment programmes.
