ABSTRACT
News is often too immediate to allow detailed research, and news items are frequently too brief to warrant an in-depth approach. The average length of a bulletin clip on British independent radio is around 15 seconds – just enough for one or two succinct points. Even a 3-minute report (and even most speech-based stations keep interviews to nearer two) can support only four or five questions. Longer interviews aremore frequently the province of national speech-based sta-
tions and current affairs departments. Many regional TV newsrooms will produce a daily half-hour programme that takes items of nearer 3 minutes’ duration. A common criticism of broadcast news is that it is shallow, tending to polarize
issues into black and white for the sake of simplicity by removing all shades of grey. While broadcasters deal with the what of the story, they seldom trouble to explain the why or the how.
