Week1: Discussion 1 and 2 Student Response

Tiffany VanVolkinburg

ThursdayNov 16 at 11:03pm

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The news segment I watched was about the allegations of sexual abuse against former Judge Roy Moore and President Trump's refusal to comment on said allegations. I'm sure several of the techniques listed in the textbook were used when writing the script for the broadcast segment I viewed (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. , but two of the noticeable techniques I observed were writing/speaking in the present tense and attribution listed before a quote instead of after.

"News is becoming an element of spectacle that has to attract, to shock the viewers" (Mitu, 2011), and it is necessary to do so to capture and maintain the attention of an audience in broadcast journalism--especially since nowadays there are so many platforms available to obtain news. Writing/presenting broadcast news in the present tense prevents boredom among viewers and "is one way broadcast writers have of bringing immediacy to their writing," (Stovall, 2015) and the subsequent reporting of the news.

Writing/speaking in the present tense consists of using verbiage that indicates an action presently happening rather than something that has already taken place. The video demonstrates this technique through words like 'tell' instead of 'told' when saying, "sources tell CNN," and saying 'remaining' instead of 'remained' in the sentence "despite mounting pressure to speak out, the president remaining silent..."

The second technique I noticed, attribution listed before a quote instead of after, consists of divulging who or where the quoted information is from before stating the quote so as not to confuse the listener. The video demonstrated this technique by referencing Ivanka Trump before directly quoting her like so, "Mr. Trump's daughter, Ivanka, however speaking out forcefully. Telling the associated press..."

Both techniques were executed well and positively contributed to the overall understand-ability of the broadcast.

Tiffany VanVolkinburg

References

MITU, B. M. (2011). TELEVISION NEWS AND CONFLICTS. Annals Of Spiru Haret University, Journalism Studies, 12(1), 119-122.

Stovall, J. G. (2015). Writing for the mass media (9th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Trump dodges questions on Roy Moore [Television broadcast]. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2017, from http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/11/16/roy-moore-wapo-more-women-carroll-dnt-newday.cnn/video/playlists/roy-moore/