The rules and rituals governing American journalism began shifting in the 1950s. At the time, former radio reporter John Daly hosted the CBS network game show What’s My Line? When he began moonlighting as the evening TV news anchor on ABC, the network blurred the entertainment and information border, foreshadowing what was to come.

In the early days, the most influential and respected television news program was CBS’s See It Now. Coproduced by Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, See It Now practiced a kind of TV journalism lodged somewhere between the neutral and narrative traditions. Generally regarded as “the first and definitive” news documentary on American television, See It Now sought “to report in depth—to tell and show the American audience what was happening in the world using film as a narrative tool,” according to A. William Bluem, author of Documentary in American Television.35 Murrow worked as both the program’s anchor and its main reporter, introducing the investigative model of journalism to television—a model that programs like 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline would imitate. Later, of course, Internet news-gathering and reporting would further alter journalism.

Differences between Print, TV, and Internet News

Although TV news reporters share many values, beliefs, and conventions with their print counterparts, television transformed journalism in a number of ways. First, broadcast news is driven by its technology. If a camera crew and news van are dispatched to a remote location for a live broadcast, reporters are expected to justify the expense by developing a story, even if nothing significant is occurring. For instance, when a national political candidate does not arrive at the local airport in time for an interview on the evening news, the reporter may cover a flight delay instead. Print reporters, in contrast, slide their notebooks or laptops back into their bags and report on a story when it occurs. However, with print reporters now posting regular online updates to their stories, they offer the same immediacy that live television news reporting does. In fact, in most newsrooms today, the online version of a story is often posted before the newspaper or TV version appears.

Second, while print editors cut stories to fit the physical space around ads, TV news directors have to time stories to fit between commercials. Despite the fact that a much higher percentage of space is devoted to print ads (about 60 percent at most dailies), TV ads (which take up less than 25 percent of a typical thirty-minute news program) generally seem more intrusive to viewers, perhaps because TV ads take up time rather than space. The Internet has “solved” these old space and time problems by freeing stories from those constraints online.

Third, while modern print journalists are expected to be detached, TV news derives its credibility from live, on-the-spot reporting; believable imagery; and viewers’ trust in the reporters and anchors. In fact, since the early 1970s, most annual polls have indicated that the majority of viewers find television news a more credible resource than print news. Viewers tend to feel a personal regard for the local and national anchors who appear each evening on TV sets in their living rooms. In fact, in the Pew Research Center’s 2012 news credibility and believability study (which did not rate online news sources like Politico or the Huffington Post), the three top news outlets with the highest “positive” rating from those polled were “local TV news” (65 percent), 60 Minutes (64 percent), and ABC News (59 percent). By comparison, Fox News, the New York Times, and USA Today were tied as the only organizations in the study to have higher negative than positive ratings—all at just 49 percent positive. The highest-rated newspaper in the study was the Wall Street Journal, with a 58 percent positive rating, while the “daily newspaper you know best”—that is, the paper from a respondent’s local area or region—scored a 57 percent positive rating.36

By the mid-1970s, the public’s fascination with the Watergate scandal, combined with the improved quality of TV journalism, helped local news departments realize profits. In an effort to retain high ratings, stations began hiring consultants, who advised news directors to invest in national prepackaged formats, such as Action News or Eyewitness News. Traveling the country, viewers noticed similar theme music and opening graphic visuals from market to market. Consultants also suggested that stations lead their newscasts with crime blocks: a group of TV stories that recount the worst local criminal transgressions of the day. A cynical slogan soon developed in the industry: “If it bleeds, it leads.” This crime-block practice continues today at most local TV news stations.

Few stations around the country have responded to viewers and critics who complain about the overemphasis on crime. (In reality, FBI statistics reveal that crime and murder rates have fallen or leveled off in most major urban areas since the 1990s.) In 1996, the news director at KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, created a new set of criteria that had to be met for news reports to qualify as responsible crime stories. She asked that her reporters answer the following questions: Do citizens or officials need to take action? Is there an immediate threat to safety? Is there a threat to children? Does the crime have significant community impact? Does the story lend itself to a crime prevention effort? With KVUE’s new standards, the station eliminated many routine crime stories. Instead, the station provided a context for understanding crime rather than a mindless running tally of the crimes committed each day.37

Pretty-Face and Happy-Talk Culture

In the early 1970s at a Milwaukee TV station, consultants advised the station’s news director that the evening anchor looked too old. The anchor, who showed a bit of gray, was replaced and went on to serve as the station’s editorial director. He was thirty-two years old at the time. In the late 1970s, a reporter at the same station was fired because of a “weight problem,” although that was not given as the official reason. Earlier that year, she had given birth to her first child. In 1983, Christine Craft, a former Kansas City television news anchor, was awarded $500,000 in damages in a sex discrimination suit against station KMBC (she eventually lost the monetary award when the station appealed). She had been fired because consultants believed she was too old, too unattractive, and not deferential enough to men.

Such stories are rampant in the annals of TV news. They have helped create a stereotype of the half-witted but physically attractive news anchor, reinforced by popular culture images (from Ted Baxter on TV’s Mary Tyler Moore Show to Ron Burgundy in the Anchorman films). Although the situation has improved slightly, national news consultants set the agenda for what local reporters should cover (lots of crime) as well as how they should look and sound (young, attractive, pleasant, and with no regional accent). Essentially, news consultants—also known as news doctors—have advised stations to replicate the predominant male and female advertising images of the 1960s and 1970s in modern local TV news.

Another strategy favored by news consultants is happy talk: the ad-libbed or scripted banter that goes on among local news anchors, reporters, meteorologists, and sports reporters before and after news reports. During the 1970s, consultants often recommended such chatter to create a more relaxed feeling on the news set and to foster the illusion of conversational intimacy with viewers. Some also believed that happy talk would counter much of that era’s “bad news,” which included coverage of urban riots and the Vietnam War. A strategy still used today, happy talk often appears forced and may create awkward transitions, especially when anchors transition to reports on events that are sad or tragic.

Sound Bitten

Beginning in the 1980s, the term sound bite became part of the public lexicon. The TV equivalent of a quote in print news, a sound bite is the part of a broadcast news report in which an expert, a celebrity, a victim, or a person-in-the-street responds to some aspect of an event or issue. With increasing demands for more commercial time, there is less time for interview subjects to explain their views. As a result, sound bites have become the focus of intense criticism. Studies revealed that during political campaigns, the typical sound bite from candidates had shrunk from an average duration of forty to fifty seconds in the 1950s and 1960s to fewer than eight seconds by the late 1990s. With shorter comments from interview subjects, TV news sometimes seems like dueling sound bites, with reporters creating dramatic tension by editing competing viewpoints together, as if interviewees had actually been in the same location speaking to one another. Of course, print news also pits one quote against another in a story, even though the actual interview subjects may never have met. Once again, these reporting techniques, also at work in online journalism, are evidence of the profession’s reliance on storytelling devices to replicate or create conflict.

Pundits, “Talking Heads,” and Politics

The transformation of TV news by cable—with the arrival of CNN in 1980—led to dramatic changes in TV news delivery at the national level. Prior to cable news (and the Internet), most people tuned to their local and national news late in the afternoon or evening on a typical weekday, with each program lasting just thirty minutes. But today, the 24/7 news cycle means that we can get TV news anytime, day or night, and constant new content has led to major changes in what is considered news. Because it is expensive to dispatch reporters to document stories or maintain foreign news bureaus to cover international issues, the much less expensive “talking head” pundit has become a standard for cable news channels. Such a programming strategy requires few resources beyond the studio and a few guests.

Today’s main cable channels have built their evening programs along partisan lines and follow the model of journalism as opinion and assertion: Fox News goes right with pundit stars like Bill O’Reilly (the ratings king of cable news) and Sean Hannity; MSNBC leans left with Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell; and CNN stakes out the middle with hosts who try to strike a more neutral pose, like Anderson Cooper. CNN, the originator of cable news, does much more original reporting than Fox News and MSNBC and does better in nonpresidential election years, as well as during natural disasters and crime tragedies. After some up and down years, CNN dropped to a twenty-year audience low in 2014, with about 440,000 viewers per night in September 2014. MSNBC, which does better in national election years, dropped after 2012 (when it was averaging over 800,000 total viewers) but climbed back to 620,000 in September 2014. Fox News continued to lead cable prime-time news by a wide margin, averaging over 2.1 million in September 2014.38

Today’s cable and Internet audiences seem to prefer partisan talking heads over traditional reporting. This suggests that in today’s fragmented media marketplace, going after niche audiences along political lines is smart business—although not necessarily good journalism. What should concern us today is the jettisoning of good journalism—anchored in reporting and verification—that uses reporters to document stories and interview key sources. In its place, on cable and online, are highly partisan pundits who may have strong opinions and charisma but who may not have all their facts straight.

Convergence Enhances and Changes Journalism

For mainstream print and TV reporters and editors, online news has added new dimensions to journalism. Both print and TV news can continually update breaking stories online, and many reporters now post their online stories first and then work on traditional versions. This means that readers and viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning paper or for the local evening newscast for important stories. To enhance the online reports, which do not have the time or space constraints of television or print, newspaper reporters are increasingly required to provide video or audio for their stories. This might allow readers and viewers to see full interviews rather than just selected print quotes in the paper or short sound bites on the TV report.

However, online news comes with a special set of problems. Print reporters, for example, can conduct e-mail interviews rather than leaving the office to question a subject in person. Many editors discourage this practice because they think relying on e-mail gives interviewees the chance to control and shape their answers. While some might argue that this provides more thoughtful answers, journalists say it takes the elements of surprise and spontaneity out of the traditional news interview, during which a subject might accidentally reveal information—something less likely to occur in an online setting.

Another problem for journalists, ironically, is the wide-ranging resources of the Internet. This includes access to versions of stories from other papers or broadcast stations. The mountain of information available on the Internet has made it all too easy for journalists to—unwittingly or intentionally—copy other journalists’ work. In addition, access to databases and other informational sites can keep reporters at their computers rather than out cultivating sources, tracking down new kinds of information, and staying in touch with their communities.

Most notable, however, for journalists in the digital age are the demands that convergence has made on their reporting and writing. Print journalists at newspapers (and magazines) are expected to carry digital cameras so they can post video along with the print versions of their stories. TV reporters are expected to write print-style news reports for their station’s Web site to supplement the streaming video of their original TV stories. And both print and TV reporters are often expected to post the Internet versions of their stories first, before the versions they do for the morning paper or the six o’clock news. Increasingly, journalists today are also expected to tweet and blog.

The Power of Visual Language

The shift from a print-dominated culture to an electronic-digital culture requires that we look carefully at differences among various approaches to journalism. For example, the visual language of TV news and the Internet often captures events more powerfully than do words. Over the past fifty years, television news has dramatized America’s key events. Civil Rights activists, for instance, acknowledge that the movement benefited enormously from televised news that documented the plight of southern blacks in the 1960s. The news footage of southern police officers turning powerful water hoses on peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators and the news images of “white only” and “colored only” signs in hotels and restaurants created a context for understanding the disparity between black and white in the 1950s and 1960s.

Other enduring TV images are also embedded in the collective memory of many Americans: the Kennedy and King assassinations in the 1960s; the turmoil of Watergate in the 1970s; the first space shuttle disaster and the Chinese student uprisings in the 1980s; the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in the 1990s; the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001; Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the historic election of President Obama in 2008; the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011; and the brutal murders of twenty schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. During these critical events, TV news has been a cultural reference point marking the strengths and weaknesses of our world.

Today, the Internet, for good or bad, functions as a repository for news images and video, alerting us to stories that the mainstream media missed or to videos captured by amateurs. Everyone remembers the video leaked to Mother Jones magazine in which candidate Mitt Romney proclaimed at a 2012 campaign fund-raiser: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what . . . who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims.” That footage, played over and over on YouTube and cable news, hurt Romney’s campaign. Then, in summer 2013, CIA employee Edward Snowden chose a civil liberties advocate and columnist for the London-based Guardian to receive leaked material on systematic surveillance of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency. The video interview with the Guardian scored 1.5 million YouTube hits shortly after its release. As New York Times columnist David Carr noted at the time, “News no longer needs the permission of traditional gatekeepers to break through. Scoops can now come from all corners of the media map and find an audience just by virtue of what they reveal.”39