Television News and Current Affairs: Contemporary Issues Facing Commercial and Public Services.
This essay will examine free-to-air television news and current affairs in Australia. Comparisons will be made where appropriate between those services offered on commercial networks (Seven, Nine and Ten) and those offered on the public broadcasters (ABC and SBS). I will examine issues of quality, frequency of content, provision of local content, funding (including cost reduction strategies) and claims of bias and regulatory obligations. .
Television enjoys a de facto monopoly in what goes into the heads of certain sections of the population. Television is a powerful mass medium, and as such it deserves strong regulation to ensure its power is not abused. Many people don't believe in events, they just simply believe in television, the "if it's on TV it must be true" attitude. .
What constitutes news can be quite different for different news services. The level of focus on world events can range from SBS where coverage is almost exclusively on world events through to channels Seven and Nine where local events are predominant. Channel Nine has the least. It generally only has a voiced over round-up of events around the globe which can last only half a minute and is wedged between the other news and the sport presenter coming on to detail what will be discussed after the break to avoid viewers from switching off, thinking that there may be more "boring" news. Channel Ten has a large amount of world news, mainly to fill their hour long bulletin. Also the budget is less big for news at Ten so by using news pieces from other sources such as CNN then money can be saved. The ABC has a mix of world affairs and local stories but prioritises significant world events higher than their commercial rivals.
The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) differs from commercial broadcasters through its Charter.