As per Alex Walker of greatreporter.com, Television news channels that operate around the clock are cutting considered analysis and investigative journalism out of the picture. The BBC spent nearly £50m on its News 24 channel last year according to its annual report, an indication of just how important round-the-clock news has become in the eyes of TV bosses.

Digital satellite viewers can now pick from over two dozen 24-hour news channels from all over the world. Along with Internet and mobile phone technology, 24-hour TV coverage offers us the chance to receive the news at almost any time.

But with this level of blanket coverage, has TV news disproved the old adage that you can never have too much of a good thing?The theory behind constant television news coverage is that a viewer will be able to switch on at any time and pick up all the latest headlines in a matter of 20 minutes or less, much the same as picking up a newspaper and flicking through the main headlines.

This has a number of effects: Firstly it means that only the most important stories (according to the producers' own news values) can be afforded valuable space on the constantly revolving merry-go-round of headlines. The obvious result of this is that certain stories may be included at the expense of others.

In order to make this work, producers and editors will usually try to find stories likely to appeal to the largest (and usually the lowest) common denominator in order to keep the ever-crucial ratings up, disregarding stories that might appeal only to a minority interest group.

The danger of this prioritization of popularity is that only the most dominant and popular ideological views will be represented, to the detriment of varied discussion and the interests of minority values.

Secondly, with the emphasis being placed on constantly revolving coverage where the main headlines of the day are given every 15 minutes or so, the stories must be compacted in order to fit enough of them in the required time.

Rather than providing the possibility for more detailed coverage - as you might expect from the luxury of 24 hours' worth of programming time - often the result is more succinct reports that may not have the time to cover anything more than the briefest details of a case, providing even less information than regular news bulletins on terrestrial channels.

A combination of limited space in which to include stories and the pressure of making your news worth watching over any one of the dozens of competitors contributes to the increasingly ephemeral nature of news coverage.

For instance, in the interests of fulfilling the up-to-the-minute tag that usually accompanies 24-hour news, a story that may have been the lead headline one morning may have been pushed right back down the running order by lunchtime and might not even by appearing in the bulletins by the evening.

On the other hand, a nightly news program would usually round up all the day's stories, no matter how early in the day they happened.

It could be argued that all news sources have a selected period of time in which to gather their stories (newspapers: the last day and night; magazines: the previous fortnight or month; websites: constantly updated) and that it would be counter-productive for news channels to loop stories to often as regular viewers would get bored of seeing the same thing over and over.

But it cannot be denied that a nightly round-up of a day's events lends itself much better to reflection and examination than a constant stream of ephemeral pieces of information.  By watching bulletins on a round-the-clock news channel, viewers will be informed about more, but not more informed about anything.

In other words, they will have a basic grasp of most stories, but without sufficient detail about any of them to really grasp the issue at hand. It is hard to see how they will be able to form valid opinions from such exposure. As well as offering constantly available news headlines, another key aspect of 24-hour news is the ability to follow a story's development throughout a day, or longer.

Logically it would make more sense to just tune in for the evening news when you know you will see the key event(s) taking place, but the suspense and anticipation that accompanies a story developing in front of our eyes is often too engrossing to ignore.

On the other hand Print journalists would wait until the story had reached a satisfying climax and pen it in retrospect, allowing readers to benefit from a reflective and considered view of all events in perspective.

With rolling TV news this isn't possible.

There are occasions when instant reportage would be beneficial, such as election results or sporting events, but all too often TV news producers are inclined to dress up an event as "live" in the name of entertainment and excitement, leaving no time for reflective consideration from the reporter.

The blurred borders between information and entertainment are by no means exclusive to 24-hour news channels.

Most news broadcasters have been levied with charges of dumbing down their coverage with too much celebrity gossip and not enough commentary on politics and international affairs.

However, 24-hours news allows us 24-hour access to the celebrity soap opera that dominates so much of our lives, pushing "serious" news further out of already-packed schedules.

In many ways, 24-hour news is symptomatic of the development of news coverage in general.

Channels are keen to show off just how global they really are in what has become one of the fastest growing businesses ever.

Modern news is all too keen to "go live" for no reason at all.

So not only is the information provided to viewers in diluted format, what is given probably isn't as reliable or insightful as it could if journalists were left alone by technology to carry out their true business of actually searching out information.
The trend now seems to be that evening news bulletins are beginning to mimick 24-hour news channels.

This means all TV news could soon resemble the entertainment-focused stream of inconsequential updates that is our 24-hour news, leaving little room for real analysis and debate.

Instant news remains a prize, but at stake lies real and considered journalism.

Courtesy: www.greatreporter.com