Sofavision and the news

 There are four main modes for presenting the news on television. The first is for the reporter to be on the spot. At present, we can see brave journalists standing on balconies in Kyiv, looking out at ever-closer explosions. They describe what they have learnt and seen, and their reports gain great authenticity as a result. The second mode is for the news reporter to sit behind a desk. In the past, they usually had a sheaf of papers in front of them, which they could be seen shuffling once the broadcast was concluded. Now of course, they have a laptop to glance down at from time to time. The third mode, which became fashionable about 20 years ago, is for the journalist to stand up in front of the camera. This requires that the guests and other journalists they interview also have to stand up, which must become irritating after a while. Finally, the fourth mode is for both journalists and guests to sit on a large sofa. This is now the pattern for the morning news in both the BBC and Sky (who have recently abandoned the standing mode).

The problem with the sofa is that it looks too comfortable. You can not report the horrors of war from a big red sofa. Where sofas excel is in the experiential interview. This involves one or usually two members of the public being interviewed about their experience of some loss or other great adversity. They are often unused to being on television, and the sofa helps set them at ease. The experiential interview also gives the journalist an opportunity to show they have skills beyond just reading out what is put in front of them, providing them the opportunity to give a convincing display of sympathy.

The distress and joy of individual people is one of the ultimate measures of the importance of an event. But the problem with the experiential interview on breakfast television is that it an lacks an explanation of why the people in front of the camera have suffered adversity and who bears responsibility for inflicting it upon them. By focussing just on their distress, it accentuates the tendency of news programmes to live in the bubble of now. The result is that real distress is presented as a kind of random and ultimately meaningless event. Long interviews of this kind also veer on exploitation for the sake of entertainment. There are repeated shots of loved ones who have been lost, and repeated questions about the effects of this loss on those who remain.

Fortunately, this is usually interrupted by the local news broadcast. Five minutes are allocated to the affairs of the five million people living in the Midlands, summarised expertly by a newsreader behind a desk. Then it is back to the big red sofa.