Gabriel F. Perez

3/9/2013

What Makes TV News Different

I found the online course, Watching TV News: How To Be a Smarter Viewer, to be very interesting and helpful in the understanding of the dynamics behind digesting information via the television. Although, the course was a bit long it was very informative and dynamic with videos and self-test. There were many tricks that I had no idea TV channels used to fill airtime that were eye opening to me. Also, the strategies and ways to dissect and fully understand what is being shown to us were very important. But, while there were some helpful things there were others that felt like were of no use to me.

One of the most interesting points in the course was the part of the redefinition of breaking news. Since, this redefinition happened when I was a child I guess I didn’t know about it. But it was incredible to learn how in the past breaking news was actually breaking news like president assassinations and stuff of that magnitude. Nowadays, breaking news is anything and everything that might get viewers. So we as viewers need to keep a watch out for actual breaking news. The second thing that I really enjoyed learning about was the fake news and the VNRs. Of course I knew about fake news like the Daily Show with Jon Stewart but the VNRs that are made to look like real news really impacted me. Now I am aware to look for reputable news casters or experts that give the news any validity. The last thing that I thought was very important and really taught me a lot and, in my opinion was the most important, was how the course taught us to deconstruct the news. Then it took us through some videos and test to see if we really did learn to deconstruct it. But, like everything there were some bad point regarding the