Can Broadcast News be "Sexy"

Veteran BBC reporter Charles Wheeler – who has worked for the corporation for nearly half a century – told last year's Edinburgh Television Festival that TV News has lost its way and become obsessed with the appearance of newsreaders.

He singled out Huw Edwards, who presents the BBC's 6 o'clock news on its main channel, BBC-1. Mr Edwards admits that before he took over the anchor's desk, he was given a 'makeover' by the BBC, who insisted on smarter clothes and a more fashionable haircut. Charles Wheeler says Mr Edwards should have walked out and gone to work for the BBC's opposition, ITN.

You can read the Daily Telegraph's report on the speech at http://www.lineone.net/telegraph/2000/08...

The row raises a more fundamental question about how we want to find out about what's happening in the world.

Personality Plus

When I moved from working for the BBC in the UK to working for New Zealand's main radio news service, IRN, I experienced a degree of culture shock. BBC newsreaders are trained to read the news as if they were, in the words of one cynical critic, 'no more animated than the "I Speak Your Weight" machine'. Certainly, British news presentation is fairly unemotional in the way it is presented.

To quote the BBC's own Producers' Guidelines "Reporting should be dispassionate…A reporter may express a judgement, bit it must not be prescriptive or fail to take account of other views… Viewers and listeners should not be able to gauge from BBC programmes the personal views of the reporters…"

Certainly, if you listen to the BBC's World Service news bulletins (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/s... ) you'll hear the dispassionate, well-measured tones for which the BBC is famous. You can see how it works out on TV by watching the BBC's major bulletins at http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/video/news... .

I found reading the news in New Zealand a different affair altogether. While newsreaders still weren't supposed to inject their own comments into the news, they were allowed to sound like they were human beings. If the story was serious, sound serious. If the story was funny, allow yourself to smile. And above all, sound as if you're INTERESTED in what you're reading. As one voice tutor said to me in a particularly bruising session, "Who wants to listen to the news read by the speaking clock?".

Perhaps it's something to do with British stiff upper lips, but there's no doubt that news presenters around the world seem altogether more excited about what they're doing than British newsreaders.

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