The Infotainment Quotient in Routine Television News: A Director's Perspective

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Abstract
To what extent does routine television news supply citizens with essential political information? To what extent are routine stories sensationalized so that their informational content is diluted or obscured? How do television news directors frame routine news stories and rationalize the mix of factual reporting and dramatization that they present? To answer these questions, television news producers were presented with hypothetical routine news events and asked to construct news presentations and explain their framing rationales. The content of actual routine news stories was also analyzed for comparisons with the hypothetical accounts. The data indicate that both actual and hypothetical routine television news stories are designed and executed to answer the who, what, where and when questions that provide essential information to citizens. But they slight the why and how questions that would assist viewers in placing the facts into a more meaningful perspective. Framing is deliberately dramatic so that the policy-relevant aspects of news are often overshadowed by entertainment features.

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