The Silent Heart of News
Abstract
A cultural analysis of television newsgathering and production that explores the spatial organization of the newsroom and the temporal manipulation of “real” events to create news is lacking in organizational sociology and media and cultural studies. This article explores the relationship between the “event” taking place “in the world” and the production process that enables the communication of that event to an audience through the televisual process. Using Bakhtin’s literary device of the chronotope, a cultural reading of news production is examined where a constant redefinition of “real” time and space takes place to interiorize the outside world into the production machine of the newsroom. The article explores professional relationships between journalists working in the separate newsgathering and news production zones of a BBC regional newsroom and illustrates their individual manipulations of the temporal and spatial parameters of the news event as it happens.