Tuesday, October 13, 2009

NPR & BBC Newscasts (Radio Journal-Entry #2)

NPR
Title: NPR Hourly News Sum
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Reporter: Paul Brown, from Washington.
Length: 4:45
Link: http://www.npr.org/?refresh=true
Then click on “Hourly News”.

The newscast started by a story about president Obama speaking at Texas ANM University in college station. Obama was speaking on the subject of community service. The second story was about Afghani officials investigating the alleged fraud during the recent presidential elections and how the results, which will soon be reached, will determine whether there will be a run off election or not. Reporter Jackie Northam has more details on the story. The third story was about the search of an F16 pilot in the South Carolina coast after two military jets collided and then there was a short report from Catherine Welsh on the situation. The fourth story was about how senate democrats are trying to put together a health care bill that merges a finance committee with a health committee version. It was followed by a sound bite of Finance committee chairman talking about how optimistic he is on the passing of the resulting bill. The fifth story was about a bombing in Pakistan where at least 11 were killed. The sixth story was about a woman accused of kidnapping and assaulting Elizabeth Smart. Reporter Howard Burgess had more on the investigation of whether the woman is mentally incompetent or not. The seventh story was about the treasury secretary is saying that government support system for the economy should be removed or else the recovery would be slow and in danger. The last story was the recent sudden increase of oil prices.

The overall newscast was interesting, it had news from different places on different subjects, it had political, economic, financial and social news. The quality of the sound was very good. There weren’t enough sound bites in the piece. I was expecting nat sound of police and chaos on the streets in the Afghani bombing story. The announcer voice was very good and he had good delivery although he stuttered once in the newscast.
The newscast wasn’t too long or too short although I expected to hear a little more on the story about the oil prices increasing.

BBC
Title: BBC News Summary
Reporter: Sue Montgomery
Length: 5 min.
Link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/tx/summary5min?size=au&bgc=003399〈=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1

The newscast started with a story about the United Nation’s human rights council voting to endorse a report into the Israeli offenses in Gaza, it accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes. Sound bite of a reporter providing more information on the matter, the council urges them to conduct credible investigations and suggests referring them both to international criminal court if they don’t. The second story was about the suicide car bomb attack in Pakistan. It was followed by a sound bite of reporter Ali Makbour reporting from Islamabad. The third story was about the French foreign ministry urging its citizens to leave a state in West Africa for security reasons. A reporter reporting from West Africa followed it. The fourth story was about a review of primary education in England that recommends that children start school at the age of 6 instead of 5. The story was followed by a story about one of the leading banks in America, Bank of America, losing around 1 billion dollars. It was followed by a sound bite of a reporter stating that the Bank’s chief executive will receive no pay or bonus for 2009 and that it was announced that he would retire at the end of December. The following story was about the governments of Southern Sudan and its works for independence. The last story was about the memorial museum at Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, launching a page on the social networking site Facebook to help engage a younger generation of people and to discuss potentially controversial renovation works at Auschwitz.

This newscast was interesting. It covered a variety of news. I was interested in the last two stories the most and I was disappointed to see that they had no sound bites at all. The quality of the sound is very good although the level of the sound was a bit low. Use of sound bites was good for the stories that had them. The quality of the announcer’s voice was very good. She stuttered a couple of times in the newscast, which I think, is fine. The length of the newscast was fine. All stories had almost equal amount of time. For some reason the language itself of the script is a lot simpler than the language of NPR. I had difficulty understanding some of the language in the NPR stories.

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