Inside the CBC

The news happens in real life, but never in the newsroom.

What happens in the newsroom is people talk about news and create a way for it to get to everyone in the audience. Editors talk, researchers research, someone else looks through the archives, librarians archive stories, copyrights are checked, technicians untangle technical difficulties, and somewhere in a corner (or a big room) the anchor delivers the news stories that reporters from around the world have compiled.

It’s a system that’s been around for awhile and it works. But the news can easily leave a sense of detachment to the person who’s in the newsroom. Stories are thrown around until you’re left wondering what’s really important. Is the story really newsworthy?

After spending the morning at CBC, what I feel in the newsroom at school is exactly what I felt there. What you see on the news is real life, but it’s not happening in the newsroom. It’s happening in Libya, Japan, Haiti, Newfoundland, Vancouver, down the street, all around the world. But what’s happening in the newsroom is assignment editors crowd around long tables to discuss what’s happening and what is first in the line-up. They decide whether TV and radio, or only one medium will cover it.

For part of the morning we watched Peter Armstrong broadcast the World Report live to BC. It gives a totally different perspective when you see the clock count down, the producer point, and Peter Armstrong is on the air. You hear him in the studio, and remember he’s being heard at exactly the same time by thousands in BC. It’s similar to driving home and hearing to your own voice on the radio with something you pre-recorded. It’s a reality check. People really do sit in their cars and listen to you. You can forget that when you’re projecting your voice in a room through the glass to the jock or producer. But the audience is bigger than that, much bigger. How much, you never know on any particular day. For Kevin Armstrong, it’s the whole country. In reality, with the internet, it’s the whole world.

So the news goes right back to where you gathered it from, and if you weren’t the reporter, you never really experienced any of it. But you did, in the newsroom.

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