Newscast Critique

The video that I chose to review was from the Bangor news channel, WVII. It was a clip from the newscast that focused on an 18-year-old that was being charged with murder. There were many unscripted parts of the newscast because the reporters asked the suspect’s friends what there opinions were on his conviction. This made the assignment more difficult but there were still numerous changes that could have been made to the scripted parts of the broadcast.

One of the first things that I noticed in the video was that the reporter used unnecessary words in her story that could have been taken out to make the story more brief. An example of this is when she said “According to a court affidavit, two groups of teens had planned to meet last Wednesday evening to fight. The altercation ended up taking place on Cumberland Street that night.” The word “had” in the first sentence is not necessary nor is “ended up” in the second sentence. I think these two sentences could have been made into one shorter sentence like, “According to a court affidavit, the incident took place during a planned fight between two groups of teens on Cumberland Street, Wednesday night.” I would rather the statement be made this way because it sounds more brief and does not repeat things like the time.

Overall, there were not many errors, or changes that needed to be made to the newscast. The entire clip was done using active voice but if I had been in charge of editing, I would have made the statements more assertive. The reporter seemed to speak with a very “unsure” tone; frequently using terms like, “has been” or “had planned.” If she had taken out the extra words like “has” or “had”, she would have been more convincing, or seem more knowledgeable on the subject.

Citations:

http://www.wvii.com/ (Carr in Court-video)