Do We Remember Much from Television News?

Abstract

Over the years, television news has tended to attract positive appraisal from viewing publics. Most viewers in developed democratic nations place trust in mainstream news broadcasters and, more significantly, believe that they learn a lot from televised news (Gunter, 1987; Towler, 2003; Pew Research, 2012). We might expect therefore that, if people are good judges of their own abilities to learn and have formed well-reasoned opinions about televised news based on their own extensive experiences, tests of learning from news broadcasts should reveal that a lot of information is retained from them. In addition, if we assume that news broadcasters, as trained professionals, know — as they claim to — what their audiences want and need, and know what they are doing in constructing digestible news, then news broadcasts should be produced in a way that will enhance viewers’ understanding of current news events and issues. It may therefore come as a surprise that when viewers are tested for what they can remember from a television news programme they recently watched, most of its contents are lost to them. Furthermore, when specific news stories are recalled or recognised afterwards, viewers’ understanding of specific details can be confused.