TV News as Narrative 17
privacy at the worst possible moment of that woman’s life. The clip ran too long and
seemed like it would never end. I cringed as I watched it. Yet, I was morbidly fascinated
by it. I also remembered my first TV news job when I was a reporter and photographer
(called a one-man-band) and had to shoot those stories myself and talk to victim’s
relatives. It was not pleasant. I had a mixture of empathy and disdain for the reporter and
photographer.
So far I have discussed how news is presented to the audience and what is going
on behind the scenes that viewers are unaware of. Another part of this story alongside
how news narratives are enacted with the audience is how coworkers enact the news
stories with each other. A different set of norms and emotional rules apply.
Emotion and Communication Between Coworkers in TV News
What about the other side of the story that is not presented on-air? One aspect of
the larger story is how news people enact the same story with each other. How do they
express emotion, or perhaps more accurately, deny emotion?
Emotion Rules and Norms. Goffman (1989) indicates that employees in
organizations perform emotion according to rules of appropriateness, which is based on
social norms, organizational norms, and interaction norms with management and
coworkers. News anchors as employees consider all those norms as well as norms of
interaction with viewers. However, TV organization norms and rules of emotional
appropriateness differ with on-air communication with the audience and off-camera
communication with coworkers. On-air presentation of stories is no-nonsense and
straightforward, especially with serious stories, such as tragedies, accidents, or crime.
However, off-camera the way news people communicate about the stories is a different
Convention