Different views of Europe in TV news reports

Abstract

Tolson and Thornborrow present a case study of news reporting from other EU member states, where national journalists are located as ‘field reporters’. The study compares journalistic practices prevalent in France and in the UK taking the news programmes TFI ‘J20H’ and Channel 4 News as examples. The French material consists of two contrasting items, one from the UK about the Eurosceptic party UKIP, and the second from Poland about the popularity of the EU in that country. By comparison the Channel 4 report, from Copenhagen, is constructed in a very different journalistic style. The reporter, Matt Frei, is constantly on camera, taking the viewer on a journey to investigate the Danish People’s Party (DPP); assuming a distance between the viewer and a different EU country that becomes, to some extent, a kind of cultural travelogue.