Temple Media Project

Temple/London Fall 1999
A Psychological Profile of British Media

Why are there differences between the way that people communicate ideas in the media in the United States and Great Britain and what are they? First the term ‘personality type’ must be defined. Personality types are the stereotypical expectations that are had for a person that does a peticular task or holds a specific position, in this case for someone that is working in the media. The way in which people communicate with one another is determined by surroundings and a set of cultural norms that are set within each kind of grouping of people.

To research this topic required both watching the media as a social observer and looking into the political aspects of the social differences. As an observer, the mediums that were used were television, radio, and newspapers. To compare the differences, a program or story was chosen from each country that was of great similarity to the other. The list of subjects covered was narrowed to news coverage, game shows, and talk shows because of the amount of real interaction between people that exists in these types of programs. Once the differences were firmly defined then there was the question of why they exist. The answers were found through categorizing the way in which people in the media talk, dress, act, and look and by discussing the differences with British people.

There are slight variations that were observed in tone of voice, gesture, dress, and physical appearance that are all due to different social norms in either culture. These are not the only qualities that could determine differences in personality types from culture to culture; however, these were the only types of differences found.

Television was the most conclusive source for determining differences found for the simple fact that every kind of program can be found there and all aspects of human behavior can be observed as a whole. The UK and the US are similar in that almost all of the same variations of these types of shows exist in both places, yet there are obvious differences in the way that these shows are handled.

News consists of the regular evening coverage of what is happening locally, nationally, and around the world and then the less responsible tabloid shows. In both types of news the differences were found to be constant. The broadcasters in the UK are more casual in behavior and less rehearsed in their monologues than the broadcasters in the US. It was found that in the span of a two week viewing from October 20^th to November 3^rd 1999 of BBC News at 6pm there were 4 occasions where there were large mistakes made. The mistakes were either people having casual conversation or showing emotion on the part of the broadcasters about things happening within the studio. For instance, on November 1^st during the broadcast covering the Egpytian airline the reporter began joking with the crew behind the camera before the camera could cut away to live footage that she had just introduced. In comparison, I chose to study the NBC Evening News because of the similarities in topic and time of broadcasting between the two shows.

After a friend had watched NBC for all the qualities that I had layed out for her she reported back to me these findings. In the US these mistakes were rare and far between. Happening once within the same time span on NBC Evening News, because such moments are edited out considering they are not within the edicite of proper broadcasting in the US news. Broadcasters making mistakes in the memorization of monologues was another more prevalent occurrence in the UK.

In the same observation as the previous there were at least 3 mistakes made in each program either in what was supposed to have been said or what was supposed to be done. Where as on the NBC Evening News at 6pm in the US approximately 2 mistakes were made for each program broadcast. For example, the broadcaster on BBC Evening News believed that the camera had cut to another location and began to comment on the story when she realized that she still had dialogue to say and then continued. Neither is better or worse for these differences, though. From a personal perspective, the BBC news had a much more personal feel to it because of the qualities that the US considers flaws and the US news had a more responsible or professional feel to it because of the careful preparation that went into it.

Talk shows were not quite so noticeably different from one another as the news programs were. In the span of time from October 20^th to November 1^st it was found that they differed most frequently, and uniformly, in the aspects of dress and gestures presented by the guests and host. The morning talk shows, This Morning aired between 6 and 7 am in the UK and Good Morning America aired from 7 to 9 am in the US, are very similar. The types of issues discussed, mostly gossip or public events and the types of people who are discussing the issues, popular stars and big names in the media appear to be almost identical in both examples. However, the dress of the host and guests on This Morning in the UK was very casual and even sometimes appearing to be just what they threw on as they jumped out of bed that morning. Unlike the US show in which each people is either wearing a casual business suit or a nice pair of khakis and a dressy shirt to discuss the issues of the day. This difference in dress appears to be caused by the same norms that causes the way in which issues are discussed on each of the shows to be different. While issues turn into heated conversations and even all out debates sometimes on This Morning people on Good Morning America try to remain polite through out the program and will even take the opinion of someone else in the discussion to prevent controversy. Once again it feels as if the people in the UK are less afraid to be real on TV than people in the US are.

This common theme of the UK having a more open approach to personal interaction on tv is, however, not held up when it comes to game shows. After watching the game shows 100 Gold in the UK and Jeopardy in the US for the week of October 10^th to the 17^thit was found that game shows are one genre of television that is kept can be very different in the UK than in the US. On 100 Gold, the British version of Jeopardy, the guests are put behind a glass screen while playing the game, they are not introduced unless they are a returning champion, and the host is not shown at any point throughout the game. Not only that, but the guests are playing to win 100 £ for answering the most questions correct out of 100. Unlike Jeopardy in the US where the host and the guests are face to face, time is given at the beginning to personally introduce each player, and money is awarded for each question according to the difficulty of the question. Game shows in the UK are also done at a faster pace than in the US. The UK version of Wheel of Fortune has in one session usually four rounds where as in the US there is three. These differences seem to branch from a variety of sources. One being that the shows in the UK are longer than those in the US and have less commercial breaks between the action, leaving more time for extra things to happen in the show. Another reason being that tension seems to be evoked more in the British people by having silence and exam testing pressure than does the boisterous cheering of the audience and personality conflict of the guests that there is in the US.

Within radio only news and talk shows were studied because there are no real game shows on the air in either country. Listening from October 20^th to November 3^rd between 7pm and 9pm in both the US and UK this test was done of two stations, 102.1 the Qfm and 98.9WUHLam from the US and 105.8 Virgin fm and 93.5 Radio 4 fm in the UK. The most noticeable differences were found in talk shows while all of the same differences in TV news carried over into radio. The differences in talk shows in the UK as compared to the US is because of these major points:

These differences come into play because of the different interests of the people, the amount of heritage that each country possesses, and how they hold choose to present that heritage. In the US educational radio comes in second best because every person can find this information in other places if it so interests them. Where as in the UK schooling and education are set up to teach people according to a set of standards that they must be able to reach.

Newspapers were hard at first to find differences in because there were such different issues discussed in both places. This was, however, soon to be discovered to be a major point that separated British and American newspapers. After reading the newspaper for just a short while curious words like ‘injunctions’ and ‘denotations’ were used to explain why certain issues were not covered fully. It came as a surprise to hear Christopher Cook, a professional in many areas of the media, say that there are no laws like the constitutional rights in the US to protect journalists from being manipulated by powerful social figures in what is said about a story or issue. Not only that, but laws like the Official Secrets Act, the Law of Injunction, and the loose conditions under which a person can be made liable for actions make it much more difficult to be a journalist.

In effect then, the writers for the British newspapers avoid the controversial issues that the US journalists jump on and openly express points of view on. To make an obvious example, the exploitation of the Monica Lewinski case that covered the newspapers in the US would probably not have made it past 10 Downing St. here, had the Prime Minister so wished it to remain secret. The story on November 5^th about Jeffrey Archer’s supposed affair with a prostitute named Monica Coghlan almost completely parallels the Monica Lewinski case, however, it was not covered the same at all. The press did not cover the story until after the case had already gone to court to start with. Then when the story ran in the Guardian it focused on the fact that he is loosing his political status and only stated as a part of the facts in one paragraph that he was accused of hiring a prostitute. At the end of the month then the Mirror, along with the other tabliod papers, finally ran a story that talked soley about the case of the prostitute. In conclusion, there is very little difference between the journalists of the UK and the US, except for the way in which both work with the government and Vis versa.

The majority of differences found in the personalities of the people in the media between the US and the UK appear to come mostly from the history of the two countries. The US is fairly new and at the peek of economic standings causing the lifestyles there to be taken more seriously. As if to being in the media in the US is much more professional or shows more success than it would if one was in the media in another country. From the same idea, the British people in the media do not appear to take themselves quite so seriously and give a more real image of themselves to those who are observing them. At the same time this freedom comes from the kind of protection that is given by the funding of the government into public service media and with that freedom comes certain hard to see restraints as were found in the case of journalists for newspapers.