News vs Documentary

 News VS Documentary

News

• Tell you brief explanation
• Give facts and figures
• Switch topics quickly
• Answer only main questions

Documentary

• Always about one topic/subject
• Go into depth with stories and reenactments
• Give facts and figures
• Give different sides to the topic in hand
• Answer lots of different questions not just the main ones
• It is an, ‘Investigation’

Documentaries and News reports are similar in factually presenting structured programs that inform their audience in a specific subject/topic. Nevertheless they are very different in the way they present and structure the program. News reports tend to present the information from the scene of the event, with reporters getting live coverage of the topic-in-hand. There are news reports of past events as well but they are not in-depth like documentaries. The 9/11 attacks were reported all over the world by channels like Fox News, CBS News and ABC News. The News reports all were mostly showing footage of what has actually happened so this would be the footage of the planes hitting the world trade centre. However in a documentary they would have more personal accounts of the attack, so this would be lots of interviews, and just people telling there story on the attacks. In Fahrenheit 9/11 there was a personal account of a woman whose son died at war for his country, this story went into a lot of detail as it supported Michael Moore’s (Director) representation of the topic.

Just to show how quick news programs go through different topics, I’ve got print screens of the start and end of a news story. They start covering the story at 8.00 and it finishes at 10.00, so they only cover the story for 2 minutes. A documentary would cover a topic for over 30 minuets usually up to 1 hour.

Just to show how quick news programs go through different topics, I’ve got print screens of the start and end of a news story. They start covering the story at 8.00 and it finishes at 10.00, so they only cover the story for 2 minutes. A documentary would cover a topic for over 30 minutes usually up to 1 hour.

 The big difference between a news report and a documentary really is, the time frame. I am saying this because a news report reports on current affairs, so they will report something that happened on the same day, but in contrast documentaries will document on a specific subject/topic, and the documentaries are released to audiences a long time after the subject/topic happened. E.G when 9/11 attacks happened that same day all the news channels where reporting it, but it took a long time until a documentary was made on it (Fahrenheit 9/11).

Another example of the difference between news reports and documentaries. The 'Classic albums' series with a resent documentary about the popular rapper Jay-Z with his first album, claiming it as a masterpiece and a 'classic album' in terms of hip hop music. The difference between this documentary an a news report about him is that the documentary is a lot more in-depth about his life and his music getting into the 'nitty-gritty' details, where there are many scenes showing Jay-Z himself in the record studio listening to his songs and explaining their meanings to the viewers. This is very different in a news report as it wouldn't get into these details they would just give factual information on his album and when it is possibly getting released with maybe one quick professional opinion on it.  

Also a completely different example would be of the documentary 'Dark Days', about the homeless in New York specifically in the tube tunnels. A news team would report on this matter in a very third person way only getting basic knowledge about them, 'from afar'. However in Dark Days this documentary's show the lives to these people in a first person perspective at times, which would not be done in a news report, also in the documentary because of this bonding between the documentary maker and the homeless it shows them in a positive to neutral light, keeping a good balance within the documentary. Although I feel in a news report the homeless would be portrayed in a negative fashion in the situation they are in within the documentary, this is a very important difference between the two.