Newsmen and their time-machine.

The production of news is an important part of contemporary cultural and social life. Much has been written about the 'news values' (occupational knowledge) of newsmen, and of their role in the construction of a picture of reality. The starting point of the argument here is that one key set of concepts--those which relate to time--have so far been missing from the account. The broad intention, therefore, is to remedy an oversight in recent sociological work. The paper begins by locating the B.B.C. newsmen studied (through direct observation in the London newsrooms) as members of a time-conscious Western culture. It then argues that the structure of competition which defines news as a perishable commodity demands a production structure geared to the value of 'immediacy' and to the temporal horizons of a daily cycle. We find, on investigation, that an acute consciousness of the passage of time invades the very details of the broadcasting newsman's work. The newsman's language displays fine conceptual distinctions regarding time which show how significant is the temporal dimension of his work. Further, certain concepts, notably 'pace', 'sequence', 'duration', are used in the framing of news as a cultural form. Lastly, the paper argues that for newsmen the mastery of time-pressure is a way of manifesting their professionalism. It closes by drawing attention to the way in which 'news' as presently conceived tends to abolish an historical awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]