Croatia: Nova TV News More “Neutral” Than Public TV – Survey
Text of report by Croatian newspaper Nacional on 9 October; subheadings as published
After nearly half a century of a news programme monopoly, the Croatian audience can exercise its right to make a choice based on quality. This shown by the results of the survey concerning the main news bulletins of HRT [public Croatian Radio Television] and [national, private network] Nova TV, which show that there is a balance between the main daily news bulletins of the public and commercial TV stations, according to their various journalistic approaches.
Viktorija Car, media theoretician at the Department of Political Sciences, conducted the survey in Croatia – part of an independent survey across the 10 countries that make up the Network of Media Centres of South-Eastern Europe – by comparing the main daily news programmes of HTV and Nova TV this April. The comparative analysis of the content only included these two TV stations and not [private network] RTL, because the quality of the news programme on that commercial TV station was seen as extremely unsatisfactory.
Better news bulletins
Even though the 1930 [1730 gmt] Dnevnik [HRT's main daily news programme] news bulletin on the national TV station is a decades- old tradition, Nova TV’s main daily news bulletin, broadcast at 1915, has managed to capture some of HRT’s audience.
Consequently, Nova TV has seen a significant improvement in the quality and viewer ratings of its news programme in the past two years. The survey points out that, with its modern approach to journalism, the so-called popularization and personalization of news, Nova TV’s Dnevnik managed to attract part of an audience that found the “old” Dnevnik “boring”, “too serious”, or “showing nothing but politics”.
The news delivered by Nova TV’s pair of presenters and its new journalistic forms – such as dividing the news programme into thematic segments and including live reports from the field – helped to bring the news closer to viewers in a more intimate and less complicated manner. Even though Nova TV is a commercial TV station, the main focus of its Dnevnik news programme is to provide information, which is why it lasts longer and carries more news than public TV, especially with regard to thematic reports that the wider public finds interesting.
Politically-neutral news
Quite expectedly, both TV stations focus on items about domestic politics from Zagreb, which the survey describes as a consequence of centralized state. Still, the results of the survey show that Nova TV carries five per cent fewer such items, and the fact that its programmes do not have reporter-read news boosts viewer ratings and improves the overall visual impression.
The analysis of the bias in reports was the least favourable segment for pollsters but the most interesting one for the public. Up to 83 per cent of the news content on Nova TV was assessed as neutral, while 60 per cent of HRT TV news items were neutral. Nova TV’s Dnevnik turned out to be more neutral on domestic politics. HRT’s Dnevnik draws the most criticism for bias evident in the individual approaches of journalists, and editors in particular.
“Nova TV’s Dnevnik is aware of its audience, it popularizes the news from Croatia and the world, personalizing politics to an extent acceptable to most of its audience,” says Car. She adds: “The number of the news items broadcast daily and the overall length of the news programme – which is much longer than HRT TV’s news – shows that Nova TV believes that its news programme is very important and that it is fighting for the audience of the public broadcaster, HRT, and not for the RTL audience that is more easily attracted by entertainment programmes, popular series and soaps. Thus, Nova TV shows a trend in its editorial policy that is not typical of transitional countries, but which is present in Scandinavian countries, for example.”
Iva Gacic, director of Nova TV’s news programme [says]: “The survey has confirmed something that Nova TV already knew, that is, that we are independent, informative and objective. This is why our audience appreciates and watches our programmes. It is definitely good to have that scientifically confirmed by an independent survey. We are pleased that the results of the survey have shown that we are more modern and that we set trends, not only in Croatia but also in the region.”
Originally published by Nacional, Zagreb, in Croatian 9 Oct 07.
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