A Missing Link? The Imagined Audience, News Practices and the Production of Children's News

Based on a production study of the distinct and unique children's news programme, BBC Newsround, this paper explores the place of the professional understanding of the target audience as a “missing link” within the news-making process. Approaching programme production with this concern uncovers the particular understandings of the target audience that inform journalists’ news culture and professional views. Further revealed is how such ideas, when traced within the news production process, explain the particularised practices that condition and shape “appropriate” news representations for the audience. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of these professional ideas on the dialogical possibilities of the children's news programme.