Anchors, Television

[Page 103]Television news anchors are among the few journalists known to the public on a national scale. In addition to keeping the public informed, viewers who watch a television newscast come to feel as though they know the people who report the news. Of all those practicing television journalism, the struggle between the time-honored principles of print and radio journalism and the elements of television appearance, personality, emotion, and celebrity is experienced to the greatest degree by network television news anchors.

Although TV news anchors often ascend to their network posts from local stations and from jobs as correspondents and reporters, they are soon distinguished by their status as the most recognizable figureheads on the nightly network news broadcasts. TV anchors’ implicit associations with “hard news” ...