Certainty and Speculation in Broadcast News Reporting of the Future: The Execution of Timothy McVeigh

This article explores the temporal organization and manipulation of time in the production and presentation of news reports. Time is often cited as one of the most central organizing concepts of news production; indeed one of the major features of news reporting is the breaking of stories and the reporting of events ‘as they happen’. However, whilst much emphasis is placed upon time within media production, much of this pertains to the reporting of past and present events rather than the reporting of the future. This article explores the future within news reporting through an examination of sequential events leading up to a main scheduled newsworthy event: the execution of Timothy McVeigh. It analyses how the production of ‘news’ utilizes the future by relying upon prediction and speculation about what will happen and examines: (i) how news can be seen to depend to a large degree on uncertainty for its value; (ii) the use of time frames within media reporting; and (iii) the way time is manipulated in the service of the recency and immediacy of news reporting