TV journalism brings the world events into the homes of individuals all over the world. From watching the Olympics to natural disasters to presidential elections, no other medium is able to connect with as many people as broadcast news coverage. Unlike cable news and news on the Web, broadcast news coverage is carried over public airwaves, and most TVs can pick it up.
Airtime is expensive and viewers have a short attention span. As such, TV journalism will often only touch on the main points of a story. This gives viewers the basic information about an event or subject and forces the viewer to go to other sources if they want to learn more. The risk is that not every individual seeks the additional information, leaving the public with only part of the story.
With moving pictures, color images and voice, TV news can be far more interesting and even entertaining to a wide audience. Newspapers and even Web-based news sites require readers to read the news, and if it is not written well, then readers may move on or leave the page or site behind.
If you are a parent, then you can sensor the news contained in newspapers and block pages on the Internet. However with TV journalism, unless you turn the channel or turn the TV off, you can't prevent your child from viewing a graphic image or story. Ultimately it is up to parents to decide what is appropriate for their children, but TV journalism offers images that can be disturbing. You only have to think of 9/11 and the graphic images shown on the news at that time to understand how graphic TV news can be.