News Presentation

News Presentation is one of the extracurricular subjects that the students have in MDIC. Students of Class – 9 get this subject along with the other compulsory or optional academic subjects that they have in O Levels.

As the name of the subject suggests, it aims at developing the skills of the students, the ones that are fundamentally essential for a news presenter. Pronunciation and fluency are two of the basic language skills that are needed for a news presenter. Proper posture and facial expressions are also necessary to develop a proper camera presence. While the language of the script is formal, with a wide variety of linguistic expressions, it is always up to the presenter himself to convey the written words to the viewers in a way that has changed much since the beginning of News Presentation in the visual medium.

In the past, the approach towards News Presentation was a lot more formal than it is today. The presenters used to keep a certain level of composure that often took out the liveliness. But it has changed significantly, particularly in the English-speaking countries of the world. Now the news presenters keep all kinds of emotional expressions in their stock to keep a more natural mood while remaining reasonably formal. Sense of humour and presence of mind are two absolutely necessary skills that a news presenter must have.

As the saying goes – “The camera cannot lie” and that is a challenge a news presenter faces in every single one of his presentations. Any amount of discomfort and dishonesty are caught on camera and if it is a live session which it is most of the times, there is no going back from the moment of disaster where a huge number of viewers are ready to criticize and troll on social media. In just a moment, any fumble or mistake can go viral.

And these are the exact challenges that MDIC tries to prepare the students for. They are given newspaper articles as they are quite similar to the news scripts that are given to the presenters in the studios. They are also shown various video clips, documentaries and needless to say news presentation clips from the popular news media. The students are given the assignments to prepare scripts themselves and present them in front of the faculties. In these practice sessions of news presentation, their performances are judged on the basis of the aforementioned skills.