Linguistic aspects of video news texts

It is a common topos that language differs very much depending for example (and most importantly) on its usage in a written or a spoken way. It is less known that there are also - and again quite different - usages of language if it is connected with moving images. Professional television news authors know and utilize these rules. News produced by the new, digital broadcasters whose authors had no classical journalistic training lack knowledge about the reasons of, nor how to utilize these rules. Thus we observe a gap in language use between professional television news and the majority of the 'other' digital video new presenters. This will be shown comparing news from Germany's biggest public broadcaster (ZDF) and a small private digital broadcaster (regio tv). I will also discuss which way in using language suits better to a broader audience, and why.