News anchor

A news anchor (US,Can), newscaster or newsreader (UK, Aus, Sri Lanka) is a television or radio personality that presents material prepared for a news program, and at times must improvise commentary for live presentation. Many news anchors are also involved in writing and/or editing the news for their programs. Sometimes news anchors interview guests and moderate panels or discussions. Some provide commentary for the audience during parades and other events.

The term anchor (sometimes anchorperson, anchorman, or anchorwoman) was coined by CBS News producer Don Hewitt. CBS cites its first usage as being on July 7, 1952 to describe Walter Cronkite's role at the Democratic and Republican Party National Conventions. The term may have been in reference to the "anchor leg" of a relay race.

Criticism

A common dogma among the general public equates "news" and "news media" with "journalism," and this typically carries over to news anchors as well; much to the consternation of many print journalists. In the current age of mass media consolidation, news anchors, despite the integrity of their backing news organizations, tend to be viewed as belonging to the infotainment or news trades, rather than to the journalism profession.

Among many, the corporate news anchor is a quintessential contemporary social archetype of superficiality, who typically recieves a excess measures of social (and financial) reward, while resting upon the hard work of nameless journalists behind the scenes. Further criticism views them as a weak link within the very (or overly-) broad news trade, representing the misplacement of both the credit and the accountability of a news organization, hence representing the corruption of integrity of journalism overall. (See yellow journalism.)

In North American news anchors are frequently imitated and lampooned people who are hired for more their looks on TV than for any skill at journalism or intelligence. This kind of character is the subject of long running gags on Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and the UK-produced The Muppet Show and the subject of sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, and NewsRadio.