This may include air crashes, train crashes, ships sinking, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or human tragedies like children falling down deep wells from which they cannot be rescued. Development is always news in a developing country. The report should be always of how the changes affect people's lives, for better or for worse.
New ideas or progress in one area may stimulate ideas in another. Development stories may include education, the development of new technology, improvement of farming techniques, road building and irrigation schemes. Citizens of more developed countries may also appreciate stories about developments in things which affect their lives or well-being, such as medical breakthroughs, new technologies or initiatives to make transport easier, quicker or cheaper.
Any crime can be news, whether it is a road traffic offence, break and enter, corruption, forgery, rape or murder - but more serious crimes or unusual crimes generally make bigger news stories. These stories include fortunes made and lost, school fees, taxes, the Budget, food prices, wage rises, economic crises and compensation claims. This is one of the great themes of literature and drama David and Goliath, the Hare and the Tortoise, Cinderella. One traditional role of the journalist is to defend the rights of the little person - the soldier against the unjust officer, the innocent man against false charges, the poor against exploitation.
There are two types of religious news story. First, there are events involving people's religious lives, such as the building of a new church or a pilgrimage. Second, there are statements by religious leaders on moral and spiritual affairs, such as contraception or salvation. It is important for the journalist to be aware of the relative numerical strengths of Christianity, Islam and other religions - including traditional local beliefs - in his or her country.
The importance of a statement by a religious leader in your society depends both upon the news value of what he has to say and upon the size of his following. Prominent men and women make news. What people in the public eye do, the lives they lead and what they look like, are all of interest.
It is especially newsworthy when they fall from power, lose their money or are involved in scandal. Many people are concerned with their health, so they are interested in stories about traditional remedies, medical research, diseases, hospitals and clinics, drugs, diet and exercise. All societies are interested in sex, even if they do not talk about it openly.
Many news stories about sex involve behaviour which goes outside society's generally accepted standards. The weather may affect the daily routine of people and is of interest when it behaves unusually, with exceptionally high or low temperatures, or exceptionally high or low rainfall. The rich person plans feasts, the poor person wants enough to eat and drink.
Shortages and gluts, crop diseases and harvest sizes, prices of food in the market or the launch of a new brand of beer - these all make news. Stories about music, dance, theatre, cinema and carving keep us informed of developments in the arts, who is doing what, who is performing where, and what it is worth going to see or hear. Many people participate in sport and many others are spectators.
They all want to know sports results, news of sportsmen and sportswomen and their achievements. There are often unusual and interesting aspects of other people's lives which are not particularly significant to society as a whole. Stories about these are called human interest stories. Examples might be a child going abroad for surgery; a pilot recovering from injuries received in an air crash and determined to fly again; or a man with a collection of a million picture postcards.
Most people agree that the purpose of the news media - newspapers, magazines, radio and television - is to inform, to educate and to entertain. However, the purpose of the news itself is to inform and to educate your readers, listeners or viewers. The entertainment can come from other areas - music and drama programs on radio; cartoons and crossword puzzles in newspapers. It is not the job of news to entertain. This does not mean that news should be dull. If a news event has an element of humour, you should always try to write the story in a way to amuse your readers or listeners.
Nevertheless, the news should only be reported if it is real news. Do not report non-news as if it was news only because the story is entertaining. As you gain more experience, you may be able to write things which are purely entertaining - such as a humorous look at current events. This is not news, however, and should not be presented as if it was. To decide what you should report, you must sort out news from non-news. To do this, ask yourself the following questions about anything you think may be news: If it is not new or unusual, if it is not interesting or significant, and if it will not affect your readers' or listeners' lives, then it is not news.
Do not publish it or broadcast it as news. A quick way to find what you're looking for in The News Manual is through the Index. It has more than links to concepts throughout the manuals. Is it interesting or significant? Is it about people? More than people were left homeless after Cyclone Victor struck Suva yesterday. Seventeen houses were flattened when Cyclone Victor struck Suva yesterday.
Human interest stories deal with usual events but usually these stories involve fellow feeling, emotion of brotherhood and humanness. A story of a child rescued by a fireman as a seven-storey building caught fire has greater value than the story of the complete loss of the building. October 13, 1 Comment. Some of the definitions are given below: News is anything out of the ordinary News is the unusual picture of life. News is anything that people talk about; the more it excites the greater its value.
Anything that enough people want to read is news provided it does not violate the canons of good taste and the law of libel. News is like a hot cake coming straight from oven. News is the report of an event that is fresh, unusual and which is interesting to a greater number of people. Objectivity News is the factual report of an event. Concise and Clear There is a famous sentence about writing a news story: Proximity or Nearness The importance of a news greatly depends on the place of its origin. An earthquake in China killing people will be less important in our newspapers than the story of earthquake killing 30 persons in Pakistan 3.
Prominence Readers have interest in names of persons with whom they are familiar. Magnitude The event relating to greater loss of life, damage or natural disaster creates interest for the readers. Conflict Everybody takes interest in confrontation among people, nations and groups. Consequence The news story that affects some change in the life of people will have great value. Human interest Human interest stories deal with usual events but usually these stories involve fellow feeling, emotion of brotherhood and humanness.
When a person reads about joy or sorrow of others he mentally associates himself with them. For various reasons, news media usually have a close relationship with the state, and often church as well, even when they cast themselves in critical roles.
The news agencies which rose to power in the mids all had support from their respective governments, and in turn served their political interests to some degree. Today, international non-governmental organizations NGOs rival and may surpass governments in their influence on the content of news. Governments use international news transmissions to promote the national interest and conduct political warfare , alternatively known as public diplomacy and, in the modern era, international broadcasting.
International radio broadcasting came into wide-ranging use by world powers seeking cultural integration of their empires. Governments have also funneled programming through private news organizations, as when the British government arranged to insert news into the Reuters feed during and after World War Two. Investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency pursued in the s found that it owned hundreds of news organizations wire services, newspapers, magazines outright.
The Russian KGB heavily pursued a strategy of disinformation , planting false stories which made their way to news outlets worldwide. Broadcasts into Iraq before the Second Gulf War mimicked the style of local programming. Today, Al Jazeera , a TV and internet news network owned by the government of Qatar , has become one of the foremost news sources in the world, appreciated by millions as an alternative to the Western media.
Edward Bernays , Propaganda , pp. As distinct from advertising , which deals with marketing distinct from news, public relations involves the techniques of influencing news in order to give a certain impression to the public. A standard public relations tactic, the "third-party technique", is the creation of seemingly independent organizations, which can deliver objective-sounding statements to news organizations without revealing their corporate connections.
Public relations releases offer valuable newsworthy information to increasingly overworked journalists on deadline. Thus, public relations works its magic in secret. Public relations can dovetail with state objectives, as in the case of the news story about Iraqi soldiers taking "babies out of incubators" in Kuwaiti hospitals.
Overall, the position of the public relations industry has grown stronger, while the position of news producers has grown weaker. Public relations agents mediate the production of news about all sectors of society. Over the centuries, commentators on newspapers and society have repeatedly observed widespread human interest in news.
Regular people in societies with news media often spend a lot of time reading or watching news reports. A study by sociologist Bernard Berelson found that during the New York newspaper strike, New Yorkers exhibited a virtual addiction to news, describing themselves as "lost", "nervous", "isolated", and "suffering" due to the withdrawal. They come to perceive news as characteristic of adulthood, and begin watching television news in their teenage years because of the adult status it confers.
People exhibit various forms of skepticism towards the news. Studies of tabloid readers found that many of them gain pleasure from seeing through the obviously fake or poorly constructed stories—and get their "real news" from television. An important feature distinguishing news from private information transfers is the impression that when one reads or hears, or watches it, one joins a larger public. Images connected with news can also become iconic and gain a fixed role in the culture.
With the new interconnectedness of global media, the experience of receiving news along with a world audience reinforces the social cohesion effect on a larger scale. This collective form experience can be understood to constitute a political realm or public sphere. This idea, at least as a goal to be sought, has re-emerged in the era of global communications. The news about Tiananmen Square traveled over fax machine, telephone, newspaper, radio, and television, and continued to travel even after the government imposed new restrictions on local telecommunications.
As the technological means for disseminating news grew more powerful, news became an experience which millions of people could undergo simultaneously. Outstanding news experiences can exert profound influence on millions of people. Through its power to effect a shared experience, news events can mold the collective memory of a society. One type of news event, the media event , is a scripted pageant organized for mass live broadcast. Media events include athletic contests such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics, cultural events like awards ceremonies and celebrity funerals, and also political events such as coronations, debates between electoral candidates, and diplomatic ceremonies.
Public relations companies can participate in these events as well. The perception that an ongoing crisis is taking place further increases the significance of live news. People rely on the news and constantly seek more of it, to learn new information and to seek reassurance amidst feelings of fear and uncertainty. In , the capture of American hostages in Iran dominated months of news coverage in the western media, gained the status of a "crisis", and influenced a presidential election. South Africans overwhelmingly describe the end of Apartheid as a source of the country's most important news.
Kennedy , Martin Luther King, Jr. Kennedy , the moon landing , the Challenger explosion, the death of Princess Diana, the intervention of the Supreme Court in the presidential election and the September 11 attacks. Positive news stories found memorable by Jordanians featured political events affecting their lives and families—such as the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon , and the Israel—Jordan peace treaty. News coverage can also shape collective memory in retrospect. A study of Israeli news coverage leading up to the media event of the nation's 60th birthday found that news coverage of events like the Holocaust, World War Two, and subsequent Israeli wars increased the perceived importance of these events in the minds of citizens.
News making is the act of making the news or doing something that is considered to be newsworthy. When discussing the act of news making, scholars refer to specific models. The Professional Model is when skilled peoples put certain events together for a specific audience. The reaction of the audience is influential because it can determine the impact that the particular article or newspaper has on the readers. This model aims to focus on particular events and provide accuracy in reporting. The Organizational Model is also known as the Bargaining Model. The Political Model outlines that news represents the ideological biases of the people as well as the various pressures of the political environment.
This model mainly influences journalists and attempts to promote public opinion. This allows the audience to play an active role in society. Models of news making help define what the news is and how it influences readers. But it does not necessarily account for the content of print news and online media. Stories are selected if they have a strong impact, incorporate violence and scandal, are familiar and local, and if they are timely. News Stories with a strong impact can be easily understood by a reader.
Violence and scandal create an entertaining and attention-grabbing story. Proximity can influence a reader more. A story that is timely will receive more coverage because it is a current event. The process of selecting stories coupled with the models of news making are how the media is effective and impactful in society. Exposure to constant news coverage of war can lead to stress and anxiety. Research also suggest that constant representations of violence in the news lead people to overestimate the frequency of its occurrence in the real world, thus increasing their level of fear in everyday situations.
The content and style of news delivery certainly have effects on the general public, with the magnitude and precise nature of these effects being tough to determine experimentally. News is the leading source of knowledge about global affairs for people around the world. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Journalism v t e. For other uses, see News disambiguation. For the album by John Abercrombie, see Current Events album. For the portal, see Portal: History of newspapers and magazines. If important things of life to-day consist of trans-atlantic radiophone talks arranged by commercial telephone companies; if they consist of inventions that will be commercially advantageous to the men who market them; if they consist of Henry Fords with epoch-making cars—then all this is news.
Media influence and Cultivation theory. Compare later novel n. Retrieved 7 July New York Herald Tribune. An International History , p. It had to be filled with whatever was available, unable to wait until information of greater clarity or certainty or of wider perspective had accumulated. A Gazette is the reflection of feelings and rumors of the time which may or may not be true.
The news market—and by the sixteenth century it was a real market—was humming with conflicting reports, some incredible, some all too plausible: Today that race is being won by television and radio. Consequently, daily newspapers are beginning to underplay breaking news about yesterday's events already old news to much of their audience in favor of more analytical perspectives on those events. In other words, dailies are now moving in the direction toward which weeklies retreated when dailies were introduced.
Indeed, Somerville argues that 'news' is not an objective 'historical' concept but one that is defined by the news industry as it creates a commodity sold by publishers to the public. In other words, the practitioner typically constructs a method for fulfilling the daily job requirements. He or she rarely has an underlying theoretical understanding of what defining something or someone as newsworthy entails.
To be sure, individual journalists may engage in more abstract musings about their work, but the profession as a whole is content to apply these conditions and does not care that the theory behind the application is not widely understood. Hall , calls news a 'slippery' concept, with journalists defining newsworthiness as those things that get into the news media.
It has also suited the news agencies to be thus presented: They have wanted to avoid controversy, to maintain an image of plain, almost dull, but completely dependable professionalism. They had relatively little incentive to doubt the firmness of the reality by which they lived. Journalists, like others, lost faith in the democratic market society had taken for granted. Their experience of propaganda during the war and public relations thereafter convinced them that the world they reported was one that interested parties had constructed for them to report.
News obviously can do much more than merely sensationalize, but most news is , in an important sense, sensational: Comparing journalists' perceptions of the normative and actual impact of different event properties when deciding what's news". Observers have often remarked on the fierce concern with the news that they find in preliterate or semiliterate peoples.
A History , p. Unlike the signs, which contained only information regarding the merchant, the criers also informed the citizens of the news of the day. Because the crier, or his agent, was compensated for his assistance in getting the advertising message out in the context of the news, there are interesting parallels with the newspaper of today Applegate, ; Roche, ; Schramm, Therefore, whoever controlled the messengers gained not only a conduit to the members of a society—the ability to inform them of new regulations—but gained a measure of power over the selection of news the members of a society received—the power, for example to ensure that they received news of triumphs but not necessarily of debacles.
Messengers were controlled, for the most part, by kings, chiefs, headmen. They were rarely channels of dissent. During the Han dynasty BC—AD the imperial court arranged to be supplied with information on the events of the Empire by means of a postal empire similar to the princely message systems of the European Middle Ages, when the postmasters of the Holy Roman Empire were required to write summaries of events taking place within their regions and transmit them along specified routes.
During this time, there were many rising powerful dukes, princes or governor-generals in charge of the large territories, equal in size to a modern province in China. These dukes or princes would naturally provide for their own news service at the capital Chang'an, which handled all official documents submitted by these representatives and transmitted imperial edicts in return.
Recent archaeological research has uncovered such official reports from the Tang dynasty.
The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. University of California Press. The merchants of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, no less than those of today, required the 'freshest advices' in order to conduct their affairs profitably. Information and Politics in the Seventeenth Century.
Cambridge University Press , Writings on Music and Society, — Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time. Stanford University Press , An International History , pp. The information was handwritten and passed along carefully organized chains, each item being labeled with its place and date of origin. This is precisely the key to the existence of a network relationship: Long-term, personal networks were particularly well suited for transmitting information that required high reliability. News pamphlets were often committed and engaged, intended to persuade as well as inform.
News also became, for the first time, part of the entertainment industry. What could be more entertaining than the tale of some catastrophe in a far-off place, or a grisly murder? This was not unproblematic, particularly for the traditional leaders of society who were used to news being part of a confidential service, provided by trusted agents. Each report was no more than a couple sentences long.
It offered no explanation, comment, or commentary. Unlike a news pamphlet the reader did not know where this fitted in the narrative—or even whether what was reported would turn out to be important. Editors relied on other papers for the national news that filled most of their columns. In effect, the federal government was encouraging local papers to become outlets for a national news network that the government itself did not control.
A History , pp. Business and Politics, —". This was an oligopolistic and hierarchical structure of the global news market controlled by Reuters, Havas and Wolff at the top tier, in partnership with an ever-increasing number of national news agencies. Each member of the triumvirate had the right to distribute its news service, incorporating news of the cartel, to its ascribed territories: It is necessary to talk about this, it is necessary to register each new fact in this regard, but in a few lines; to pound out in 'telegraph style' the new appearances of old, already known and evaluated policies.
The BBC was happy to live up to this stereotype. Radio announces always arrived in evening dress, and announcers were chosen from the upper classes of English society. More importantly, they had to be able to speak the King's English just as the King spoke it. From about this revolution was under way. Advertising agencies, manufacturers, sponsors, promoters, and the sellers of medical and life insurance were jockeying for places in a world of propaganda disseminated by radio broadcasting.
The networks' version of the story will be seen in the United States; CNN's version will be seen all over the world. As a result, members of the Masai community did not learn about the September 11 attack in New York until the following June. The Sociology of News 2nd edition. News and Google News: Quantitative analysis of geographic coverage of online news".