What is News?

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Experts agree that defining news can be a difficult task.

The answer to the question "What is news?" may seem obvious. News is what is new; it's what's happening. Look it up in the dictionary, and you'll find news described as "a report of recent events or previously unknown information." But most of the things that happen in the world every day don't find their way into the newspaper or onto the air in a newscast.

So what makes a story newsworthy enough to be published or broadcast? The real answer is, it depends on a variety of factors. Generally speaking, news is information that is of broad interest to the intended audience, so what's big news in Buenos Aires may not be news at all in Baku. Journalists decide what news to cover based on many of the following "news values":

Timeliness
Did something happen recently or did we just learn about it? If so, that could make it newsworthy. The meaning of "recently" varies depending on the medium, of course. For a weekly news magazine, anything that happened since the previous edition the week before may be considered timely. For a 24-hour cable news channel, the timeliest news may be "breaking news," or something that is happening this very minute and can be covered by a reporter live at the scene.

Impact
Are many people affected or just a few? Contamination in the water system that serves your town's 20,000 people has impact because it affects your audience directly. A report that 10 children were killed from drinking polluted water at a summer camp in a distant city has impact too, because the audience is likely to have a strong emotional response to the story. The fact that a worker cut a utility line is not big news, unless it happens to cause a blackout across the city that lasts for several hours.

Proximity
Did something happen close to home, or did it involve people from here? A plane crash in Chad will make headlines in N'Djamena, but it's unlikely to be front-page news in Chile unless the plane was carrying Chilean passengers.

Controversy
Are people in disagreement about this? It's human nature to be interested in stories that involve conflict, tension, or public debate. People like to take sides, and see whose position will prevail. Conflict doesn't always entail pitting one person's views against another. Stories about doctors battling disease or citizens opposing an unjust law also involve conflict.

Prominence
Is a well-known person involved? Ordinary activities or mishaps can become news if they involve a prominent person like a prime minister or a film star. That plane crash in Chad would make headlines around the world if one of the passengers were a famous rock musician.

Currency
Are people here talking about this? A government meeting about bus safety might not draw much attention, unless it happens to be scheduled soon after a terrible bus accident. An incident at a football match may be in the news for several days because it's the main topic of conversation in town.

Oddity
Is what happened unusual? As the saying goes, "If a dog bites a man, that is not news. But if a man bites a dog, it's news!" The extraordinary and the unexpected appeal to our natural human curiosity.

News is the conglomeration of new facts and events that impact our lives. Most people rely on journalists to provide them with this up-to-date information about the world, making it the journalists' responsibility to determine what is news. Then the media must help the audience master the data, "master it intellectually and emotionally by putting it in a context, a mosaic that help[s] make it seem somewhat less gratuitous and unpredictable, somewhat less frightening" 
Since a news story is buried within a mass of facts, there are a great many points that can be made. It is up to journalists to dictate the focus of the story and determine which facts should be emphasized. Some media critics argue that the media deliver the news that the audience demands in market research. But Jack Fuller, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, claims while "marketing helps journalists get the message across successfully; it does not determine what message to give"  . Instead journalists prescribe to a set of judgment guidelines that help shape the definition of news. But this refinement process is not completely objective.

Although journalists strive to be fair, they are influenced by an internal system of values and beliefs. These prejudices, while tempered by the news values stressed by their profession, are still evident in news stories. There is a great deal of "cultural understanding that is taken for granted in news stories--some of it universally shared...but some of it dependent on familiarity with historical experiences specific to or interpreted in specific ways by our culture or certain groups within it"  . Thus, the value of a news story is embedded within a system of cultural beliefs internalized by the journalist and the story's angle is dictated by a combination of these beliefs and quasi-objective news judgments. The news reinforces a "common understanding" about what is important, how to absorb it, and what to do with it