News
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called "hard news" to differentiate it from soft media.
For other uses, see News (disambiguation).
Common topics for news reports include war, government, politics, education, health, the environment, economy, business, fashion, entertainment, and sport, as well as quirky or unusual events. Government proclamations, concerning royal ceremonies, laws, taxes, public health, and criminals, have been dubbed news since ancient times. Technological and social developments, often driven by government communication and espionage networks, have increased the speed with which news can spread, as well as influenced its content.
Throughout history, people have transported new information through oral means. Having developed in China over centuries, newspapers became established in Europe during the early modern period. In the 20th century, radio and television became an important means of transmitting news. Whilst in the 21st, the internet has also begun to play a similar role.
Meaning[edit]
Etymology[edit]
The English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German Neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages – namely cognates from Serbo-Croatian novost (from nov, "new"), Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the Polish nowiny (pronounced noviney), the Bulgarian novini and Russian novosti – and likewise in the Celtic languages: the Welsh newyddion (from newydd) and the Cornish nowodhow (from nowydh).[1][2]
Jessica Garretson Finch is credited with coining the phrase "current events" while teaching at Barnard College in the 1890s.[3]
Newness[edit]
As its name implies, "news" typically connotes the presentation of new information.[4][5] The newness of news gives it an uncertain quality which distinguishes it from the more careful investigations of history or other scholarly disciplines.[5][6][7] Whereas historians tend to view events as causally related manifestations of underlying processes, news stories tend to describe events in isolation, and to exclude discussion of the relationships between them.[8] News conspicuously describes the world in the present or immediate past, even when the most important aspects of a news story have occurred long in the past—or are expected to occur in the future. To make the news, an ongoing process must have some "peg", an event in time that anchors it to the present moment.[8][9] Relatedly, news often addresses aspects of reality which seem unusual, deviant, or out of the ordinary.[10] Hence the famous dictum that "Dog Bites Man" is not news, but "Man Bites Dog" is.[11]
Another corollary of the newness of news is that, as new technology enables new media to disseminate news more quickly, 'slower' forms of communication may move away from 'news' towards 'analysis'.[12]
Commodity[edit]
According to some theories, "news" is whatever the news industry sells.[13] Journalism, broadly understood along the same lines, is the act or occupation of collecting and providing news.[14][15] From a commercial perspective, news is simply one input, along with paper (or an electronic server) necessary to prepare a final product for distribution.[16] A news agency supplies this resource "wholesale" and publishers enhance it for retail.[17][18]
Tone[edit]
Most purveyors of news value impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity, despite the inherent difficulty of reporting without political bias.[19] Perception of these values has changed greatly over time as sensationalized 'tabloid journalism' has risen in popularity. Michael Schudson has argued that before the era of World War I and the concomitant rise of propaganda, journalists were not aware of the concept of bias in reporting, let alone actively correcting for it.[20] News is also sometimes said to portray the truth, but this relationship is elusive and qualified.[21]
Paradoxically, another property commonly attributed to news is sensationalism, the disproportionate focus on, and exaggeration of, emotive stories for public consumption.[22][23] This news is also not unrelated to gossip, the human practice of sharing information about other humans of mutual interest.[24] A common sensational topic is violence; hence another news dictum, "if it bleeds, it leads".[25]
Newsworthiness[edit]
Newsworthiness is defined as a subject having sufficient relevance to the public or a special audience to warrant press attention or coverage.[26]
News values seem to be common across cultures. People seem to be interested in news to the extent which it has a big impact, describes conflicts, happens nearby, involves well-known people, and deviates from the norms of everyday happenings.[27] War is a common news topic, partly because it involves unknown events that could pose personal danger.[28]
Social organization of news production[edit]
News organizations[edit]
Viewed from a sociological perspective, news for mass consumption is produced in hierarchical organizations. Reporters, working near the bottom of the structure, are given significant autonomy in researching and preparing reports, subject to assignments and occasional intervention from higher decision-makers.[227] Owners at the top of the news hierarchy influence the content of news indirectly but substantially. The professional norms of journalism discourage overt censorship; however, news organizations have covert but firm norms about how to cover certain topics. These policies are conveyed to journalists through socialization on the job; without any written policy, they simply learn how things are done.[228][229] Journalists comply with these rules for various reasons, including job security.[230] Journalists are also systematically influenced by their education, including journalism school.[231]
News production is routinized in several ways. News stories use familiar formats and subgenres which vary by topic. "Rituals of objectivity", such as pairing a quotation from one group with a quotation from a competing group, dictate the construction of most news narratives. Many news items revolve around periodic press conferences or other scheduled events. Further routine is established by assigning each journalist to a beat: a domain of human affairs, usually involving government or commerce, in which certain types of events routinely occur.[232]
A common scholarly frame for understanding news production is to examine the role of information gatekeepers: to ask why and how certain narratives make their way from news producers to news consumers.[233] Obvious gatekeepers include journalists, news agency staff, and wire editors of newspapers.[234] Ideology, personal preferences, source of news, and length of a story are among the many considerations which influence gatekeepers.[235] Although social media have changed the structure of news dissemination, gatekeeper effects may continue due to the role of a few central nodes in the social network.[236]
New factors have emerged in internet-era newsrooms. One issue is "click-thinking", the editorial selection of news stories—and of journalists—who can generate the most website hits and thus advertising revenue. Unlike a newspaper, a news website has detailed data collection about which stories are popular and who is reading them.[183][237] The drive for speedy online postings, some journalists have acknowledged, has altered norms of fact-checking so that verification takes place after publication.[183][238]
Journalists' sometimes unattributed echoing of other news sources can also increase the homogeneity of news feeds.[239] The digital age can accelerate the problem of circular reporting: propagation of the same error through increasingly reliable sources. In 2009, a number of journalists were embarrassed after all reproducing a fictional quotation, originating from Wikipedia.[239][240]
News organizations have historically been male-dominated, though women have acted as journalists since at least the 1880s. The number of female journalists has increased over time, but organizational hierarchies remain controlled mostly by men.[241] Studies of British news organizations estimate that more than 80% of decision-makers are men.[242] Similar studies have found 'old boys' networks' in control of news organizations in the United States and the Netherlands.[243] Further, newsrooms tend to divide journalists by gender, assigning men to "hard" topics like military, crime, and economics, and women to "soft", "humanised" topics.[244]
Relationship with institutions[edit]
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.[48][49][245] This relationship seems to emerge because the press can develop symbiotic relationships with other powerful social institutions.[245] In the United States, the Associated Press wire service developed a "bilateral monopoly" with the Western Union telegraph company.[119][246]
The news agencies which rose to power in the mid-1800s all had support from their respective governments, and in turn served their political interests to some degree.[139] News for consumption has operated under statist assumptions, even when it takes a stance adversarial to some aspect of a government.[247] In practice, a large proportion of routine news production involves interactions between reporters and government officials.[248] Relatedly, journalists tend to adopt a hierarchical view of society, according to which a few people at the top of organizational pyramids are best situated to comment on the reality which serves as the basisi of news.[249] Broadly speaking, therefore, news tends to normalize and reflect the interests of the power structure dominant in its social context.[250]
Today, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rival and may surpass governments in their influence on the content of news.[251]
Influence of sponsorship[edit]
It has been acknowledged that sponsorship has historically influenced various news stories.[317][318][319] This history gained widespread attention following the release of the film Anchorman 2.[317][318][319] One example in recent time is the fact that Facebook has invested heavily in news sources and purchasing time on local news media outlets.[320][321] TechCrunch journalist Josh Continue even stated in February 2018 that the company "stole the news business" and used sponsorship to make many news publishers its "ghostwriters."[320] In January 2019, founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he will spend $300 million in local news buys over a three-year period.[321][322]