What Makes News

Theres a lot to be told and a lot to be discovered. Armed with an optimisim of the will and pessimism of the intellect,I'm on a continous journey of understanding the world around us.
For what good is information if its not accessed by one and all.what is the point of education if its limited.how would knowing something more really makea diffrence unless it reverbrates in a thousand tongues.how can u build an opinion abt something unless its openly, publicly discusssed or bought forth in the first place.
news..is generally considered sacrosant. now im not somebody who likes to be the iconoclast(for the uninitiated an iconoclast is somebody who attacks some cherished belief) but its important to know that newspapers and the news that they carry are certainly not an entity that deserves to be kept on a pedestal and their words engraved in stone.
usually in debates,the last word is reserved for the opponent who quotes such and such article of such and such newspaper in his or her defence.now if this very person was to be told about the components of newsmaking and also the disconnect that exists between ethics in journalism and ground realities or should i say market realities,he or she will have to look for an alternative defense.
it is incorrect to think that a newspaper reports everything that goes on around us.the first thing that happens in the world of the media is filtering.the decision of what is newsworthy and wats not follows 5 main points.
Timing
The word news means exactly that - things which are new. Topics which are current are good news. Consumers are used to receiving the latest updates, and there is so much news about that old news is quickly discarded.
A story with only average interest needs to be told quickly if it is to be told at all. If it happened today, it’s news. If the same thing happened last week, it’s no longer interesting.
Significance
The number of people affected by the story is important. A plane crash in which hundreds of people died is more significant than a crash killing a dozen.
Proximity
Stories which happen near to us have more significance. The closer the story to home, the more newsworthy it is. For someone living in France, a major plane crash in the USA has a similar news value to a small plane crash near Paris.
Note that proximity doesn’t have to mean geographical distance. Stories from countries with which we have a particular bond or similarity have the same effect. For example, Australians would be expected to relate more to a story from a distant Western nation than a story from a much closer Asian country.
Prominence
Famous people get more coverage just because they are famous. If you break your arm it won’t make the news, but if the Queen of England breaks her arm it’s big news.
Human Interest
Human interest stories are a bit of a special case. They often disregard the main rules of newsworthiness; for example, they don’t date as quickly, they need not affect a large number of people, and it may not matter where in the world the story takes place.
Human interest stories appeal to emotion. They aim to evoke responses such as amusement or sadness. Television news programmes often place a humourous or quirky story at the end of the show to finish on a feel-good note. Newspapers often have a dedicated area for offbeat or interesting items.
but in this entire discourse..expecting this process of newsgathering to be a harmless and innocent exercise is foolhardy.political science teaches us not to view things in isolation.everything is inevitably interconneceted .all u need to do is look closely ang look hard enough.
so think about it…when a newspaper carries articles about BRTs in delhi calling them big road traumas..talks about the traffic problems caused..all the time referring to quotes of people who own cars and not a single account of whether the BRT is helping daily bus commuters ..the middle class,the low income group…can u really call that report objective?
say if u were to discover that the reason Koel Purie gets frequent publicity regardless of the fact whether shes done as many movies as to be constantly making news is because she happens to be the India today editor’s daughter..would u really typecast this under the ethical rule of prominence.
when the tata group talks about pulling out of Singur,it gets front page coverage in a leading daily replete with statistical accounts of the entire issue from the business house’s perspective,it wouldnt take long to wonder why the justification to the opposition from the poor farmer’s perspective receives no space if u were to look at the 2 page centre ad of indica vista in the papers the next day.
these are just a few instances of what happens in the nws media day in and day out. the point that i seek to make here by invoking this is that the next time when you read an article in the newspaper donot think of it as the only way or the best way of looking at that issue. for all u know, sometimes it could turn out to be the narrowest vision possible. so before u pass a judgement over any incident,think of news not as the end but a the means to an end that u need to discover all by yourself.