News: What It Is and How It Gets to the Public (part A)
by
Charles Lamson
That's News to Me
Times change. And along with them, definitions change. Trying to pin down what is "news" becomes an endless exercise, with as many definitions as there are public relations practitioners, journalists and academicians. Or even playrights. George Bernard Shaw opined that the media are "unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization."
Former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, never a great fan of the press, declared that the media is about controversy, conflict and confusion---not clarity. Simpson further castigated the media for creating disengagement and disenfranchising the electorate.
Simpson and Shaw both observed the number one characteristic of news: Conflict. An objective news story will offer both sides of the conflict but it is the conflict itself that is of interest. Conflicts can be intellectual (evolution vs. creationism), moral (employee layoffs vs. CEO compensation package), economic (trade imbalance vs. free trade), political (drill for oil vs. protect the environment) or legal/bioethical (right-to-die vs. life sustaining treatment).
David and Goliath conflicts can be of special interest (the big corporation vs. the well-intended whistle blower) while conspiracies or conspiracy theories can be of even more public interest. Conflict is easy to create and often comes from disgruntled employees, competitors, special interest groups, proposed legislation or rumor.
Modern-day observers of the media are also bemoaning the obsession of networks, print media and Web sites with "infotainment," a hybrid of news and entertainment, designed to hold viewers longer. Is this the definition of news?
The original definition of "news" is thought to come from the four points on a compass: North, East, West, South. But that definition does not mean that all information from all points on the globe are newsworthy. For readers, listeners and viewers, "news" is what they personally are interested in. A long-ago rule-of-thumb definition stated that the importance of news varied inversely as the square of the distance from the reader. Example: "Two people killed in a local factory explosion in Cincinatti" gets more play than "100 people killed in a landslide in India." Readers are especially interested in those things that do or may affect the pocketbook, safety, employment, health or environment.
Sometimes though, the simplest definitions are the best: "News" is whatever the editor---or the gatekeeper---says it is.
If information does not get past the final editor's desk, it does not get printed, it does not get read on radio, described on television or put online and, thus, it does not become reported news. Editorial processing of information is not unique to the news media. All of us make decisions each day---about which pieces of information we will keep to ourselves and which pieces we will share with peers, subordinates, superiors, families and friends. In our hands, this is a benign process; when in the hand of news media the process seems to be a show of power with a blatant disregard for the "real" truth.
*SOURCE: ON DEADLINE: MANAGING MEDIA RELATIONS 4TH ED., 2006, CAROLE M. HOWARD AND WILMA K. MATHEWS, PGS. 25-26*
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