NEWS
Man can subsist without newspaper but no newspaper can subsist without news. News is the spinal cord of journalism. The basic assumption of journalism is the collection, presentation and interpretation of news which is meant to inform the people about new and novel.
What is news ?
News is an unpublished account of human activity, Which seeks to interest, inform, and educate the readers.
News is a report of a current event. It is information about something that has just happened or will happen soon. News is a report about recent happenings in a newspaper, television radio or internet. News is something that is not known earlier. From all these, we can safely define news as a development that has happened in the past 24 hours which was not known outside and which is of wide interest to the people and that which generates curiosity among listeners.
Let us consider a few examples,
You have heard a news broadcast on the radio .Twenty people died in a train accident. You don’t consider it as news concerning you. Lots of accidents happen in various places every day. But after some time you hear that passengers in the compartment which met with the accident are from your village. Now you become more alert. The news becomes important for you. You are anxious to know the condition of passengers. Are they safe? Is anyone hurt or hospitalized ?
You are in no way connected with the presentation of the central budget in parliament. But when the Finance Minister, while presenting the budget, announces a hike in the prices of petroleum products, you suddenly become interested in the news. You want to know how much is the increase. Will it affect your pocket? How much is the increase for a cooking gas cylinder? The news becomes quite important for you.
Counting of votes is going on in your constituency. Election to the state assembly is going on. As the counting progresses, you become eager to know the lead positions. At the end of the counting, you want to know who has won the seat. So it is news which you wanted to know without delay.
NEWS AND INFORMATION
"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.
And 'Information' Is Information can be thought of as the resolution of uncertainty; it is that which answers the question of "what an entity is" and thus defines both its essence and nature of its characteristics. It is associated with data, as data represents values attributed to parameters, and information is data in context and with meaning attached.[Information relates also to knowledge, as knowledge signifies understanding of an abstract or concrete concept.
In the railway station, you might have noticed the board displaying the train timings. That is not news. That is information. But information becomes news when news value is added to it. For example, if a new train time table is issued by the railways replacing the existing one with changes in train timings, that becomes news.
Similarly, the different slabs of income tax rates is not news. But when the government decides to increase or lower the rates, it becomes news. You might have seen weather reports in the newspapers. It gives the day’s temperature or rainfall. It does not make news. It becomes news when there is a sudden change in weather, or when heavy rains lead to floods or when continuous absence of rain leads to drought. So information is different from news. News should give something new to the readers, viewers or listeners.
NEWS VALUES
Journalists are the best judges about what is news and what is not. They take this decision based on certain news values. The following are the salient points to judge the newsworthiness.
#Timeliness: News is something new. So timeliness is a great factor in deciding news. An incident that happened one month back will not make news for today’s newspaper. Also timeliness varies from publication to publication. For a newspaper, events that had happened on the previous day is news. But for a weekly, events of the previous one week can make news. For a 24-hour television news channel, every second is a deadline. They can break the news anytime. So their timeliness is different from that of a newspaper.
#Impact: Impact of an event decides its newsworthiness. When the tsunami waves struck several parts of the world, thousands of people were affected. It became major news for the whole world. But if a cyclone kills 20 people in Bangladesh, it may not have any impact on other parts of the world. When dengue fever affects 100 people in Delhi, it makes news not only in Delhi but in other states also because the impact is more wide and people become more alert about the news.
#Proximity: “Bird flu spreading and hundreds of chicken dying in England”. Does it make news for you? You may read it but do not worry about it. But bird flu spreading in West Bengal will make you alert. This is because it is in your proximity. A plane crash in Peru will not be big news in India, but if an aircraft crashes in India, it will be headlines everywhere. So proximity decides the news.
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