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News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of Witness to events. News is sometimes called " hard news" to differentiate it from soft media.
Subject matters for news reports include war, government, politics, education, health, economy, business, fashion, sport, entertainment, and the Climate change, as well as quirky or unusual events. Government proclamations, concerning Monarchy, , , public health, and Crime, have been dubbed news since ancient times. Technology and Social change, 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, 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 century, the internet has also begun to play a similar role.
Jessica Garretson Finch is credited with coining the phrase "current events" while teaching at Barnard College in the 1890s.
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'.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 56. "It is axiomatic in journalism that the fastest medium with the largest potential audience will disseminate the bulk of a community's breaking news. Today that race is being won by television and radio. Consequently, daily newspapers are beginning to underplay breaking news about yesterday's events (already old news to much of their audience) in favor of more analytical perspectives on those events. In other words, dailies are now moving in the direction toward which weeklies retreated when dailies were introduced."
Paradoxically, another property commonly attributed to news is sensationalism, the disproportionate focus on, and exaggeration of, emotive stories for public consumption.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 2. "Sensationalism appears to be a technique or style that is rooted somehow in the nature of the news. News obviously can do much more than merely sensationalize, but most news is, in an important sense, sensational: it is intended, in part, to arouse, to excite, often—whether the subject is a political scandal or a double murder—to shock." This news is also not unrelated to gossip, the human practice of sharing information about other humans of mutual interest.Stephens, History of News (1988), pp. 26, 105–106. A common sensational topic is violence; hence another news dictum, "if it bleeds, it leads".Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 202.
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.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 33. War is a common news topic, partly because it involves unknown events that could pose personal danger.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 31.
The news is also transmitted in public gathering places, such as the Greek forum and the Roman baths. Starting in England, coffeehouses served as important sites for the spread of news, even after telecommunications became widely available. The history of the coffee houses is traced from Arab countries, which was introduced in England in the 16th century.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 8. "A particularly lively forum for the exchange of news by word of mouth—the coffeehouse—flourished in England well after the development of the newspaper, and in some countries, the coffeehouse has survived even the introduction of television." In the Muslim world, people have gathered and exchanged news at mosques and other social places. Travelers on pilgrimages to Mecca traditionally stay at , roadside inns, along the way, and these places have naturally served as hubs for gaining news of the world.Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (1995), p. 5. In late medieval Britain, reports ("tidings") of major events were a topic of great public interest, as chronicled in Chaucer's 1380 The House of Fame and other works.Lim, "Take Writing" (2006), pp. 1–6.
Specially sanctioned messengers have been recognized in Vietnamese culture, among the Khasi people in India, and in the Meskwaki and Ho-Chunk cultures of the American midwest. The Zulu Kingdom used runners to quickly disseminate news. In West Africa, news can be spread by . In most cases, the official spreaders of news have been closely aligned with holders of political power.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 27–30.
Town criers were a common means of conveying information to citydwellers. In thirteenth-century Florence, criers known as banditori arrived in the market regularly, to announce political news, to convoke public meetings, and to call the populace to arms. In 1307 and 1322–1325, laws were established governing their appointment, conduct, and salary. These laws stipulated how many times a banditoro was to repeat a proclamation (forty) and where in the city they were to read them.Milner, "Fanno bandire" (2013), pp. 110–112. Different declarations sometimes came with additional protocols; announcements regarding the plague were also to be read at the city gates.Milner, "Fanno bandire" (2013), p. 120. These proclamations all used a standard format, beginning with an exordium—"The worshipful and most esteemed gentlemen of the Eight of Ward and Security of the city of Florence make it known, notify, and expressly command, to whosoever, of whatever status, rank, quality and condition"—and continuing with a statement ( narratio), a request made upon the listeners ( petitio), and the penalty to be exacted from those who would not comply ( peroratio).Milner, "Fanno bandire" (2013), p. 121. In addition to major declarations, bandi (announcements) might concern petty crimes, requests for information, and notices about missing slaves.Milner, "Fanno bandire" (2013), pp. 122–123. Niccolò Machiavelli was captured by the Medicis in 1513, following a bando calling for his immediate surrender.Milner, "Fanno bandire" (2013), p. 124. Some town criers could be paid to include advertising along with news.Straubhaar and LaRose, Communications Media in the Information Society (1997), p. 366. "Another ancient form of advertising was the town crier, who told the citizenry about the 'good deal' to be found 'just around the corner'. Unlike the signs, which contained only information regarding the merchant, the criers also informed the citizens of the news of the day. Because the crier, or his agent, was compensated for his assistance in getting the advertising message out in the context of the news, there are interesting parallels with the newspaper of today (Applegate, 1993; Roche, 1993; Schramm, 1988)."
Under the Ottoman Empire, official messages were regularly distributed at mosques, by traveling holy men, and by secular criers. These criers were sent to read official announcements in marketplaces, highways, and other well-traveled places, sometimes issuing commands and penalties for disobedience.Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (1995), p. 4.
One of the imperial communication channels, called the "Royal Road" traversed the Assyrian Empire and served as a key source of its power.Kessler, "Royal Roads" (1995), p. 129. "The ability of the Assyrian court to challenge a huge and permanent stream of information seems to have been one of the essential factors for the long maintenance of Assyrian domination, over the vast areas in the Near East." The Roman Empire maintained a vast network of roads, known as cursus publicus, for similar purposes.Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), pp. 19–20.
Visible chains of long-distance signaling, known as optical telegraphy, have also been used throughout history to convey limited types of information. These can have ranged from smoke and fire signals to advanced systems using semaphore codes and telescopes.Stephens, History of News (1988), pp. 24–25. The latter form of optical telegraph came into use in Japan, Britain, France, and Germany from the 1790s through the 1850s.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), pp. 156–157.
Japan had effective communications and postal delivery networks at several points in its history, first in 646 with the Taika Reform and again during the Kamakura period from 1183 to 1333. The system depended on hikyaku, runners, and regularly spaced relay stations. By this method, news could travel between Kyoto and Kamakura in 5–7 days. Special horse-mounted messengers could move information at the speed of 170 kilometers per day.Distelrath, "Development of the Information and Communication Systems in Germany and Japan" (2000), pp. 45–46 .Alice Gordenker, "Postal Symbol"; Japan Times, 21 May 2013. The Japanese shogunates were less tolerant than the Chinese government of news circulation.Smith, The Newspaper: An International History (1979), p. 14–15. The postal system established during the Edo period was even more effective, with average speeds of 125–150 km/day and express speed of 200 km/day. This system was initially used only by the government, taking private communications only at exorbitant prices. Private services emerged and in 1668 established their own Kabunakama (guild). They became even faster, and created an effective optical telegraphy system using flags by day and lanterns and mirrors by night.
In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly Notizie scritte, which cost one gazette. Wan-Press.org , A Newspaper Timeline, World Association of Newspapers These avviso were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently to Italian cities (1500–1700)—sharing some characteristics of newspapers though usually not considered true newspapers.Infelise, Mario. "Roman Avvisi: Information and Politics in the Seventeenth Century." in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700(Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp. 212, 214, 216–217 Avvisi were sold by subscription under the auspices of military, religious, and banking authorities. Sponsorship flavored the contents of each series, which were circulated under many different names. Subscribers included clerics, diplomatic staff, and noble families. By the last quarter of the seventeenth century, long passages from avvisi were finding their way into published monthlies such as the Mercure de France and, in northern Italy, Pallade veneta.Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music and Society, 1650–1750. Venice: Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, 1985. Chs. 1 2, 3.Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. Song and Season: Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time. (Stanford UP, 2007). Chs. 10, 11.Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), p. 5.
Postal services enabled merchants and monarchs to stay abreast of important information. For the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Maximillian I in 1490 authorized two brothers from the Italian Tasso family, Francesco and Janetto, to create a network of courier stations linked by riders. They began with a communications line between Innsbruck and Mechelen and grew from there.Lampe & Ploeckl, "Spanning the Globe" (2014), 248. In 1505 this network expanded to Spain, new governed by Maximilian's son Philip. These riders could travel 180 kilometers in a day.Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), pp. 17–18. This system became the Reichspost, administered by Tasso descendants (subsequently known as Thurn-und-Taxis), who in 1587 received exclusive operating rights from the Emperor. The French postal service and English postal service also began at this time, but did not become comprehensive until the early 1600s.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), pp. 30–31.Fang, History of Mass Communication (1997), pp. 29–30. In 1620, the English system linked with Thurn-und-Taxis.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 13.
These connections underpinned an extensive system of news circulation, with handwritten items bearing dates and places of origin. Centred in Germany, the network took in news from Russia, the Balkans, Italy, Britain, France, and the Netherlands.Smith, The Newspaper: An International History (1979), pp. 18–19. "Since the late Middle Ages a formal network of correspondents and intelligence agents had come into being across the bulk of the European continent, busily sending news of military, diplomatic and ecclesiastical affairs along a series of prescribed routes. The information was handwritten and passed along carefully organized chains, each item being labeled with its place and date of origin." The German lawyer Christoph von Scheurl and the Fugger house of Augsburg were prominent hubs in this network. Letters describing historically significant events could gain wide circulation as news reports. Indeed, personal correspondence sometimes acted only as a convenient channel through which news could flow across a larger network.Lim, "Take Writing" (2006), pp. 35–45. A common type of business communication was a simple listing of current prices, the circulation of which quickened the flow of international trade.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), pp. 10–11.Kallionen, "Information, communication technology, and business" (2004), p. 22. Businesspeople also wanted to know about events related to shipping, the affairs of other businesses, and political developments. Even after the advent of international newspapers, business owners still valued correspondence highly as a source of reliable news that would affect their enterprise.Kallionen, "Information, communication technology, and business" (2004), p. 21. "Although the businessmen obtained information from newspapers and other public sources, for instance, from the consuls stationed in foreign towns, they placed special value on the letters received directly from their foreign partners. This is precisely the key to the existence of a network relationship: the parties were dependent on the resources controlled by both parties, both goods and information, so by mutual co-operation both parties gained mutual benefits. Long-term, personal networks were particularly well suited for transmitting information that required high reliability. Handwritten newsletters, which could be produced quickly for a limited clientele, also continued into the 1600s.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), pp. 11–12.
The new format, which mashed together numerous unrelated and perhaps dubious reports from far-flung locations, created a radically new and jarring experience for its readers.Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), p. 9. "The news reporting of the newspapers was very different, and utterly unfamiliar to those who had not previously been subscribers to the manuscript service. Each report was no more than a couple sentences long. It offered no explanation, comment, or commentary. Unlike a news pamphlet the reader did not know where this fitted in the narrative—or even whether what was reported would turn out to be important." A variety of styles emerged, from single-story tales, to compilations, overviews, and personal and impersonal types of news analysis.Smith, The Newspaper: An International History (1979), pp. 9–10.
News for public consumption was at first tightly controlled by governments. By 1530, England had created a licensing system for the press and banned "seditious opinions".Cranfield, Press and Society (1978), p. 1. Under the Licensing Act, publication was restricted to approved presses—as exemplified by The London Gazette, which prominently bore the words: "Published By Authority".Heyd, Reading newspapers (2012), p. 11. Parliament allowed the Licensing Act to lapse in 1695, beginning a new era marked by Whig and Tory newspapers.Heyd, Reading newspapers (2012), pp. 15–16. (During this era, the Stamp Act limited newspaper distribution simply by making them expensive to sell and buy.) In France, censorship was even more constant.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), p. 29. Consequently, many Europeans read newspapers originating from beyond their national borders—especially from the Dutch Republic, where publishers could evade state censorship.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), pp. 43–44.
The new United States saw a newspaper boom beginning with the Revolutionary era, accelerated by spirited debates over the establishment of a new government, spurred on by subsidies contained in the 1792 Postal Service Act, and continuing into the 1800s.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 30.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), pp. 69–73. American newspapers got many of their stories by copying reports from each other. Thus by offering free postage to newspapers wishing to exchange copies, the Postal Service Act subsidized a rapidly growing news network through which different stories could percolate.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), p. 90. "The 1792 law codified the right of newspapers to exchange copies for free with one another, and by the 1840s the average newspaper received an astonishing 4,300 exchange copies a year. Editors relied on other papers for the national news that filled most of their columns. In effect, the federal government was encouraging local papers to become outlets for a national news network that the government itself did not control." Newspapers thrived during the colonization of the West, fueled by high literacy and a newspaper-loving culture.Cloud, Frontier Press (2008), pp. 8–9, 22–23. By 1880, San Francisco rivaled New York in number of different newspapers and in printed newspaper copies per capita.Cloud, Frontier Press (2008), pp. 31, 73. Boosterism of new towns felt that newspapers covering local events brought legitimacy, recognition, and community.Cloud, Frontier Press (2008), pp. 67–69. The 1830s American, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, was "a very civilized man prepared for a time to face life in the forest, plunging into the wilderness of the New World with his Bible, ax, and newspapers."Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), p. 48. "Tout In France, the Revolution brought forth an abundance of newspapers and a new climate of press freedom, followed by a return to repression under Napoleon.Smith,The Newspaper: An International History (1979), pp. 88–89. In 1792 the Revolutionaries set up a news ministry called the Bureau d'Esprit .Straubhaar and LaRose, Communications Media in the Information Society'' (1997), p. 391.
Some newspapers published in the 1800s and after retained the commercial orientation characteristic of the private newsletters of the Renaissance. Economically oriented newspapers published new types of data enabled the advent of statistics, especially economic statistics which could inform sophisticated investment decisions.Parsons, Power of the Financial Press (1989), p. 31 These newspapers, too, became available for larger sections of society, not just elites, keen on investing some of their savings in the . Yet, as in the case other newspapers, the incorporation of advertising into the newspaper led to justified reservations about accepting newspaper information at face value.Parsons, Power of the Financial Press (1989), p. 40 Economic newspapers also became promoters of economic ideologies, such as Keynesianism in the mid-1900s.Parsons, Power of the Financial Press (1989), pp. 81–110.
Newspapers came to sub-Saharan Africa via colonization. The first English-language newspaper in the area was The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, established in 1801, and followed by The Royal Gold Coast Gazette and Commercial Intelligencer in 1822 and the Liberia Herald in 1826.Fosu, "The Press and Political Participation" (2014), p. 59 A number of nineteenth-century African newspapers were established by missionaries.Fosu, "The Press and Political Participation" (2014), pp. 60–61. These newspapers by and large promoted the colonial governments and served the interests of European settlers by relaying news from Europe. The first newspaper published in a native African language was the Muigwithania, published in Kikuyu by the Kenyan Central Association. Muigwithania and other newspapers published by indigenous Africans took strong opposition stances, agitating strongly for African independence.Fosu, "The Press and Political Participation" (2014), p. 62 Newspapers were censored heavily during the colonial period—as well as after formal independence. Some liberalization and diversification took place in the 1990s.Fosu, "The Press and Political Participation" (2014), pp. 64–65.
Newspapers were slow to Arab culture, which had a stronger tradition of oral communication, and mistrust of the European approach to news reporting. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire's leaders in Istanbul monitored the European press, but its contents were not disseminated for mass consumption.Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (1995), pp. 6–7. Some of the first written news in modern North Africa arose in Egypt under Muhammad Ali, who developed the local paper industry and initiated the limited circulation of news bulletins called jurnals.Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (1995), pp. 13–16. Beginning in the 1850s and 1860s, the private press began to develop in the multi-religious country of Lebanon.Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (1995), pp. 28–39.
One of Havas's proteges, Bernhard Wolff, founded Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau in Berlin in 1849.Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), p. 180. Another Havas disciple, Paul Reuter, began collecting news from Germany and France in 1849, and in 1851 immigrated to London, where he established the Reuters news agency—specializing in news from the continent.Salmon, The Newspaper and the Historian (1923), p. 118. In 1863, William Saunders and Edward Spender formed the Central Press agency, later called the Press Association, to handle domestic news.Salmon, The Newspaper and the Historian (1923), pp. 117–118. Just before insulated telegraph line crossed the English Channel in 1851, Reuter won the right to transmit stock exchange prices between Paris and London.Wenzlhuemer, Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World (2013), pp. 90–92. He maneuvered Reuters into a dominant global position with the motto "Follow the Cable", setting up news outposts across the British Empire in Alexandria (1865), Bombay (1866), Melbourne (1874), Sydney (1874), and Cape Town (1876).Hachten, World News Prism (1996), p. 43. In the United States, the Associated Press became a news powerhouse, gaining a lead position through an exclusive arrangement with the Western Union company.
The telegraph ushered in a new global communications regime, accompanied by a restructuring of the national postal systems, and closely followed by the advent of telephone lines. With the value of international news at a premium, governments, businesses, and news agencies moved aggressively to reduce transmission times. In 1865, Reuters had the scoop on the Lincoln assassination, reporting the news in England twelve days after the event took place.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 16. In 1866, an undersea telegraph cable successfully connected Ireland to Newfoundland (and thus the Western Union network) cutting trans-Atlantic transmission time from days to hours.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 17.Graham Meikle, Interpreting News; Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; p. 152. The transatlantic cable allowed fast exchange of information about the London and New York stock exchanges, as well as the New York, Chicago, and Liverpool commodity exchanges—for the price of $5–10, in gold, per word.Hills, Struggle for Control of Global Communication (2002), p. 32. Transmitting On 11 May 1857, a young British telegraph operator in Delhi signaled home to alert the authorities of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The rebels proceeded to disrupt the British telegraph network, which was rebuilt with more redundancies.Wenzlhuemer, Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World (2013), pp. 211–215. In 1902–1903, Britain and the U.S. completed the circumtelegraphy of the planet with transpacific cables from Canada to Fiji and New Zealand (British Empire), and from the US to Hawaii and the occupied Philippines.Hills, Struggle for Control of Global Communication (2002), pp. 145–146. U.S. reassertions of the Monroe Doctrine notwithstanding, Latin America was a battleground of competing telegraphic interests until World War I, after which U.S. interests finally did consolidate their power in the hemisphere.Hills, Struggle for Control of Global Communication (2002), pp. 153–178.
By the turn of the century (i.e., ), Wolff, Havas, and Reuters formed a news cartel, dividing up the global market into three sections, in which each had more-or-less exclusive distribution rights and relationships with national agencies.Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 26–27. "The principal feature of the world's news market in the second half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th, was the cartel. This was an oligopolistic and hierarchical structure of the global news market controlled by Reuters, Havas and Wolff at the top tier, in partnership with an ever-increasing number of national news agencies. Each member of the triumvirate had the right to distribute its news service, incorporating news of the cartel, to its ascribed territories: these territories were determined by periodic, formal agreements. … The triumvirate of Reuters, Havas, and Wolff supplied world news to national news agencies in return for a service of national news … (although the practice was rather more complicated) the national agencies had exclusive rights to the distribution of cartel news in their territories, and the cartel had exclusive rights to the national agency news services." Each agency's area corresponded roughly to the colonial sphere of its mother country.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 22. Reuters and the Australian national news service had an agreement to exchange news only with each other.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 36. Due to the high cost of maintaining infrastructure, political goodwill, and global reach, newcomers found it virtually impossible to challenge the big three European agencies or the American Associated Press.Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 23. In 1890 Reuters (in partnership with the Press Association, England's major news agency for domestic stories) expanded into "soft" news stories for public consumption, about topics such as sports and "human interest".Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 28. In 1904, the big three wire services opened relations with Vestnik, the news agency of Czarist Russia, to their group, though they maintained their own reporters in Moscow.Michael Palmer, "What Makes News", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 180–181. During and after the Russian Revolution, the outside agencies maintained a working relationship with the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, renamed the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and eventually the TASS.Michael Palmer, "What Makes News", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 184.
The Chinese Communist Party created its news agency, the Red China News Agency, in 1931; its primary responsibilities were the Red China newspaper and the internal Reference News. In 1937, the Party renamed it Xinhua News Agency, which became the official news agency of the People's Republic of China in 1949.Xin Xin, "A developing market in news: Xinhua News Agency and Chinese newspapers"; Media, Culture & Society 28.1 (2006).
These agencies touted their ability to distill events into "minute globules of news", 20–30 word summaries which conveyed the essence of new developments. Unlike newspapers, and contrary to the sentiments of some of their reporters, the agencies sought to keep their reports simple and factual.Michael Palmer, "What Makes News", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 182–183. The wire services brought forth the "inverted pyramid" model of news copy, in which key facts appear at the start of the text, and more and more details are included as it goes along. The sparse telegraphic writing style spilled over into newspapers, which often reprinted stories from the wire with little embellishment.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 18–19. In a 20 September 1918 Pravda editorial, Lenin instructed the Soviet press to cut back on their political rambling and produce many short anticapitalist news items in "telegraph style".Wolfe, Governing Soviet Journalism (2005), pp. 25–26. Translating Lenin: "Why instead of 200–400 lines you can't write in 20–10 lines about such simple, well-known, clear, and already mastered to a great degree, widespread phenomena like the base betrayals of the Mensheviks, those lackeys of the bourgeoisie, like the Anglo-Japanese invasion for the restoration of the holy law of capital; like the chattering teeth of the American millionaires against Germany, and so on, and so on. It is necessary to talk about this, it is necessary to register each new fact in this regard, but in a few lines; to pound out in 'telegraph style' the new appearances of old, already known and evaluated policies."
As in previous eras, the news agencies provided special services to political and business clients, and these services constituted a significant portion of their operations and income. The wire services maintained close relationships with their respective national governments, which provided both press releases and payments.Boyd-Barrett, Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 23–24. "Earnings were generally derived from the sale of news services to media, financial or economic institutions, and governments, which were important as sources of revenue and as sources of intelligence, and it is generally considered that their news services reflected their respective national interests." The acceleration and centralization of economic news facilitated regional economic integration and economic globalization. "It was the decrease in information costs and the increasing communication speed that stood at the roots of increased market integration, rather than falling transport costs by itself. In order to send goods to another area, merchants needed to know first whether in fact to send off the goods and to what place. Information costs and speed were essential for these decisions."Bakker, "Trading Facts" (2011), p. 33.
In the US, RCA's Radio Group established its radio network, NBC, in 1926. The Paley family founded CBS soon after. These two networks, which supplied news broadcasts to subsidiaries and affiliates, dominated the airwaves throughout the period of radio's hegemony as a news source.Straubhaar and LaRose, Communications Media in the Information Society (1997), pp. 177–178. Radio broadcasters in the United States negotiated a similar arrangement with the press in 1933, when they agreed to use only news from the Press–Radio Bureau and eschew advertising; this agreement soon collapsed and radio stations began reporting their own news (with advertising).Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 33. As in Britain, American news radio avoided "controversial" topics as per norms established by the National Association of Broadcasters.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 34. By 1939, 58% of Americans surveyed by Fortune considered radio news more accurate than newspapers, and 70% chose radio as their main news source. Radio expanded rapidly across the continent, from 30 stations in 1920 to a thousand in the 1930s. This operation was financed mostly with advertising and public relations money.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), p. 27. "Thus WEAF planted the seeds of a new business that eventually grew to envelop the broadcasting industry: advertising, public relations, and propaganda. From about 1927 this revolution was under way. Advertising agencies, manufacturers, sponsors, promoters, and the sellers of medical and life insurance were jockeying for places in a world of propaganda disseminated by radio broadcasting."
The Soviet Union began a major international broadcasting operation in 1929, with stations in German, English and French. The Nazi Party made use of the radio in its rise to power in Germany, with much of its propaganda focused on attacking the Soviet Bolsheviks. The British and Italian foreign radio services competed for influence in North Africa. All four of these broadcast services grew increasingly vitriolic as the European nations prepared for war.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 38–42.
The war provided an opportunity to expand radio and take advantage of its new potential. The BBC reported on Allied invasion of Normandy on 8:00 a.m. of the morning it took place, and including a clip from German radio coverage of the same event. Listeners followed along with developments throughout the day.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 29. The U.S. set up its Office of War Information which by 1942 sent programming across South America, the Middle East, and East Asia.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), p. 51. Radio Luxembourg, a centrally located high-power station on the continent, was Germany Calling, and then by the United States—which created fake news programs appearing as though they were created by Germany.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 45. Targeting American troops in the Pacific, the Japanese government broadcast the "Zero Hour" program, which included news from the U.S. to make the soldiers homesick.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 87–91. But by the end of the war, Britain had the largest radio network in the world, broadcasting internationally in 43 different languages.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 39, 105. Its scope would eventually be surpassed (by 1955) by the worldwide Voice of America programs, produced by the United States Information Agency.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 108–114, 132.
In Britain and the United States, television news watching rose dramatically in the 1950s and by the 1960s supplanted radio as the public's primary source of news.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 42–44. In the U.S., television was run by the same networks which owned radio: CBS, NBC, and an NBC spin-off called ABC.Straubhaar and LaRose, Communications Media in the Information Society (1997), p. 209. Edward R. Murrow, who first entered the public ear as a war reporter in London, made the big leap to television to become an iconic newsman on CBS (and later the director of the United States Information Agency).Straubhaar and LaRose, Communications Media in the Information Society (1997), pp. 179, 210.
Ted Turner's creation of the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980 inaugurated a new era of 24-hour satellite news broadcasting. In 1991, the BBC introduced a competitor, BBC World Service Television. Rupert Murdoch's Australian News Corporation entered the picture with Fox News Channel in the US, Sky News in Britain, and STAR TV in Asia. Combining this new apparatus with the use of embedded reporters, the United States waged the 1991–1992 Gulf War with the assistance of nonstop media coverage.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), p. 34. CNN's specialty is the crisis, to which the network is prepared to shift its total attention if so chosen.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 45–48. "When a major crisis breaks out overseas, ABC, CBS, and NBC will issue news bulletins and then go back to scheduled programming and perhaps do a late-evening wrap-up, but CNN stays on the air for long stretches of time continually updating the story. The networks' version of the story will be seen in the United States; CNN's version will be seen all over the world." CNN news was transmitted via Intelsat communications satellites.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 54–55. CNN, said an executive, would bring a "town crier to the global village".
In 1996, the Qatar-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera emerged as a powerful alternative to the Western media, capitalizing in part on anger in the Arab & Muslim world regarding biased coverage of the Gulf War. Al Jazeera hired many news workers conveniently laid off by BBC Arabic Television, which closed in April 1996. It used Arabsat to broadcast.McNair, Cultural Chaos (2006), pp. 108–114.
Quantitatively, the internet has massively expanded the sheer volume of news items available to one person. The speed of news flow to individuals has also reached a new plateau.McNair, Cultural Chaos (2006), pp. 1–2. This insurmountable flow of news can daunt people and cause information overload. Zbigniew Brzezinski called this period the "technetronic era", in which "global reality increasingly absorbs the individual, involves him, and even occasionally overwhelms him."Hachten, World News Prism (1996), p. 8.
In cases of government crackdowns or revolutions, the Internet has often become a major communication channel for news propagation; while shutting down a newspaper, radio or television station is (relatively) simple, mobile devices such as smartphones and netbooks are much harder to detect and confiscate. The propagation of internet-capable mobile devices has also given rise to the citizen journalist, who provide an additional perspective on unfolding events.
Speed of news transmission varies wildly on the basis of where and how one lives.Silverblatt & Zlobin, International Communications (2004), pp. 42–43. "In contrast, the Masai, a nomadic community of cattle raisers in Kenya, Africa, spend their lives on the move; consequently, their contact with the media is sporadic. As a result, members of the Masai community did not learn about the September 11 attack in New York until the following June."
The world's top three most circulated newspapers all publish from Japan.
About one-third of newspaper revenue comes from sales; the majority comes from advertising.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 100. Newspapers have struggled to maintain revenue given declining circulation and the free flow of information over the internet; some have implemented for their websites.
In the U.S., many newspapers have shifted their operations online, publishing around the clock rather than daily in order to keep pace with the internet society. Prognosticators have suggested that print newspapers will vanish from the U.S. in 5–20 years.Shelley Thompson, "The Future of Newspapers in a Digital Age", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), Journalism (2013). Many newspapers have started to track social media engagement for trending news stories to cover.
The largest supplier of international video news is Reuters TV, with 409 subscribers in 83 countries, 38 bureaus, and a reported audience of 1.5 billion people each day. The other major video news service is Associated Press Television News. These two major agencies have agreements to exchange video news with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Eurovision—itself a sizeable video news exchange.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 39–41. CNN International is a notable broadcaster in times of crisis.
Michael Schudson, professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has said that "everything we thought we once knew about journalism needs to be rethought in the Digital Age." Today the work of journalism can be done from anywhere and done well. It requires no more than a reporter and a laptop. In that way, journalistic authority seems to have become more individual- and less institution-based. But does the individual reporter always have to be an actual journalist? Or can journalistic work be done from anywhere and by anyone? These are questions that refer to the core of journalistic practice and the definition of "news" itself. As Schudson has given emphasis to, the answer is not easily found; "the ground journalists walk upon is shaking, and the experience for both those who work in the field and those on the outside studying it is dizzying".
Schudson has identified the following six specific areas where the ecology of news in his opinion has changed:
These alterations inevitably have fundamental ramifications for the contemporary ecology of news. "The boundaries of journalism, which just a few years ago seemed relatively clear, and permanent, have become less distinct, and this blurring, while potentially the foundation of progress even as it is the source of risk, has given rise to a new set of journalistic principles and practices", Schudson puts it. It is indeed complex, but it seems to be the future.
Online news has also changed the geographic reach of individual news stories, diffusing readership from city-by-city markets to a potentially global audience.
The growth of social media networks have also created new opportunities for automated and efficient news gathering for journalists and newsrooms. Many newsrooms (broadcasters, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) have started to perform news gathering on social media platforms. Social media is creating changes in the consumer behaviour and news consumption. According to a study by Pew Research, a large portion of Americans read news on digital and on mobile devices.
Because internet does not have the "column inches" limitation of print media, online news stories can, but don't always, come bundled with supplementary material. The medium of the World Wide Web also enables hyperlinking, which allows readers to navigate to other pages related to the one they're reading.
Despite these changes, some studies have concluded that internet news coverage remains fairly homogenous and dominated by news agencies.Chris Paterson, "News Agency Dominance in International news on the Internet", Papers in International and Global Communication 01/06 (Center for International Communications Research), May 2006. And journalists working with online media do not identify significantly different criteria for newsworthiness than print journalists.
The oldest news agency still operating is the Agence France-Presse (AFP). It was founded in 1835 by a Parisian translator and advertising agent, Charles-Louis Havas as Agence Havas. By the end of the twentieth century, Reuters far outpaced the other news agencies in profits, and became one of the largest companies in Europe.Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 2; Oliver Boyd-Barrett, "'Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 28. In 2011, Thomson Reuters employed more than 55,000 people in 100 countries, and posted an annual revenue of $12.9 billion.
United Press International gained prominence as a world news agency in the middle of the twentieth century, but shrank in the 1980s and was sold off at low prices. It is owned by the Unification Church company News World Communications.
News agencies, especially Reuters and the newly important Bloomberg News, convey both news stories for mass audiences and financial information of interest to businesses and investors.John Bartram Ewha, "News Agency Wars: the battle between Reuters and Bloomberg"; Journalism Studies 4.3 (2003). Bloomberg LP, a private company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, made rapid advances with computerized stock market reporting updated in real time. Its news service continued to exploit this electronic advantage by combining computer-generated analytics with text reporting. Bloomberg linked with Agence France Presse in the 1990s.
Following the marketization of the Chinese economy and the media boom of the 1990s, Xinhua has adopted some commercial practices including subscription fees, but it remains government-subsidized. It provides newswire, news photos, economic information, and audio and video news. Xinhua has a growing number of subscribers, totaling 16,969 in 2002, including 93% of Chinese newspapers. It operates 123 foreign bureaus and produces 300 news stories each day.
Other agencies with considerable reach include Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Germany), Kyodo News (Japan), the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (Italy), the Middle East News Agency (Egypt), Tanjug (Serbia), EFE (Spain), and Anadolu Agency (Turkey).Hachten, World News Prism (1996), p. 38.
On the internet, news aggregators play a role similar to that of the news agency—and, because of the sources they select, tend to transmit news stories which originate from the main agencies. Of articles displayed by Yahoo! News in the U.S., 91.7% come from news agencies: 39.4% from AP, 30.9% AFP, and 21.3% Reuters. In India, 60.1% of Yahoo! News stories come from Reuters. Google News relies somewhat less on news agencies, and has shown high volatility, in the sense of focusing heavily on the most recent handful of salient world events. In 2010, Google News redesigned its front page with automatic geotargeting, which generated a selection of local news items for every viewer.Lisa M. George & Christiaan Hogendorn, " Local News Online: Aggregators, Geo-Targeting and the Market for Local News"; 1 November 2013.
Television news agencies include Associated Press Television News, which bought and incorporated World Television News; and Reuters Television.Oliver Boyd-Barrett, "'Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 19. Bloomberg News created in the 1990s, expanded rapidly to become a player in the realm of international news.Oliver Boyd-Barrett, "'Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 21. "Bloomberg's influence is greater than the number of its terminals may suggest, as it feeds financial data and economic news through the AP network to AP members and clients in the United States, and to many national networks through national news agencies. Indeed, it boasts having the second largest 'wholesale' news distribution in the United States, after AP. It has print, radio and television distribution in many countries: Bloomberg television is distributed via Astra satellite service in Europe." The Associated Press also maintains a radio network with thousands of subscribers worldwide; it is the sole provider of international news to many small stations.
By some accounts, dating back to the 1940s, the increasing interconnectedness of the news system has accelerated the pace of human history itself.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), p. 7. "Since World War II, an intricate and worldwide network of international news media has evolved, providing an expanded capability for information flows. This relationship between the capacity and the need to communicate rapidly has resulted from the interaction of two long-term historical processes: the evolution toward a single global society and the movement of civilization beyond four great benchmarks of human communication—speech, writing, printing, electronic communications (telephone and radio)—into a fifth era of long-distance instant communication based on telecommunications (mainly satellites) and computer technology. Harold Lasswell believed that the mass media revolution has accelerated the tempo and direction of world history. What would have happened later has happened sooner, and changes in timing may have modified substantive developments."
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has promoted a New World Information and Communication Order, which envisions an international news exchange system involving national news agencies in every country. UNESCO encouraged the new states formed from colonial territories in the 1960s to establish news agencies, to generate domestic news stories, exchange news items with international partners, and disseminate both types of news internally.Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 8-10. "The UN, through UNESCO, consistently endeavored to encourage the spread and development of national news agencies, and of news-exchange arrangements between them, especially during the great wave of independence in Africa during the 1960s. Setting up a national news agency became one of the essential things, part of the 'script', of what it meant to be a 'nation'. Through a national news agency, a state could lay down information links domestically and internationally which would facilitate the generation and exchange of news." Along these lines, the 1980 MacBride report, "Many Voices, One World", called for an interdependent global news system with more participation from different governments. To this end, also, UNESCO formed the Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool.Chakravartty and Sarikakis, Media Policy and Globalization (2006), p. 31.
The Inter Press Service, founded in 1964, has served as an intermediary for Third World press agencies.C. Anthony Giffard, "Alternative News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 191. Inter Press Service's editorial policy favors coverage of events, institutions, and issues which relate to inequality, economic development, economic integration, natural resources, population, health, education, and sustainable development.C. Anthony Giffard, "Alternative News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 192–194. It gives less coverage than other agencies to crime, disasters, and violence. Geographically, 70% of its news reporting concerns Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.C. Anthony Giffard, "Alternative News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 195–196. IPS has the most subscribers in Latin America and southern Africa. IPS receives grants from organizations such as the United Nations Development Program and other United Nations agencies and private foundations to report news on chosen topics, including the environment, sustainable development, and women's issues.C. Anthony Giffard, "Alternative News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 196–197.
Beginning in the 1960s, the United States Agency for International Development, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and UNESCO developed the use of satellite television for international broadcasting. In India, 1975–1976, these agencies implemented an experimental satellite television system, called the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, with assistance from the Indian Space Research Organisation, and All India Radio.Chakravartty and Sarikakis, Media Policy and Globalization (2006), p. 29.
In countries with less telecommunications infrastructure, people, especially youth, tend today to get their news predominantly from mobile phones and, less so, from the internet. Older folks listen more to the radio. The government of China is a major investor in Third World telecommunications, especially in Africa.Geniets, Global News Challenge (2013), pp. 22–27. Some issues relating to global information flow were revisited in light of the internet at the 2003/2005 World Summit on the Information Society, a conference which emphasized the role of civil society and the private sector in information society governance.Chakravartty and Sarikakis, Media Policy and Globalization (2006), pp. 136–143.
Journalists are often expected to aim for objectivity; reporters claim to try to cover all sides of an issue without bias, as compared to commentators or analysts, who provide opinion or personal points of view. The resulting articles lay out facts in a sterile, noncommittal manner, standing back to "let the reader decide" the truth of the matter. Several governments impose certain constraints against bias. In the United Kingdom, the government agency of Ofcom (Office of Communications) enforces a legal requirement of "impartiality" on news broadcasters.Sue Wallace, "Impartiality in the News", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), Journalism (2013). Some governments, such as Russia, operate state media news organizations.
Although newswriters have always laid claim to truth and objectivity, the modern values of professional journalism were established beginning in the late 1800s and especially after World War I, when groups like the American Society of Newspaper Editors codified rules for unbiased news reporting. These norms held the most sway in American and British journalism, and were scorned by some other countries.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 20–23. These ideas have become part of the practice of journalism across the world.Zhong, "Searching for Meaning" (2006), pp. 15, 35. Soviet commentators said stories in the Western press were trivial distractions from reality, and emphasized a socialist realism model focusing on developments in everyday life.Wolfe, Governing Soviet Journalism (2005), p. 29.
Even in those situations where objectivity is expected, it is difficult to achieve, and individual journalists may fall foul of their own personal bias, or succumb to Media bias. Similarly, the objectivity of news organizations owned by conglomerated corporations fairly may be questioned, in light of the natural incentive for such groups to report news in a manner intended to advance the conglomerate's financial interests. Individuals and organizations who are the subject of news reports may use news management techniques to try to make a favourable impression. Because each individual has a particular point of view, it is recognized that there can be no absolute objectivity in news reporting. Journalists can collectively shift their opinion over what is a controversy up for debate and what is an established fact, as evidenced by homogenization during the 2000s of news coverage of climate change.Sara Shipley Hiles & Amanda Hinnart, "Climate Change in the Newsroom: Journalists' Evolving Standards of Objectivity When Covering Global Warming"; Science Communication 36.4, 2014.
Some commentators on news values have argued that journalists' training in news values itself represents a systemic bias of the news. The norm of objectivity leads journalists to gravitate towards certain types of acts and exclude others. A journalist can be sure of objectivity in reporting that an official or public figure has made a certain statement. This is one reason why so much news reporting is devoted to official statements.John Soloski, "News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on Reporting the News", from Media, Culture & Society 11 (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 143–145. This lemma dates back to the early history of public news reporting, as exemplified by an English printer who on 12 March 1624 published news from Brussels in the form of letters, with the prefacing comment: "Now because you shall not say, that either out of my owne conceit I misliked a phrase, or presumptuously tooke upon me to reforme any thing amisse, I will truly set you downe their owne words."Cranfield, Press and Society (1978), p. 8.
Feminist critiques argue that discourse defined as objective by news organizations reflects a male-centered perspective.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 123. In their selection of sources, journalists rely heavily on men as sources of authoritative- and objective-seeming statements.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 129. News reporting has also tended to discuss women differently, usually in terms of appearance and relationship to men.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 134–135.
The critique of traditional norms of objectivity comes from within news organizations as well. Said Peter Horrocks, head of television news at BBC: "The days of middle-of-the-road, balancing Left and Right, impartiality are dead. … we need to consider adopting what I like to think of as a much wider 'radical impartiality'—the need to hear the widest range of views—all sides of the story."
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 reporting: a domain of human affairs, usually involving government or commerce, in which certain types of events routinely occur.James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in Handbook of Communications Science (1987), ed. C.H. Berger & S.H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), p. 38.
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.Pamela J. Shoemaker, "A New Gatekeeping Model", from Gatekeeping (1991); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), p. 57. "Simply put, gatekeeping is the process by which the billions of messages that are available in the world get cut down and transformed into hundreds of messages that reach a given person on a given day." Obvious gatekeepers include journalists, news agency staff, and wire editors of newspapers.David Manning White, "The 'Gate Keeper': A Case Study in the Selection of News", from Journalism Quarterly 27 (1950); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), p. 63. Ideology, personal preferences, source of news, and length of a story are among the many considerations which influence gatekeepers.David Manning White, "The 'Gate Keeper': A Case Study in the Selection of News", from Journalism Quarterly 27 (1950); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 66–71. 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.Thomas John Erneste, "Toward a Networked Gatekeeping Theory: Journalism, News Diffusion, and Democracy in a Networked Model"; Dissertation accepted at University of Minnesota, January 2014.
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.An Nguyen, "Online News Audiences: The challenges of web metrics", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), Journalism (2013). The drive for speedy online postings, some journalists have acknowledged, has altered norms of fact-checking so that verification takes place after publication.Joanna Redden, " The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media and Politics"; Dissertation accepted at Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011.
Journalists' sometimes unattributed echoing of other news sources can also increase the homogeneity of news feeds. 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.John Timmer, " Wikipedia hoax points to limits of journalists' research: A sociology student placed a fake quote on Wikipedia, only to see it show up …"; Ars Technica, 7 May 2009.
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.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 119–121. Studies of British news organizations estimate that more than 80% of decision-makers are men.Allan, News Culture (2004), p. 124. Similar studies have found 'old boys' networks' in control of news organizations in the United States and the Netherlands.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 127–129. Further, newsrooms tend to divide journalists by gender, assigning men to "hard" topics like military, crime, and economics, and women to "soft", "humanised" topics.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 129–130.
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. News for consumption has operated under Statism assumptions, even when it takes a stance adversarial to some aspect of a government.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 5. "Free of an extended view of the history of press-government relations, it is easy to maintain a romantic image of the journalist, when unchained by repressive regulation, as a staunch adversary of government; it is easy to overlook the basic pro-authoritarian role that has been played by those who spread news: their success in occupying the minds of the governed with a belief in the importance, if not the inevitability, of a system of government." In practice, a large proportion of routine news production involves interactions between reporters and government officials.Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production", from Media, Culture & Society (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), p. 14. "One study after another comes up with essentially the same observation, and it matters not whether the study is at the national, state, or local level—the story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials." 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 basis of news.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 62–63. "To clarify, H.S. Becker (1967) employs the notion of a 'hierarchy of credibility' to specify how, in a system of ranked groups, participants will take it as given that the members of the highest group are best placed to define 'the way things really are' due to their 'knowledge of truth'. Implicit in this assumption is the view that 'those at the top' will have access to a more complete picture of the bureaucratic organization's workings than members of lower groups whose definition of reality, because of this subordinate status, can only be partial and distorted." Broadly speaking, therefore, news tends to normalize and reflect the interests of the power structure dominant in its social context.James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in Handbook of Communications Science (1987), ed. C.H. Berger & S.H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 34–37. "In sum, a considerable body of research supports the argument that inter-organizational- and institutional-level forces, realized in a journalistic culture of 'objectivity,' fostered by, and in the service of, progressive liberal capitalism, constrain what journalists report. News thus exhibits an identifiable and widely shared form and a content broadly consonant with the social structures and values of its political-economic context."
Today, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rival and may surpass governments in their influence on the content of news.
Governments have also funneled programming through private news organizations, as when the British government arranged to insert news into the Reuters feed during and after World War Two.Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 21, 55. "The Reuters news service would be broadcast from Rugby with an insertion written by the Foreign Office. The secret agreement provided that both Leafield and Rugby Radio would carry 720 000 words per year, at a cost of three and a half pence per word. During and after the Second World War, these two radio stations transmitted news whose content had been falsified with the intention of deceiving the enemy." Past revelations have suggested that the U.S. military and intelligence agencies create news stories which they disseminate secretly into the foreign and domestic media. Investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency pursued in the 1970s found that it owned hundreds of news organizations (wire services, newspapers, magazines) outright.Parenti, Inventing Reality (1993), pp. 66–68.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 116–118. Soviet news warfare also involved the creation of front groups, like the International Organization of Journalists. The Russian KGB heavily pursued a strategy of disinformation, planting false stories which made their way to news outlets worldwide.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 113–116.
Broadcasts into Iraq before the Gulf War mimicked the style of local programming.Silverblatt & Zlobin, International Communications (2004), p. 49; also see The US also launched Middle East Broadcasting Networks, featuring the satellite TV station Alhurra and radio station Radio Sawa to beam 24-hour programming to Iraq and environs.Silverblatt & Zlobin, International Communications (2004), p. 49; also see: Josh Getlin and Johanna Neuman, " Vying for Eyes, Ears of Iraq"; Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2003.
Today, Al Jazeera, a TV and internet news network owned by the government of Qatar, has become one of the foremost news sources in the world, appreciated by millions as an alternative to the Western media.Geniets, Global News Challenge (2013), p. 8 State-owned China Central Television operates 18 channels and reaches more than a billion viewers worldwide.Geniets, Global News Challenge (2013), p. 66. Iran's Press TV and Russia's Russia Today, branded as RT, also have multiplatform presences and large audiences.
Public relations releases offer valuable newsworthy information to increasingly overworked journalists on deadline.Jamie Matthews, "Journalists and their sources: The twin challenges of diversity and verification", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), Journalism (2013). (This pre-organized news content has been called an information subsidy.) The journalist relies on appearances of autonomy and even opposition to established interests—but the public relations agent seek to conceal their client's influence on the news,. Thus, public relations works its magic in secret.
Public relations can dovetail with state objectives, as in the case of the 1990 news story about Iraqi soldiers taking "babies out of incubators" in Kuwaiti hospitals.Parenti, Inventing Reality (1993), p. 169. During the Nigerian Civil War, both the federal government and the secessionist Republic of Biafra hired public relations firms, which competed to influence public opinion in the West, and between them established some of the key narratives employed in news reports about the war.Karen Rothmyer, "What really happened in Biafra? Why did themes such as mass starvation and genocide alternately surface and fade? A study of media susceptibility to public relations manipulation." Columbia Journalism Review 9.3, Fall 1970.
Overall, the position of the public relations industry has grown stronger, while the position of news producers has grown weaker. Public relations agents mediate the production of news about all sectors of society.Kevin Moloney, Daniel Jackson, & David McQueen, "News journalism and public relations: a dangerous relationship", in Fowler-Watt & Allan (eds.), Journalism (2013).
Regular people in societies with news media often spend a lot of time reading or watching news reports.Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 5. Newspapers became significant aspects of national and literary culture—as exemplified by James Joyce's Ulysses, which derives from the newspapers of 16 June (and thereabouts), 1904, and represents the newspaper office itself as a vital part of life in Dublin.R. Brandon Kershner, The Culture of Joyce's Ulysses; Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; see Chapter Five, " Newspapers and Periodicals: Endless Dialogue". Also see: James Broderick, "'Give Us This Day Our Daily Press': Journalism in the Life and Art of James Joyce", Dissertation accepted at City University of New York, 1999.
A 1945 study by sociologist Bernard Berelson found that during the 1945 New York newspaper strike, New Yorkers exhibited a virtual addiction to news, describing themselves as "lost", "nervous", "isolated", and "suffering" due to the withdrawal.Bernard Berelson, " What 'missing the newspaper' means", in Communications Research 1948–1949, ed. Lazarsfeld & Stanton; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949; quoted in Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 17. Television news has become still further embedded in everyday life, with specific programming anticipated at different times of day.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 47–48. Children tend to find the news boring, too serious, or emotionally disturbing. They come to perceive news as characteristic of adulthood, and begin watching television news in their teenage years because of the adult status it confers.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 113–115.
People exhibit various forms of skepticism towards the news. Studies of tabloid readers found that many of them gain pleasure from seeing through the obviously fake or poorly constructed stories—and get their "real news" from television.Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 110–112.
Photojournalism can also become iconic and gain a fixed role in the culture. Examples such as Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph V-J Day in Times Square, Nick Ut's photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc and other children running from a napalm blast in Vietnam; Kevin Carter's photograph of a starving child being stalked by a vulture; etc.
With the new interconnectedness of global media, the experience of receiving news along with a world audience reinforces the social cohesion effect on a larger scale.McNair, Cultural Chaos (2006), pp. 6–7. "But news is an illusion which, when we receive it, and when we extend to it our trust in its authority as a representation of the real, transports us from the relative isolation of our domestic environments, the parochialism of our streets and small towns, the crowded bustle of our big cities, to membership of virtual global communities, united in access to these events, communally experienced at this moment, through global communications networks. … It is, indeed, more like the fear and exhilaration experienced by watching a movie on the big screen, but with an added viscerality contributed by the awareness that this scene, unlike a movie, is really happening, right now, to real people." As a corollary, global media culture may erode the uniqueness and cohesion of national cultures.Silverblatt & Zlobin, International Communications (2004), pp. 28–31. "A major liability of transnational media conglomerates is the loss of distinctive local culture. Transnational media conglomerates have a distinctly American influence—regardless of their country of origin. For instance, although Bertelsmann is a German-based corporation, in 2001, its largest proportion of its revenue (35 per cent) came from its U.S. media subsidiaries, including Bantam, Doubleday Dell, and Random House publishing companies, Family Circle and McCall's' magazines, and Arista and RCA record labels."
This idea, at least as a goal to be sought, has re-emerged in the era of global communications.Geniets, Global News Challenge (2013), pp. 17–18. Today, unprecedented opportunities exist for public analysis and discussion of world events.McNair, Cultural Chaos (2006), pp. 140–144. According to one interpretation of the CNN effect, instantaneous global news coverage can rally public opinion as never before to motivate political action.McNair, Cultural Chaos (2006), pp. 179–185. In 1989, local and global communications media-enabled instant exposure to and discussion of the Chinese government's actions in Tiananmen Square. The news about Tiananmen Square travelled over a fax machine, telephone, newspaper, radio, and television, and continued to travel even after the government imposed new restrictions on local telecommunications.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 70–72.
One type of news event, the media event, is a scripted pageant organized for a mass live broadcast. Media events include athletic contests such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics, cultural events like awards ceremonies and celebrity funerals, and also political events such as coronations, debates between electoral candidates, and diplomatic ceremonies.Dayan & Katz, Media Events (1992), pp. 1–14. These events typically unfold according to a common format which simplifies the transmission of news items about them.Dayan & Katz, Media Events (1992), pp. 25–53. Usually, they have the effect of increasing the perceived unity of all parties involved, which include the broadcasters and audience.Dayan & Katz, Media Events (1992), p. 196. Today, international events such as a national declaration of independence can be scripted in advance with the major news agencies, with staff specially deployed to key locations worldwide in advance of the life news broadcast. Public relations companies can participate in these events as well.
The perception that an ongoing crisis is taking place further increases the significance of live news. People rely on the news and constantly seek more of it, to learn new information and to seek reassurance amidst feelings of fear and uncertainty.Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), 57–61. Crises can also increase the effect of the news on social cohesion, and lead the population of a country to "rally" behind its current leadership.Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), 73–76. The rise of a global news system goes hand in hand with the advent of terrorism and other sensational acts, which have power in proportion to the audience they capture. In 1979, the capture of American hostages in Iran dominated months of news coverage in the western media, gained the status of a "crisis", and influenced a presidential election.Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 73–77.
South Africans overwhelmingly describe the end of Apartheid as a source of the country's most important news.Danie Du Plessis, "What's News in South Africa?" in Shoemaker & Cohen, News Around the World (2006), p. 303. "Virtually all references to the political significance of news events refer to the historical events of the first part of the 1990s. Current political events are overshadowed so greatly by the start of the political process in South Africa that they have lost much of their significance to the participants. Both black and white participants in the focus group shared this response." In the United States, news events such as the assassinations of the 1960s (of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy), the 1969 Moon landing, the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, the 1997 death of Princess Diana, the intervention of the Supreme Court in the 2000 presidential election and the 2001 September 11 attacks.Elizabeth A. Skewes and Heather Black, "What's News in the United States?" in Shoemaker & Cohen, News Around the World (2006), p. 329. In Jordan, people cited numerous memorable news events involving death and war, including the death of King Hussein, Princess Diana, and Yitzhak Rabin. Positive news stories found memorable by Jordanians featured political events affecting their lives and families—such as the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, and the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.Mohammed Issa Taha Ali, "What's News in Jordan?" in Shoemaker & Cohen, News Around the World (2006), p. 252.
News coverage can also shape collective memory in retrospect. A study of Israeli news coverage leading up to the media event of the nation's 60th birthday found that news coverage of events like the Holocaust, World War Two, and subsequent Israeli wars increased the perceived importance of these events in the minds of citizens.Neta Kliger-Vilenchik, "Memory-Setting: Applying Agenda-Setting Theory to the Study of Collective Memory"; in On Media Memory (2011), ed. Neiger, Myers, & Zandberg; pp. 233–234. Also see: Neta Kliger-Vilenchik, "Setting the collective memory agenda: Examining mainstream media influence on individuals' perceptions of the past"; Memory Studies 7.4, October 2014.
The Professional Model is when skilled peoples put certain events together for a specific audience. The reaction of the audience is influential because it can determine the impact that the particular article or newspaper has on the readers. The Mirror Model states that news should reflect reality. This model aims to focus on particular events and provide accuracy in reporting. The Organizational Model is also known as the Bargaining Model. It focuses on influencing various news organizations by applying pressures to governmental processes. The Political Model outlines that news represents the ideological biases of the people as well as the various pressures of the political environment. This model mainly influences journalists and attempts to promote public opinion. The Civic Journalism Model is when the press discovers the concerns of the people and uses that to write stories. This allows the audience to play an active role in society.
Models of news making help define what the news is and how it influences readers. But it does not necessarily account for the content of print news and online media. Stories are selected if they have a strong impact, incorporate violence and scandal, are familiar and local, and if they are timely.
News Stories with a strong impact can be easily understood by a reader. Violence and scandal create an entertaining and attention-grabbing story. Familiarity makes a story more relatable because the reader knows who is being talked about. Proximity can influence a reader more. A story that is timely will receive more coverage because it is a current event. The process of selecting stories coupled with the models of news making are how the media is effective and impactful in society.
Research also suggest that constant representations of violence in the news lead people to overestimate the frequency of its occurrence in the real world, thus increasing their level of fear in everyday situations.
News is the leading source of knowledge about global affairs for people around the world.Zhong, "Searching for Meaning" (2006), pp. 17–18. According to agenda-setting theory, the general public will identify as its priorities those issues which are highlighted on the news. The agenda-setting model has been well-supported by research, which indicate that the public's self-reported concerns respond to changes in news coverage rather than changes in the underlying issue itself.Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), 98–99. The less an issue obviously affects people's lives, the bigger an influence media agenda-setting can have on their opinion of it.Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), 100. "When issues are obtrusive, or directly experienced, such as inflation, the public does not need the news media to alert them to its importance. But, the less direct experience that they have with an issue, the more they depend on the news media for awareness. So, agenda-setting appears to be stronger for less personally involving issues." The agenda-setting power becomes even stronger in practice because of the correspondence in news topics promulgated by different media channels.
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