Lesson 4
What is News and Who Decides?
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In Lesson 3, we talked about three kinds of stories that are news in every culture - those that Alert, Divert, and Connect. And the traits that differentiate news from other kinds of information are Verification, Independence and Accountability.
But do we all agree on what is news? That’s the point of this lesson.
What IS news? And why.
We start with the video below.
Mika Brezinki Revolts over Paris Hilton Story on Morning Joe.mp4Example: This is Mika Brzezinski , the co-anchor of “Morning Joe,” a news talk show on MSNBC. In this 2007 segment (from its first year on the air), the anchors are on camera, chatting, about to launch their daily summary of the top stories of the day. Mika Brzezinski and her co-anchor had been talking about U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar’s critique of the President’s war strategy when she looked down to see the first story on her script was Paris Hilton’s release from jail, which was getting a lot of news coverage at the time.
Brzezinski swears it was a spontaneous response and not a publicity stunt. What do you think she is reacting to? Do you sometimes have that same reaction when hearing about yet another "viral video"?
In moving towards becoming a more critical consumer of news, you'll want to have an understanding of how Paris Hilton’s term in jail or the next viral video came to be a prominent story on so many newscasts.
Deciding the News
Deciding the News
Here are 3 front pages from a recent day in the news - December 19, 2019.
(Note: click on the pop-out button in the upper right hand corner of each to see a larger version)
Impeachment MN_ST.pdfImpeachment DC_WP.pdfImpeachment CT_HC.pdfHere is a capture of the top sections of the newspaper websites of the outlets above on that same day from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. (scroll down to see others)
Dec192019 - Webfronts.pdfAs you can see, despite one of the papers having a national focus (the Washington Post), and other two local, the story of the President's impeachment is prominent enough to be placed on the front page of multiple newspapers, and take top billing on their websites at the times at which these captures were taken (which were all around the same time of day -- 6am).
Now, let's look at another day... August 26, 2020.
8-26-20 - OH_CPD.pdf8-26-20 - OH_CD.pdf8-26-20 - CT_NHRopt.pdfWe'll stay with the front pages for this example, since the websites are a bit more dynamic. In this case, none of the headlines match -- with the exception of mentions about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and its effects on schools in the different areas of coverage.
Why might this be?
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