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What is News?

By Alexander Quiñones

If you manage the comments section of a news website you will eventually come

across a comment from a reader exclaiming “Is this news?!” in protest to an article

viewed as frivolous. It may be true that newspapers, once seen as the guardian of news,

are losing readership, but the question of what is news is nonetheless hotly debated.

The stakes could not be higher. As Mitchell Stephens points out in A History of

News, “news” as a term has become so closely associated with “journalism” that a

discussion about the nature of news assumes an association with the practice of

journalism. As a result, the question of what is news has seemingly existential

consequences for journalists, as they struggle to define the term in the face of increased

competition from online content providers who use the word to loosely describe their

product.

In the United States, journalists do not need certification to practice their craft, so

no single organization or government body has a stranglehold on the definition of news.

If you ask readers, they give answers seemingly at odds with journalists. In a survey of 1

560 college students in the fall of 2011, respondents placed little value on treasured

journalism concepts like timeliness, proximity and objectivity. As the authors of that

Armstrong, Cory L., Melinda J. McAdams, and Jason Cain. "What Is News? Audiences 1

May Have Their Own Ideas." Atlantic Journal of Communication 23.2 (2015): 81-98. Print.

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survey point out, the failure of several hyperlocal news ventures lends credibility to those

results.

A review of the literature continually points to the work of Johan Galtung and

Mari Holmboe Ruge who proposed twelve factors for evaluating the selection of

international news. They imagined a world with an enormous set of broadcasting stations,

where we have to select which stations catch our attention. The list includes factors such 2

as frequency of the “signal,” threshold needed to reach, and the meaningfulness of what

is being broadcast.

Tony Harcup and Deirdre O'Neill would propose a revision to their work thirty-

six years later in which they point out shortcomings of the list, such as a focus limited to

events that “ignored day-to-day coverage of ‘lesser’ events,” a lack of reference to the

importance of visual elements in shaping the news and a general problem of interpreting

and applying the twelve factors. For their part, Harcup and O'Neill proposed a list of ten 3

news values that include stories about celebrities, stories concerning the entertainment

industry, and stories with either negative or positive overtones. While only one of the

news values is needed to be met to classify a news story as being news, the list falls short

in classifying the realm of human interest. I propose such a task is impossible and misses

the point of what is news.

Galtung, Johan, and Mari Holmboe Ruge. "The Structure of Foreign News." Journal of 2

Peace Research 2.1 (1965): 64-91. Print.

Harcup, Tony, and Deirdre O'Neill. "What Is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited." 3

Journalism Studies 2.2 (2001): 261-280. Print.

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News can be defined as:

The definition has four key building blocks.

In the broadest sense, news is broadcast information. Information kept secret and

not transmitted may have news value but cannot yet be called “news.” As Stephens points

out, news has a social function. 4

The information must also be new. That is not to say that the subject matter must

be new. Information we learn about our ancestors from hundreds of thousands of years

ago is newsworthy and is rightly so called news. What can be considered newsworthiness

is a separate idea that will be discussed later.

One of the crucial building blocks of this definition of news is that the

information needs to be verified. This is arguably journalists’ most important task.

Generally speaking, professionally-trained journalists place tremendous weight on this

task. In fact, they know not to report something unless it’s been verified.

Verification is to be viewed as the defining process that turns an average citizen

witnessing and recording an event into a citizen journalist. Imagine that a citizen is

walking by a police station and notices a protest against the chief taking place. This

citizen, as many others, has the ability to broadcast live video of the scene with his or her

Stephens, Mitchell. A History of News. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 4

2007. Print.

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smartphone. Imagine then that while the citizen broadcasts the event to viewers on the

web, one of the protesters seizes the opportunity for attention and gets in front of the

smartphone to make defamatory statements about the police chief. The protester’s

message is instantly broadcast, but until now, the citizen is merely a witness.

Social media streams are full nowadays with video from eyewitnesses who

decided to record events on their smartphone. Only until that witness takes the extra step

to verify the accuracy of the information, such as whether or not the police chief in

question is a crook, is that person a citizen journalist.

As Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel point out, “in the end, the discipline of

verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction or art.” 5

Journalists truly concerned about the future of journalism would be wise to help

citizens learn how to verify the information they are publishing online. While it might

mean increased competition in their profession, journalism as a whole would experience

a renaissance on the web.

The last building block in the definition of “news” calls for the new and verified

broadcast information to be for the public good.

What benefits society can come in many forms. Public safety information about a

natural disaster or a crisis springs to mind. Information that helps the public stay

informed about the issues of their community and aids them with the task of citizenry

Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism : What Newspeople 5

Should Know and the Public Should Expect. First revised edition. Completely updated and revised. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2007. Print.

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also fits this paradigm. Information that enhances the people’s rights to “life, liberty and

the pursuit of happiness,” as our founding fathers formulated, also come to mind. In

general, the public good advances the goals of the society.

To contrast, new and verified broadcast information designed to harm the interests

of the public would include, for example, the dissemination of private, financial

information hacked from the accounts of online users.

Furthermore, information broadcast for the public good does not include

entertainment “news,” or any of its subsets. While the use of the term “news” to describe

this type of content is understandable, such content is best defined as:

New and verified information broadcast to appeal to ___________ interests.

This definition does not negate the value of content dealing with any number of

topics, no more than the value of sweets can be discounted as having a positive effect on

the life of a person. New information appealing to people interested in cinema,

automobiles, knitting, or any topic, for that matter, can have the expediency, accuracy and

even share the same transmission channels as news but it should not be considered

“news.” In fact, such content can flourish alongside news, without worrying journalism

professionals about the current state of news. So long as information relayed for the good

of the public can be recognized as having important and intrinsic value, the future of

news is secured.

In conclusion, it is my hope that this definition of news shifts the panicked

conversation currently taking place in journalism schools about the future of news to one

in which the different building blocks of the definition of news, particularly those dealing

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with verification and the exploration of what is in the public good, are understood,

appreciated and advanced.

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