What is News 新闻的定义

mean journalists should ignore these events, but only that they need to do additional reporting to get a complete story.

Most reporters say their best stories come from their own

enterprise. Sometimes story suggestions come from strangers, who may visit, telephone, or e-mail the newsroom with a complaint or concern. Some news organizations actively solicit ideas from people who live in the communities they serve, by providing a telephone number or an e-mail address where suggestions can be

submitted. Journalists spend a lot of time building relationships with people who can provide them with information. (We’ll talk more about source building in Chapter 2, “Getting the Story.”)

Journalists frequently find stories simply by looking around and

listening to what people are talking about. What you overhear at a sports event or in line at the post office could turn into a news

story. Ask the people you meet when you are not covering a story what is going on in their lives or their neighborhoods and you might find yourself on the trail of a news story no one else has covered. Another way to find news is to ask what has happened since the last time a story was in the paper or on the air. Follow-ups often lead to surprising developments that are even more newsworthy than the original report. For example, a story about a fire the day after it happened might tell you how many people were killed and the extent of the property damage. But a follow-up several weeks later could discover that a faulty radio system made it impossible for firefighters to respond quickly enough to save more lives.

Documents, data, and public records can lead to terrific stories as well. Reporters can use them to look for trends or to spot

irregularities. This kind of work requires more effort, but the results are almost always worth the trouble. It’s considerably easier when the data are made available electronically, of course, but reporters have been known to enter data from paper records into computer database programs just so they can search for the most significant information in a pile of statistics. For example, a list of people who have received speeding tickets might yield a story if it could be sorted by name instead of date. That’s how television reporter Nancy

Amons learned that one driver in her town had managed to amass a dozen traffic violations in three years and had even caused an accident that killed another driver without ever losing his driver’s license. When she investigated, city officials admitted they had failed to do their job.

The Journalist’s Role

New technologies have made it possible for anyone with a computer to disseminate information as widely as the largest news

organizations. But a well-designed Internet site, no matter how well it’s written or how often it’s updated, is not necessarily a reliable source of news. The truth is that in a complex world where

information is no longer a scarce commodity, the role of the journalist has become more important than ever.

Unlike a propagandist or a gossip, the journalist sorts through the information available and determines how much of it is valuable and reliable before passing it on to the public. News stories, whether hard news or features, must be accurate. Journalists not only collect the information they need to tell the story, they have to verify the information before they can use it. Journalists rely on first-hand observation whenever possible and consult multiple sources to make sure the information they receive is reliable. And, except on rare occasions, they identify the sources of their information so the audience can evaluate its credibility.

But journalism is more than just the distribution of fact-based

information. Propaganda also may be based on facts, but those facts are presented in such a way as to influence people’s opinions. As we’ve already noted, public relations professionals use facts, as well, but may tell only one side of a story. Journalists, on the other hand, strive to be fair and complete. They strive to tell an accurate and authentic story, one that reflects reality, not their own perception of it or anyone else’s.

Another distinction between journalism and other forms of

information is that journalists strive for independence from the people they cover. A public relations professional who is employed by the organization he or she is writing about is unlikely to include

information that might make the organization look bad. A journalist, on the other hand, will attempt to provide a complete picture, even if it is not entirely positive.

Journalists are not mere transmission belts for their own viewpoints or for information provided by others. They do original reporting, they do not confuse fact with opinion or rumor, and they make sound editorial decisions. A principal responsibility of journalism, says Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, is “applying judgment to information.”

Unlike other purveyors of information, journalists owe their primary allegiance to the public. As Canada’s Montreal Gazette states in its code of ethics, “A newspaper’s greatest asset is its integrity. Respect for that integrity is painfully won and easily lost.” To maintain that integrity, journalists work hard to avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. (We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 7, “Ethics and Law.”)

Objectivity and Fairness

The concept of objectivity in journalism developed almost a century ago, as a reaction to the sensational, opinion-driven reporting that was common in most newspapers of the day. The term “objectivity” was originally used to describe a journalistic approach or method; journalists would seek to present the news in an objective way, without reflecting any personal or corporate bias.

Over time, objectivity was required from the journalists

themselves. The executive editor of the American newspaper the Washington Post, Leonard Downie, took the concept so seriously that he refused to register to vote. But many journalists today concede that total objectivity is impossible. In 1996, the U.S. Society of

Professional Journalists dropped the word “objectivity” from its code of ethics. Journalists are human beings, after all. They care about their work and they do have opinions. Claiming that they are

completely objective suggests that they have no values. Instead, journalists have largely agreed that they must be aware of their own opinions so they can keep them in check. The audience should not be able to tell from the story what the journalist’s opinion is. By using an objective, scientific method for verifying information, journalists can report stories that do not reflect their own personal views. The story itself, in other words, should be impartial and fair.

Journalists also strive to be fair in their reporting by not telling one-sided stories. They look for contrasting views and report on them without favoring one side or another. In addition to verifying assertions of fact, they will seek out differing opinions in cases where the facts are in dispute.

Fairness is not the same thing as balance, however. Balance

suggests that there are only two sides to any story, which is rarely the case, and that each side should be given equal weight. Journalists who seek that kind of artificial balance in their stories actually may produce coverage that is fundamentally inaccurate. For example, the vast majority of independent economists may agree on the

consequences of a particular spending policy while a small handful has a different opinion, which has been proven wrong by past

experience. A story giving equal time or space to the views of both groups would be misleading.

The challenge for journalists is to report all significant viewpoints in a way that is fair to those involved and that also presents a complete and honest picture to the audience. “Fairness means, among other things, listening to different viewpoints, and incorporating them into the journalism,” says reporter and blogger Dan Gillmor. “It does not mean parroting lies or distortions to achieve that lazy equivalence that leads some journalists to get opposing quotes when the facts overwhelmingly support one side.” News Providers

Journalists the world over share certain characteristics. They are curious and persistent. They want to know why things happen and they don’t take no for an answer. They are not intimidated by the powerful and they care deeply about the work they do. Kevin Marsh, an editor at the British Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) Radio 4, says a good journalist has “the ability to grasp the big truths – with the

humility to let them go again when the facts don’t fit.” A journalist’s job is challenging and complicated. As Philip Graham, late chairman of the board of the Washington Post Company, once said, “(A journalist has the) inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of a history that will never be completed about a world we can never understand.”

Journalists today have more outlets for their work than at any other time in history, from small community newspapers to worldwide television news channels and online-news sites. Each of the media outlets has different strengths and weaknesses.

In most countries, daily newspapers generally have the largest staffs and offer more depth on a wider range of topics than the broadcast media. With the addition of online sites, many newspapers have begun to overcome the limitations of their traditional once-a-day publication schedule. But they largely reach only a literate, affluent audience, people who can read and who have enough money to buy the newspaper or have access to a computer to read it on line. Radio, one of the most widely used sources of news in the world, has the advantage of speed and easy availability. Radio journalists can get the news on the air quickly and anyone with a battery-powered