Making Sure That the News You Read is Worth Your Time
News reaches people through many channels. Whether online or offline, it is important to make sure that the news you read is worth your time. Journalism is the process of checking, evaluating and publishing news for credibility, objectivity, and fairness. Objectivity means reporting news without bias or prejudice, and fairness implies that a news story is balanced. Journalists access both sides of an issue before forming an opinion.
Timeliness
Timeliness is a critical element of news reporting. In today’s news media, reporters strive to break stories as quickly as possible, but there is a balance between accuracy and timeliness. Stories with high timeliness are those about breaking news, critical events, and unexpected developments.
Relevance
Relevance is a core news value, understood by news creators and audiences in different ways. Relevance is a dynamic, interactive relationship between news story and audience. It can be emphasized by journalists through the language they use, or it can be created by audiences themselves by making connections outside of the story’s context. Most research to date has focused on how journalists create stories that are relevant to audiences, but recent research focuses more on how audiences construct relevance.
Value
In publishing news, newsworthy events are selected according to their “values.” News values explain the criteria that influence the selection and presentation of an event as news.
Professionalism
Professionalism in news reporting is a complex topic. There are many competing demands on news organizations, including profitability and the need to report the news without damaging the reputation of the newspaper. But how do news organizations balance these competing demands while ensuring high standards of news reporting?
Ethics
As the digital age continues to churn the news industry, ethical journalism is more important than ever. New laws and regulations may make it harder to report news, but maintaining the highest professional and ethical standards is essential for public trust. Today’s news business is faster, more pressurized, and infinitely more complex than it was a few years ago. And the media have learned the hard way about the double-edged sword of the information revolution.