Becoming More Critical when Teaching about News Values

Abstract

What is news? That's a question that journalism practitioners, educators, and students ask and answer routinely. Sometimes question and answers are explicit, as in instruction and discussion. Other times they are implicit, as in news selection and processing. The same question is asked and answered by a documentary used to introduce visitors to The Freedom Forum's Newseum and its traveling component, NewsCapade. Although documentary provides no revolutionary insight into notion of news, it does trigger further reflections. If for no other reason, it raises and answers question anew - and in a way that straddles journalists' intuitive and situational approach and educators' attempt to conceptualize and standardize news judgment. Though documentary does not make this point, it has led this instructor to conclude that introductory reporting textbooks should more to emphasize contingency and personal nature of news selection. As a background for those who are not familiar with Newseum, it was opened in Arlington, Va., in April 1997 as an interactive museum that educates public about news media and their central role in chronicling contemporary history. Its traveling component, NewsCapade, began touring country in March 1999 with goal of making at least one stop in each of 50 states by end of year 2000. Before exploring exhibits at Newseum and NewsCapade, visitors are shown documentary titled What's Given that Newseum was created as a public relations undertaking on behalf of press, documentary may be said to be news media's collective reflection on itself. In explaining purpose of Newseum, Allen H. Neuharth, its founder and Freedom Forum executive, said: We wanted to make public more aware of news and how it is gathered. One of reasons [newspaper] popularity is in pits is that people don't understand a lot of what we do (Editor & Publisher, August 1999, p. 40). As such, introductory documentary provides an important insight into journalists' conception of news, or at least their preferred public conception of it. The definition of news in Newseum/NewsCapade documentary is essentially event-oriented, much like journalistic practice, but it also reflects a level of abstraction that nonetheless makes viewer see news in personal terms. The documentary begins with takeoff of a U.S. spaceship, as narrator, Charles Osgood of CBS News, asked title-question, What's As theater vibrates in simulation of an actual lunch site, Osgood begins to list a series of events that constitute news. They are: War, Peace, Breakthroughs, Life, Death, Love, Hate, Sacrifice, and Freedom. The announcement of each element of news is accompanied by an illustrative visual component. Firsts, for instance, are illustrated with launch of U.S. spaceship and Life is illustrated with a warmly lit image of a newborn. As Ted Friedman wrote in a 1998 issue of Critical Studies in Mass Communication, such framing of news invites the viewer to regard news within a context of natural circles. Moreover, framing personalizes news and suggests that it be about routine life of ordinary people. The reality, of course, is that ordinary people's routines are rarely news, except for occasional features. The birth, life, and death of ordinary people, for instance, rarely make news, nor their firsts, their loves, their hates and their sacrifices. The elements of news listed in reporting textbooks suggest importance of context in determining when life experiences are newsworthy. For instance, births are not newsworthy by themselves, unless they involve prominent people or entail something unusual. Similarly, Firsts are only newsworthy when they are of consequence, or, again, involve prominent people. Still, despite definitional deficiencies in What's News? …