News is a report that contains information about a recent event. It can be positive or negative. Usually, news stories contain interesting or amusing details. These stories may involve a person or a group.
When choosing what to report, journalists have to be careful to be objective. If the story has a conflict, it is important to be able to tell the good and bad sides of the story. The media can also play a role in spreading communalism and nationalism. However, the press can be criticized for corrupting public perceptions.
According to the Political Model, news represents a variety of political pressures and ideological biases. Some governments have imposed constraints on the way their reporters choose to report. Other governments, such as the United Kingdom, impose a requirement that broadcasters be impartial.
Another model explains that news reflects the ideological biases of the audience. Depending on the story, readers’ reactions can determine the impact. For example, a reader will be more interested in an unusual or unexpected event than in a story that is more conventional. Likewise, a person who becomes famous will be more likely to be newsworthy than an unknown person.
There is also a model of news making that provides a list of key news values. One of these values is the value of “magnitude.” This can refer to an extreme occurrence, or the number of people involved.
News is also considered to have a higher impact on readers when it involves a larger loss of life, or when it involves an uncommon issue. People take interest in news about confrontation among different groups.
As technology has progressed, the speed at which news is transmitted has been dramatically increased. Mobile devices allow instantaneous reports. In the 21st century, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have expanded the number of news sources. Although these new outlets have changed the way people receive news, the largest share of the market still goes to the major news organizations.
Several scholars have studied news values. A few of these are Stephen J. Milner, who wrote Town Criers and the Information Economy of Renaissance Florence, and Robert E. Park, who published News as a Form of Knowledge in 1940.
Other models are the Organizational Model and the Mirror Model. Both of these models are based on the premise that the news should reflect reality. Despite these scholarly explanations of the value of news, they cannot explain every value.
While these theories can help explain some of the values of news, they don’t account for the content of the news in the print and online media. Further research is needed to assess the impact of social media on the news media.
Finally, a study conducted by Galtung and Ruge examined the relevance of a revised list of news values developed by Harcup and O’Neill. They found that the first two values (magnitude and exclusivity) accounted for a significant portion of the total.