What is News and What is Not News

[MineralMan]

There seems to be some confusion, in general, about what news is. News is an account of things that happened. It tells you what the events were, who the participants in those events were, when the events occurred, and perhaps why the events occurred, if that information is available.

News does not comment on the events and try to tell you how to think about those events. That is commentary.

MSNBC is not news. It does not pretend to be. Fox News is not news, except occasionally during one of their straight news segments. Huffington Post is not news. Almost no blogs are news. Unless an outlet is describing events without comment, that outlet is giving you commentary, not news.

So, where do you get the news? Well, you get it in the same places you always have. On the main pages of major newspapers around the world. Not on the editorial pages. The main pages. When you want major US or international news, you can find it in major newspapers. You can find an abbreviated version of the news on major network newscasts, as well. You can find local news in sources near where event occurred, from newspapers to local television news sources.

You can use the internet to read every legitimate news source on the planet. All you have to do is look for factual accounts of events. That's news.

For example, a story about a murder that took place in Cleveland will first appear in the Cleveland newspapers or television stations. It will tell you who was murdered, when the murder took place, where the murder occurred, and who committed that murder, if that information is available. It will not tell you why, because nobody will know why. That's news. If, later, stories start to appear about the sorry life the murderer led or what a tragedy the murder is for the family, that's not news. That's commentary.

If BP blows up a well and spills oil into the gulf, that's news. Stories discussing how evil BP is and how horrible the spill will be in the future is commentary. Stories that speculate about the extent of the spill without measuring that extent are not news. They are commentary and speculation.

It's all so simple, really. News is only an account of events. It does not judge the events. It does not pontificate about events. It simply tells you what happened, when, where, and how. Sometimes the why is known, and that is part of the news. What the news means is not news. It is commentary.

Decrying the state of the news industry is only useful if there are no accounts of an event. Decrying commentary while conflating it with the news is a serious mistake. Commentary is not news. It is commentary.

So, if you want the news, it's available in all the usual places. If you want commentary, you can find that too, very easily. Confusing which one is which is a mistake. Nothing Chris Matthews says is news. Everything he says is commentary, based on the news he read or saw somewhere else. Everything on Huffington Post that is not a direct quote from a news source is commentary, not news. Almost everything on DU is commentary, except for the odd OP that simply presents a news story, unchanged from its source.

News is simply information about an event. Commentary is everything else. Commentary is always biased by the beliefs of the commentator. News is simple. It says "This happened at this time in this place and the following people or places were involved. If the reason it happened is known, as with a natural gas explosion that destroyed a building, that is also news. Nothing else. Not the supposed negligence of the gas company or anything else, unless that is known for a certainty.

News is simply news. Everything else is commentary about the news. This OP is pure commentary. There is no news content here.

[hfojvt]

1. there is plenty of commentary being hidden in the news

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/100

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/98

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/77


Secondly, there is the selection of stories. There will be many stories about the latest murder in Cleveland or the latest major car pile-up and, of course, anything involving a celebrity, but there won't be very many stories about income inequality. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/126

[MineralMan]

2. Yes, there is, depending on the particular outlet.

Learning to recognize commentary and ignore it is a simple thing. It's a skill more people need to develop.

I have seen stories about income inequality that were news. They were boring. That's why you don't see them, but they certainly exist. If there's a timely story about that subject, it will be reported. On the other hand, there are many commentaries on the subject. Timeliness is not required.

News is an account of events. That is all it is. Anything beyond that is commentary. It's pretty easy to weed the commentary out and focus on what actually happened. Basic reading and listening skills. If what is written or said does not tell you the basic information, it is commentary.

You can read any newspaper or watch any television news and get the news. You just have to ignore the commentary.

Further, not every story is of national or global importance. A murder in Cleveland should only be interesting if you live in Cleveland, except in unusual circumstances. We promote local stories into national news far too often, I think.

Frankly, it is up to each of us to use our own discriminatory skills and our intelligence to separate the commentary from the news. It's not difficult at all.

Barack Obama won the Election and is President-elect. That is news. Pretty much anything beyond that that address politics or what that election means is commentary. It's so simple, really.

[hfojvt]

10. nobody separates the commentary

Instead, they typically absorb it. Can we be taught not to? I doubt it. And for most people "commentary I agree with" is the same thing as "fact" and that becomes especially true the less somebody knows about an issue. People will talk and write as if they are talking about the facts when they really are not, but unless you have better information, you are not gonna know that.

Take the upcoming election. Newspapers have done voter guides for this election, and they typically put lots of weight on the following - a picture, stuff about the candidate, like work experience, hometown, age, previous election experience, etc. What they do not do, is provide substance about various issues.

[canetoad]

3. K & R Damn good post

What brought this on? :)

[MineralMan]

4. Thanks! It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

People keep referring to sources like MSNBC as news and post stuff from editorial pages and imply that it is somehow news. I just wanted to explore the difference between actual news and commentary. Commentary always includes bias of one sort or another. News shouldn't and, even if it does in a minor way, the actual news is usually pretty easy to extract.

I don't know. I think about stuff like this a lot. I'm weird that way, I guess. :shrug:

[MineralMan]

5. To add: There is nothing wrong with commentary. I didn't mean

to imply that there was. It's just very important to separate factual news from commentary about that news. Unless we do that, we cannot separate events from bias, and that's a bad thing, indeed.

[Kali]

6. I mostly agree but you CAN extract "news" from commentary.

I do it all the time from right here at DU.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes, you can, and I do that, too. It's easier, though, to extract

the commentary from news in traditional news sources, just because there is much less of it.

I'm concerned about people losing the ability to tell the difference. That's what this OP is about, really.

[Kali]

9. and then add the total lack of accuracy of most stories

and the ignorance factor goes way up fast

have you ever had first hand knowledge of events in a news story where they got it "right"? I haven't - depressing implication for the events you don't have personal knowledge of

[The_Commonist]

8. I see it all the time, particularly on the...

..."other side of the aisle," where someone will refer to an opinion piece and say "it is a FACT that..." (whatever it was the the commentator was commenting on). This happens a lot with those right-wing emails that people seem to like to send out all the time.

[MineralMan]

21. True. I do see it on the left, too, though.

Sometimes there seems to be too much reliance on web sites like Huffington Post and Daily KOS and not enough discrimination on those sites between what is actual news and what is "the news explained for you."

I find that somewhat disturbing, I must admit.

[JonLP24]

11. I agree the commentary shows on MSNBC

are not news even though they tell you what happens and then give their opinion but I wanted to point out during the day they are news. An anchor reads the news up until the commentary shows come on. Fox News is commentary from start to finish even their so called news shows like America's Newsroom features lots of commentary. I'm not sure what is a direct quote from a news story but I don't see a whole lot of commentary on their news stories like this one. -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/01/alan-greenspan-extending_n_666549.html

[MineralMan]

24. Thanks. I haven't watched television in the daytime for years, so

I really have no idea what's on. My normal habit is to watch the local news on one channel over coffee in the morning, and the CBS local and national news in the late afternoon/early evening. In the daytime, I read stories of interest to me in major newspapers and follow up stories from the TV to get more coverage.

The only place I see commentary, per se, is her on DU and links from here.

[ThomWV]

12. And what do you call reporting where there is no apparent commentary, but falsified "facts"

Because there is a third element at play too, and that is information which is not true that is presented as news - it tells you when something happened, where it happened, who did it, and often not a single word of it is true, and it can be easily found in every newspaper in the world.

[SidDithers]

13. Good post...

But too sensible for much of DU, I'm afraid.

Sid

[MineralMan]

17. Thanks. I just post and let everyone sort themselves out.

As I said in my last line, my post is just commentary, not news.

[nashville_brook]

14. this is a very unsophisticated view of "news" -- bias is delivered in what is covered or not covered

bias (or, "commentary") is in camera angles -- whether a handsome pic is used or an unflattering one. bias/commentary is delivered every time your local news station covers bloody murders instead of city council meetings. bias/commentary is delivered by giving "business" a whole section of reportage, while "environment" or "education" has none.

meanwhile...many columnists cover news that isn't otherwise "reported" in news outlets. they pick up reports and investigations run by public interest groups who are doing the work of getting important news to the people. you do know that the government is no longer in the business of keeping us safe, or our environment clean, or our water potable...you know that, don't you?. so, there's not going to be a whithouse.gov press release on, say, how toxic Gulf shrimp is. if it weren't for MSNBC and HuffPo and Salon and ProPublica covering these stories we'd never hear of them. all we'd know is "Man dies in bar fight," and "Car hit pole," and "Rain made things wet today."

The work that journalists do is difficult, it pays shit and it's a constant battle to keep a story true from first draft thru editing. Journalists spend many years learning their craft, and it very much includes having the ability to analyze information, use judgement, and manage exposition. The "news" doesn't fall to the ground is whole chunks readt-to-be uploaded to a newsreader. That's not news -- that's a blank stare at the obvious.

[laughingliberal]

15. Exactly! Bias is the probe of Rangel as front page but the criminal investigation of Ensign is...

crickets. It's not the commentary, alone, that creates bias. It's the editorial decisions about placement and all the other issues you mentioned.

[nashville_brook]

16. there's a tremendous bias in the media toward resolution -- you're seeing that w/the Gulf Disaster

it's the mirror image of 'if it bleeds it leads" -- something like "alls well that ends well...moving right along."

[MineralMan]

23. Some of that is timing, really. Rangel is news right now. The Ensign i

investigation is an ongoing thing without any real current changes.

[laughingliberal]

25. Ensign's issue got far less attention, even new, than the Rangel story is getting, even here.

And I live in NV.

[MineralMan]

27. OK. Still, I remember an awful lot of news on Ensign at the time.

I don't write the news. I just follow it.

[sl8]

18. Good post & good reminder.

I know that that I wasn't as particular about my sources in my younger days as I am today

I assume that most people learn about credibility much more quickly than did I and, regrettably, a few never seem to learn.

[MineralMan]

19. Thank you. I'm not sure that most people do understand the

difference. Here at DU, the percentage that's able to do that is almost certainly higher than the general population, though. The popularity of Fox News is a good measure of how many people don't understand what is news and what is not.

[SoCalDem]

20. News CAN be commentary

When my boys were little i always made them read the paper and then take out the "extra stuff"

an example..

years back, a man crossing the street was hit by a car and killed..that was the "news"

our rag-newspaper reported it as a "hispanic VAGRANT was jaywalking and was hit by a young mother in a van, as she drove her kids to school...the children were traumatized"

NBC news from LA, reported it as "an elderly homeless man was hit as a woman driver turned right on red, after being distracted by the children in the car..she claimed to have not seen the man"

KTLA had interviews with the family of the dead man, and they told about what a wonderful grandfather he was

In any version of the "news" the man was dead and the woman hit him..she was not charged with anything and he was dead..It was an accident, pure and simple..did he step in front of the vehicle? was she distracted? maybe both

he was dead and she was sorry..

each news venue chose to report it with their own particular flavor...to appeal to whatever sensibilities they thought their viewers might have

[MineralMan]

22. Good examples! Looking at the different stories, it's clear

what actually happened, of course. I think the LA Times probably was the least colored of the three. It simply relates the information, without much color at all. The use of hispanic and vagrant in the first example shows the distinct color of bias. The KTLA story went beyond the story and colored it with a single viewpoint from the man's family.

As you say, though, the story was that a man was hit by a car, driven by a woman with children in her car, and died. That is the news. Everything beyond that is color. Maybe he was homeless. Maybe the woman was distracted. It sounds like he probably wasn't actually a vagrant, and everyone's family is sad when a family member dies and remembers him fondly.

In these cases, the news is fairly easy to extract in all of the stories.

Thanks for the examples.

What I would have written would be something like this:

"An elderly man, full name/whose name has not been released, was struck and killed in this city. The driver of the car, name if known, a woman with her children, has not been charged, and the incident is under investigation by police."

In a reasonable world, that would be the last you'd hear about it, unless someone was charged in the incident. A sad story, but not that important to any but those involved and their families. But, if it bleeds, it leads...or so the saying goes.

[Scurrilous]

26. K & R

:thumbsup: