THE NEWS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: GOING BEYOND THE 5WS AND 1H

PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES and ACTIVITIES
‘The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumour, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy.’ Walter Lippmann, in News Reporting and Writing

STUDY VISIT TO A NEWS MEDIA ORGANIZATION
A field trip may be done to a media office to dialogue with the editor-in-chief or a senior editor and observe firsthand the news development process at the editorial office level.
Participants will be asked to write a reflection paper on what they observed and learned during the visit.

PROCESS ENQUIRY (A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A NEWS REPORTER)
The trainee accompanies a news reporter while covering his or her beat and documents the
following: (a) what elements of the news were identified and written about, compared to
what happened in the field (or the process of sifting through the data gathered); and (b) how
and why did the reporter tell the story (put meaning to the data) the way he or she did.

Identifying news and recognizing the story 

Starter/baseline assessment

News scavenger hunt: in pairs, participants explore a newspaper or news website to find a list of given items as quickly as they can. Challenge: participants find a news report that most interests them. Why did it catch your attention? What makes it interesting? What is it informing you about?

NB: You may want to scan through the chosen newspaper or news site to check that the available content is appropriate for your participants. You can remove any unsuitable stories from the newspaper.

Learning activity

Participants work in role as desk editors to evaluate the newsworthiness of potential stories. First, decide as a class the type of news publication you are (ie a school newspaper, local, national or international news), as this will also tell you who your audience is.

1. Group participants and allocate each group a section of the news publication: National, International, Science & Environment, Entertainment & Culture or Sport. Each group must choose three newsworthy stories to report from their list, using the news criteria to justify their decision.
2. Hold a news conference where each group presents their chosen stories. As a class, discuss what makes them newsworthy. What is the story informing our audience about? What is the purpose of the story? Why would this story be interesting for our audience?
3. Choose the lead story. Out of the chosen stories, which one should feature as the lead story on the front page? Why is it the most newsworthy for your audience? Which story would feature as the next most important story? Discuss and share the pupils’ story choices.

Plenary

What would happen if news companies didn’t exist? What would happen without news? What would people no longer be able to find out?

Discipline of verification as the essence of journalism

Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information.

While there is no standardized code as such, every journalist uses certain methods to assess and test information to “get it right.”

Being impartial or neutral is not a core principle of journalism. Because the journalist must make decisions, he or she is not and cannot be objective. But journalistic methods are objective.

When the concept of objectivity originally evolved, it did not imply that journalists were free of bias. It called, rather, for a consistent method of testing information – a transparent approach to evidence – precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of the work. The method is objective, not the journalist.

Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. This discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other forms of communication such as propaganda, advertising, fiction, or entertainment.

Called the Discipline of Verification, its intellectual foundation rests on three core concepts – transparency, humility, and originality.

Transparency means show your work so readers can decide for themselves why they should believe it.

• Don’t allow your audience to be deceived by acts of omission — tell them as much as you can about the story they are reading.
• Tell the audience what you know and what you don’t know. Never imply that you have more knowledge than you actually do.
• Tell the audience who your sources are, how they are in a position to know something, and what their potential biases might be.

Transparency signals the journalist’s respect for the audience. It allows the audience to judge the validity of the information, the process by which it was secured and the motives and biases of the journalist providing it.

Transparency signals the journalist’s respect for the audience.

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This makes transparency the best protection against errors and deception by sources. If the best information a journalist has comes from a potentially biased source, naming the source will reveal to the audience the possible bias – and may inhibit the source from attempting to deceive you as well.

The journalist’s job is to provide information in such a way that people can assess it and then make up their own minds what to think.

This is the same principle that governs the scientific method. By giving the audience the background on how you arrived at a certain conclusion, you allow them to replicate the process for themselves.

Humility means keep an open mind.

Journalists need to keep an open mind — not only about what they hear but also about their own ability to understand what it means. Exercise humility. Don’t assume. Avoid arrogance about your knowledge.

“Assumption,” as a veteran bureau chief once put it, “is the mother of all screw-ups.”

Journalists need to recognize their own fallibility and the limitations of their knowledge. They should be conscious of false omniscience and avoid just “writing around it.” They should acknowledge to themselves what they are unsure of, or only think they understand – and then check it out. This makes their judgment more precise and their reporting more incisive.

Jack Fuller, the author, novelist, editor, and newspaper executive, has suggested that journalists need to show “modesty in their judgment” about what they know and how they know it.

Gregory Favre, a longtime editor in Sacramento and Chicago, says his rule is simple. DO NOT PRINT ONE IOTA BEYOND WHAT YOU KNOW.

First, you have to be honest about what you know, versus what you assume you know, or think you know. A key way to avoid misrepresenting events is a disciplined honesty about the limits of one’s knowledge and the power of one’s perception.

Originality means do your own work.

Information can be viewed as a hierarchy. At the top is the work you have done yourself, reporting you can directly vouch for.

Journalists say the times they most often got something wrong was when they took something from somebody or someplace else and failed to check it themselves.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
The teacher analyzes newspaper accounts of a major issue or event and examines the
information provided. He or she explains the assessment, considering the factors and
process in ‘identifying news and recognizing the story’:
● Elements of the news (5Ws and 1H: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?)
and redefining them: news is data with meaning (who is character, what is plot,
where is setting, why is motivation or causation, how is narrative)
● Journalism as ‘storytelling with a purpose’: finding the information people need to
live their lives, and making it meaningful, relevant and engaging
The teacher will check for verifiability, based on the core principles of verification: do
not add; do not deceive the audience; be transparent as possible about methods and
motives; rely on own original reporting; and exercise humility
The teacher will also apply at least one technique of verification: sceptical editing,
accuracy checklist, method of verifying presumed facts, rules on anonymous sources,
etc. (Reference: Kovach and Rosentiel, The Elements of Journalism)

PRODUCTION
The training facilitator or teacher coordinates with the adviser of a school publication
(or school broadcast station) to allow trainees to come up with an issue plan for the
next publication/programme. The issue plan includes the line-up of articles or stories to be written or produced and the basis for their inclusion, scope of each story, and possible angle or treatment of each story

MEDIA LOG
Teachers are required to maintain a journal or log book where (daily) observations on
the topic (e.g. news values, news judgements, criteria of verification, citizen reporting)
are recorded for summary and synthesis at the end of the course
ASSESSMENT RECOMMENDATIONS
Media log
Production
Reports on study visit, immersion, textual analysis
Participation in group learning activities, e.g. workshops, class discussions
TOPICS FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION
News sources and news gathering techniques (including use of ICTs)
Taste and appropriateness in news coverage

RESOURCES FOR THIS MODULE
Joseph, Ammu. (2005): Media Matters Citizens Care. Retrieved on 17 May 2011 from
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/19137/11164945435advocacy_brochure.pdf/
advocacy_brochure.pdf
Article 19. (1999, June). Right to Know: Principles on Freedom of Information Legislation.
International Standards Series. Retrieved 27 May 2009 from www.article19.org/pdfs/
standards/righttoknow.pdf