ELEMENTS OF NEWS REPORTING

ELEMENTS OF NEWS REPORTING 

1: ACCURACY OR AUTHENTICITY

2: OBJECTIVITY

3: ATTRIBUTION

4: BACKGROUNDER  

5: PRECISE AND CONCISE 

6: CLEARITY

7: HUMAN INTERESTS 

8: BALANCE AND FAIRNESS

1: ACCURACY OR AUTHENTICITY

Verified facts must form the basis of all news, not rumour and speculation.

Accuracy is essential if journalism is to inform the public debate. Accuracy comes ahead of speed. If you are not sure, hold fire. Being first and wrong is not a model to aim for. Being right, always reliable and measured is. There is no room for gossips 

fake news can lead to real life consequences 

for example fake news about any bomb blast can seriously panic the people.

2: objectivity 

 means that when covering hard news, reporters don't convey their own feelings, biases or prejudices in their stories. They accomplish this by writing stories using language that is neutral and avoids characterizing people or institutions in ways good or bad

3:ATTRIBUTION

Attribution simply means telling your readers where the information in your story comes from, as well as who is being quoted. Generally, attribution means using a source’s full name and job title if that's relevant. Information from sources can be paraphrased or quoted directly, but in both cases, it should be attributed.

SOURCE CAN BE OF TWO TYPES

1: HUMAN SOURCE 

when a story is originally covered by any journalist or a common man 

2: WRITTEN SOURCE

when news story is shared by any news agency in documented form it will termed as written source 

4: BACK GROUNDER 

A backgrounder is an informational document often provided with a press release, press advisory or as part of a larger media kit. The backgrounder gives the press or other interested parties a more detailed background of an issue, event, person of interest or launch.. The backgrounder provides more information to the journalist or media outlet without compromising the readability or standard format of the media advisory or press release.

5: PRECISE AND CONCISE 

There is a famous sentence about writing a news story : “Brevity and simplicity are the soul of journalism.”

Journalism has got a special language – journalistic language – which is quite different from all other languages and particularly from the literature.Journalistic language is simple, easy, concise and clear. Its basic aim is to convey the message in the simplest way to the masses because every person in the masses is not highly educated.

6: CLEARITY 

Clarity means that you should have all of your facts and have them organized before you start writing. Your story should leave no question unanswered and should avoid jargon.If we write clearly, our readers will understand. We will always be accurate, of course, but we will always be clear with it. This takes a great deal of effort, but we will write in language that our readers understand.

It is important not to confuse the use of precise technical, engineering or medical terms, for instance, with accuracy when their use might baffle most readers

7: HUMAN INTERESTS 

Human interest stories deal with usual events but usually these stories involve fellow feeling, emotion of brotherhood and humanness.

When a person reads about joy or sorrow of others he mentally associates himself with them.

Example: A story of a child rescued by a fireman as a seven-storey building caught fire has greater value than the story of the complete loss of the building.

8: BALANCE AND FAIRNESS 

Balance and fairness are classic buzzwords of journalism ethics: In objective journalism, stories must be balanced in the sense of attempting to present all sides of a story. Fairness means that a journalist should strive for accuracy and truth in reporting, and not slant a story so a reader draws the reporter’s desired conclusion.

Some critics argue that journalists never succeed in being completely balanced and fair — in telling all sides of a story. News coverage often represents the voices of those only on both extremes of the spectrum or voices of those who are the most powerful. Election coverage is a good example of this. In many countries, candidates from non-mainstream parties garner little news coverage. This, critics argue, leads to candidates never building recognition and, therefore, never getting elected.