ABSTRACT
This book is an attempt to write the ‘story’ of news: what I believe to be its constituent features, its various manifestations and, of course, its significance. If I were writing the philosophy of news, the points I make in this Introduction, which is the matrix through which I conduct my interrogation of news, would be the book itself. However, given that I begin with what I believe news is, the rest of the book is hopefully a coherent account which follows that definition faithfully and, more importantly, reveals the story of news as it is today: in short its character, nature, history, purpose and value. To begin with, the familiar word ‘news’ belies its highly contested meaning. For generations writers and theorists have questioned what makes news, what is news and what function news does or should play in society. We all need and rely upon news; we have to invest trust in those who tell it to us. News reflects our need to know about contemporary events as they occur. We return from holiday and immediately check what has happened while we have been away. There may be a sense of relief if the events that have occurred and which directly affect us, are trivial, or merely constitute exciting gossip. Events which do not directly affect us may be of interest or seem important because they are significant in their own right (water is found on Mars), or we may empathize and perhaps send aid to those involved in the story (major natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones or tsunamis). Some stories can have a different type of impact upon us, becoming part of our collective memory (the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001; the death of Princess Diana on 31 August 1997). Some stories may merely entertain us for a short time (the dash for freedom made by two pigs on their way to the slaughterhouse; the rescue of a duck trapped in ice, or a ghost seen at Hampton Court). While this book recognizes that news can be selected and expressed in a variety of ways by a range of different news tellers, the focus of this analysis of news is concerned, first, with the constituent features of news itself and, second, with their impact on practice, namely what those reporting the news actually do and why.
