Global News Is a Fast Moving Commodity - Essay Example

"GLOBAL NEWS IS A FAST MOVING COMMODITY" and Section # of News is a fast moving commodity generically. Even if the media is removed from the scene, news travels pretty quickly through word of mouth and through the interaction of people if it is worthy enough. But the role of media has changed the whole scenario. Global news, of any kind, travels at the speed of light, across the whole world, for every sort of recipient to receive and understand. The news might by very minute but it is given importance by the media. This role is amplified by the part played by news agencies who collect and then disburse news so that it can be presented to recipients in various ways, whether TV, radio or newspaper. WHAT IS NEWS If we break down the word N.E.W.S., we get North East West South. This disambiguation of the word news gives us insight into what constitutes news. News is happening all around us. As noted by Jaap Van Ginneken (Understanding Global News), news portrays any information that is new or pertains to events that are current in nature. Whether we look at the local front or take a wider angle of the whole globe, news is getting created by the minute from every corner of the world. Getting this news across to people is important as they are in search of latest happenings and what is affecting their state, city, country or the whole world. All cultures and societies, whether they are literate or not, have this inborn thirst for news, for the happenings, for what is latest. The happenings in the lives of others are important for people as it educates as well as entertains them in a way. This yearning for receiving and being up-to-date with news has increased with the shrinking of the world as a global village. This is where the media enters. Media, in pure English language, is a carrier of something. Industries which are engaged in producing news or any sort of content for the masses is generally called media. For this reason, media plays a very significant role by transmitting news from absolutely every nook and corner of the world to everyone who has the reach of print, broadcast, Internet or word of mouth. Yes, media can reach out to every single person through various ways and methods. There are many channels of the media through which it communicates. Therefore, global news takes no longer than seconds to reach its viewers, listeners and prospective analysts. In what is significantly a very powerful book, Ciaran McCullagh (Media Power) tells us that news making is a type of journalism. It is a type of art where the news producers learn how to reproduce the news that they have received in a manner and way in which it is most useful and readable for the people who intake that news. Journalists are taught to produce news in a standardized "news style". Any news is initially produced and investigated by journalists. But after that, it can be distributed to various outlets through news agencies. What is a news agency We will come to that later. For now, we want to explore the word "news" a little more. Normally, any news content must contain the following 5 Ws for it to be complete. The 5 Ws are who, what, when, where, why and also how. Every event has a certain answer to the above mentioned 5 Ws. There should be no ambiguity or questions remaining. Moreover, most importantly, it is expected out of the person who is writing the report or the journalist that he/she maintains objectivity. It is crucial so that all aspects and side of the story can be covered and that no biases or prejudice should come in while writing and presenting the news. Giving personal opinions and point of views is the job of analysts and commentators. It is for the betterment of the whole world in general that global news are kept away from such biases as people around the world already have pre conceived notions about each other. Biased news can further increase and deteriorate the reputation of certain communities, societies and people in the eyes of all. WHAT IS GLOBAL NEWS The author Van Ginneken, Jaap (Understanding Global News) depicts to us the ins and outs of global news and starts by telling that there are many categories of news: weather, sports, fashion, society, entertainment, business-related, cartoon drawing / comics, features / special articles, celebrity lives and advertising. But what our report is focusing on is global news. Global news can be any news belonging to any strata of society or lying in any category whether sports or fashion. The condition is that it should be global. It is a piece of news which belongs to a country but is ultimately disseminated in all parts of the world, making it "global news". The factor of objectivity as described above is a very crucial component of news reporting but is gets even more difficult to achieve when dealing with global news. Because global news gets transmitted from one corner of the world to another, certain biases and prejudice can come in the news while it is traveling this long distance. Certain television channels and newspapers find it difficult to be objective and biases somehow creep into their news transmittals. ROLE OF NEWS AGENCY Nossik, Hillel (Our News and Their News) has reached important conclusions and given us inside analysis of what work do news agencies do and what role do they basically play in the whole news making cycle. A news agency is a very important part of the background process through which media gives us all that loads of information. A news agency is a type of organization consisting of many journalists who supply news reports, fact, figures and happenings to the organizations who are dealing in news trade. A news agency is also known as wire services or news services. News trade is basically all those companies who are delivering news through any channel of the media, be it be the newspapers, magazines, radio or television broadcasters. The aforementioned organizations are those part of the media which endeavour to present current news to the public. With changing times, the emergence of the Internet-based media can also be seen. World Wide Web pages as well as web blogs are gaining increasing popularity as a source of transmitting current news to its receivers. The news trade business can also be called news media. The term news media depicts a news media which is entirely separate from the profession of journalism, yet centrally connected with it. Journalism gives them the basis on which they then conduct this news trade. If journalism ceases to exist, their business will halt as well. This relationship is reciprocal as the news produced by journalism will never receive that much coverage if it were not for news agencies. Nossik, Hillel communicates that there are many categories and types of news agencies as well. Some are pure corporations which conduct a business of selling news and then earn profit through it. Some are cooperative societies which consist of newspapers. They cooperate with each other through the sharing of newspaper articles with each other. The third type is those who provide newswire services commercially and charge various organizations to distribute their news. News agencies generally engage in the preparation of hard news stories and articles which feature specific topics of interest and then they sell it to other organizations that can use these with little or absolutely no changes. These articles are provided in bulk electronically through wire services. In the past, their mode of transfer used to be the telegraph but now as times have advanced, the Internet is being used as the mode for transferring this news. News agencies are not just catering to organizations, but to intelligence agencies, analysts as well as individuals. These news agencies are used in a wide variety of ways by businesses and other people. As an incident narrated by Nossik, Hillel (Our News and Their News), many companies which are traded in the stock market have to keep their reputation up so that their stocks prices remain fairly high and that their fair market value is always higher than their book value. For this these companies solicit business analysis firms to make favourable reports of the company and then distribute it through news agencies. This impacts their trading scene on the stock market. HOW GLOBAL NEWS TRAVELS FAST McCullagh, Ciaran (Media Power) is very effective in telling us the power of media and how global news has crossed barriers and reached masses. Global news is no longer a commodity for which demand is high but supply is limited or difficult. Various modes of communication have made traveling of global news as fast as lightning. These modes take the latest news from the news agencies which are so willing and efficient in producing news and then telecast it through the medium they are engaged in. One of the first means is through broadcasting. In broadcasting, audio as well as video signals are distributed to a large number of listeners and viewers. Television and radio programs are examples of broadcasting news. Broadcasting forms a very hefty portion of the mass media. A second means can be a news magazine which is issued periodically, usually after every week and contains all the current news and happenings which took place in the last week or period of issuance. News magazines also try to analyse the situation and give a more in-depth feeling of the whole event to the reader. Then there are newspapers. They are disposable publications, costing very low to the buyer, published for general or special purposes and issued daily, weekly, monthly etc. General interest newspapers usually contain something for everyone. They will contain entertainment news, political updates, advertising, weather forecasts and predictions, cartoons, horoscopes, community news, society events and the list just goes on. Another mode is a newsreel which is a documentary film made especially to depict a news story and make it a publicly viewed presentation. In addition to this, another mode which is gaining popularity because of its zero cost and lightning speed is online journalism. In this, reporting as well as publication is done via the Internet. Every country has a specific news media of its own. The United States of America benefits from both public as well as private sector news media. Research suggests that the public does believe what the media tells them, but with reservations. It does not accept blindly whatever the media transmits. Therefore, global news is surely moving fast but might not be sunk properly in the minds of the receivers due to their effective gauging of the fact that media might be biased and prejudiced. AFFECT OF GLOBAL NEWS EXPANSION Bromley, Michael (No News is Bad News) tells us the affects that news might cause of society's values, schemas and many other things. She tells us that by covering absolutely everything from politics to sports, horoscopes to weather, entertainment to basic news, the media literally is shaping our lives. It is altering and playing a dominant role in our cultural, social, and political situation in any certain society. These news agencies report even those events which have escaped the attention of others or the stories which were overshadowed by the major ones. Moreover, the media also plays a vital role in agenda setting. It sets agendas for its public that what should be taken seriously, what lightly and what is least important etc. This is a very important political function that the media performs. INCREASING ACCESS TO NEWS PRODUCERS BY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Bromley, Michael (No News is Bad News) has studied the developing countries and has given us insight and triggered our thought processes over how access has increased to news of the developing countries. Before understanding how access has been increased to all developing countries, we need to define and understand a developing country. A developing country is one which, at present, has a low standard of living and whose industrial base is not developed all that much. Poverty is high and capital formation is extremely slow. A developing country is someone whose economic situation is improving with each passing year. This means that with time, the infrastructure and technology that is available to these countries is increasing. They are exploiting the potential that they have and not letting go of any sort of opportunity to be part of this global village. Developing countries are showing a significant aspect of "developing" by being centrally connected with the rest of the world. This connection is mainly made on the basis of news via the media. Developing countries are trying to make sure that they are connected electronically to news agencies which are popular and informative. They gain all the news and knowledge from these news agencies and bring themselves up to the level where they will have full awareness of what is happening around the world. To improve with each year, they have to align themselves with the knowledge of those countries which are already developed. They have to develop their capabilities and widen their perceptual spaces. Therefore, they are giving magnifying importance to uninterrupted access to news producers all over the world. They stay connected and their media portrays the right information so that their residents can benefit from it and get enlightened. Bibliography 1. McCullagh, Ciaran, (2002) Media Power, London. 2. Van Ginneken, Jaap (1998) Understanding Global News, London. 3. Nossik, Hillel, (2004) Our News and Their News 4. Bromley, Michael, (2001) No News is Bad News Read More