News

News is a global phenomenon. Most countries have a news industry that is producing and distributing news to consumers based on information from sources both local and distant. The news might be disseminated in the form of a newspaper, public letter, or magazine and/or via television, radio, or the Internet. The concept of news is associated with novel and interesting information on various events. However, news is not simply “out there” in society, and neither should it be regarded as a mirror of reality: It is instead invented and constructed and should be understood as the outcome of particular traditions, routines, and conventions.

In the editorial and journalistic processing of news, identified events and verbal comments are inserted into preexisting news frames in order to generate public interest and commercial value. As two seminal studies on the production of news once suggested, reality is “socially constructed” and “put together.” Furthermore, particular actions and processes become news due to their correspondence to predetermined news values. Traditionally, important news values are, for example, involvement of elite people and elite nations, cultural proximity, the personal (private), unexpectedness, meaningfulness, and negativity (the occurrence of “bad happenings”).

Both commercial news and state-owned news media (public service media) could play an important role in society from a democratic point of view. Ideally, they establish communicative bridges between various powers (the political elite, the market, organizations, etc.) and the public and act as the public's watchdog. The production of news is embedded in the ideal of objectivity and the idea that journalism should deliver pertinent and neutral information to its audiences. On this foundation rests the ideology and self-identity of the journalistic profession. Numerous studies, however, have demonstrated the impossibility of total impartiality in news making. As with discourse in general, news language includes values, norms, and ideological interests, which are more or less hidden and conscious. Therefore, in the scientific analysis of news companies, it is quite obligatory to map and analyze factors such as political belonging, loyalties, and ownership structure.

Contemporary news and the news industry should be understood in relation to the gradual development of economic globalization. Today's news is historically connected to the expansion of intercontinental economic exchange and trade for the last 500 years (approximately), including the relations between colonial states and their colonies. More precisely, the origin of the present form and character of news could be found in the expansion of market capitalism and market activities in important commercial towns in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. News very much developed out of the increasing demand for information on goods, transportation routes, and sources of financial gain among people who were engaged in trade and commerce. Consequently, to begin with, the selling of news was limited to people in the economic sector, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, the production of news gradually developed into a critical press. Besides financial news, it included political news and information on various social matters. Over the long term, the production and development of political news in various countries and parts of the world paved the way for democratic rights movements and parliamentarism. In this process, inventions such as the printing press and the telegraph helped to intensify and expand the production of news. In the 20th century, news production developed into a full-fledged commercial industry.

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