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1.2 Fundamental about news
1.2.1 Definition and classification of news
The definition of news is rather elusive and no single one has won widespread acceptance in the world up to now. A well known saying is that “NEWS” can be split into four letters, which stand for four directions: North, East, West, and South. This indicates that news is reports of events which occur everywhere around the world.
Another frequently quoted saying about news is attributed to a nineteenth-century editor John Bogart of the New York Sun: when a dog bites a man, which is not news: but when a man bites a dog that is news, this statement particularly stresses the freshness and unusualness of news. Besides the above sayings, there are many other definitions about news.
All in all, news is the reflection of objective affairs that exist. The essence of news is facts, which is substantial. Facts are primary, while news is secondary. Facts are the source of news, but not all the facts can become news. In general news reporting contains five elements, i.e. the five“W”s who, what, when, where, why. Usually another element is attached, that is “H”: how.
Though there is no widely agreed definition of news, most of the definition seems to accept that news is the timely reporting of the facts that have happened or are happening or about to happen. This will be the working definition of this study.