What Is News?
Still more deeply hidden is a curious twist in the character of news itself. What is news? A well-worn “gag” accurately describes the publishing industry’s concept. “If a man bites a dog, that’s news.” There is nothing unexpected, nothing unusual, nothing sensational about a dog biting a man; hence, that isn’t news. In short, an accurate picture of what is happening is not news. News is a name for unrelated, torn-from-context events or incidents of a sensational character.
Man-bites-dog may be a gag but it is no joke. It contains the link between the obvious faults of our press and their hidden disease. The techniques by which American newspapers turn events into profit are all an expression of the man-bites-dog idea. The compulsory use of the “lead” and headline (with the consequent development of the “headline mentality” decried by the late President Roosevelt), is merely the final expression of the technical process. The whole process consists in finding or creating sensations to exploit. The object being to sell papers, not to maintain just values, “news” is not that which informs but that which sells another newspaper to a badgered reader. Not only complicated international affairs but even “local” stories are distorted beyond recognition of the facts by these techniques. The “crime waves” cooked up out of quite average statistics from time to time are a sample (whatever further reactionary ends they may serve).
The preoccupation with selling papers against fierce competition leads to the American practice of an edition every thirty seconds. This mania for speed, plus the man-bites-dog news formula, works to corrupt and discourage the men who handle news. At length, even the boasted accuracy of the press about elementary facts becomes a myth and a fraud. “The reliability of news accounts is far below what it was years ago ... the reporter is trained to look for the bizarre as all-important ...” writes Oswald Garrison Villard in The Disappearing Daily. Anyone who has ever figured in a news story knows that the printed “facts” have little to do with reality!