News: Editorial Judgement, Sourcing and Accuracy
News questions test whether you can apply editorial values, not whether you can recall a headline. The core concepts are news values (impact, proximity, timeliness, prominence, novelty, conflict), the public interest test, verification and sourcing, impartiality and balance, and the corrections and complaints process. Know the difference between accuracy (is it true?) and impartiality (is it fairly presented?). A story can be accurate and still partial if one side is given undue weight.
Expect traps around anonymous sources and single-source stories. A single source is not automatically wrong, but it raises risk; questions often ask what a journalist should do next, and the answer is usually to corroborate or seek a second independent source before publishing, not to drop the story automatically. Another trap is balance versus false equivalence: giving equal weight to a well-evidenced claim and an unsupported one is not impartiality. Watch for embargoes (an agreement not to publish before a time) and off-the-record (information not for publication) being confused with unattributable (usable but not attributed).
Rule of thumb: before publishing, ask "How do I know this, and who else can confirm it?" If you cannot name the chain of evidence, the story is not ready.
Worked example: A source claims a council will close a school. You have one unnamed official. The right move is to seek confirmation from the council press office or a second independent source, and to give the council a right of reply before publication - not to publish immediately because the source is "senior".
Also learn the right of reply: the subject of serious criticism should normally be given a fair opportunity to respond before publication.