News: Concepts, Values, and Reporting
What the domain tests
This domain tests whether you can define news, identify news values and report an event accurately under deadline pressure. It rewards precise terminology and defensible editorial judgement.
Core rules and concepts
- News is a timely account of an event, issue or process that matters to an audience and can be verified.
- News values (Galtung and Ruge): timeliness, proximity, prominence, impact/consequence, magnitude, conflict, novelty/oddity, human interest, currency and eliteness. Use them to explain selection, not to justify fabrication.
- Hard news reports a developing event; soft news offers background, colour or human interest.
- Reporting basics: 5W1H; inverted pyramid; attribution ('said', not 'stated'); direct and indirect quotes; verification from at least two independent sources where possible.
- Objectivity means fair method-balance, attribution, no editorialising-not the absence of a viewpoint in every sentence.
Worked example
A minister visits a flood-hit block, announces Rs 5 crore relief and a compensation delay angers residents. Selection: prominence (minister), proximity (local readers), impact (relief), timeliness (today), conflict (protest). Lead: 'Relief materials reached ... on Sunday, but residents ...' Reasoning: the lead combines impact and conflict; the minister's announcement is attributed; the protest is verified by a resident and a panchayat member. The reporter does not write 'the minister callously ignored victims' because that is opinion.
Traps that cost marks
Do not invent quotes or composite characters. Do not bury the newest development under background. Do not confuse 'human interest' with sentimental exaggeration. Do not use a single anonymous source for a serious allegation.