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BTN: What makes news?

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Journalist sits in newsroom
BTN: What makes news?

SUBJECTS:  English, Media Literacy

YEARS:  5–6


What makes an event a news story?

Find out about the well-established 'news formula' and how it helps determine what stories become news and what ones don't.


Things to think about

  1. 1.What are the main stories in the established, mainstream news media (TV, radio, online and print newspapers) today? For instance, what are the top three headline stories? Why do you think they were chosen as the top stories?
  2. 2.Why is the audience so important in deciding what makes big news? What three things go into the news formula? Why are what seem to be important world stories sometimes left out of the news?
  3. 3.You are a journalist. Answer the last question of the program. 'Which news item would you choose to broadcast: the bombing in Iraq or the Justin Bieber ticket fiasco?' Apply the news formula and then justify your answer in an email to your news editor.
  4. 4.Access two different conventional news broadcasts on the same day (eg, the ABC evening news and a commercial station's evening news). Were the top three stories the same? Using the news formula, analyse which decisions the news editor may have made in deciding what made the big news for their station. Does what's hot on social media differ from the established news formula model?



Date of broadcast: 9 Aug 2011


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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