DURATION: 3 hours
KEY TOPICS
- Identifying news and recognizing the story (the news development process)
- Discipline of verification as the essence of journalism
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After completing this unit, teachers will be able to:
- describe the process of how the news story is developed from story idea to data gathering to news writing
- understand the core principles of the discipline of verification, as distinguished from the journalism of assertion, and how they are applied to the news development process
- analyze how news reports can apply the techniques of verification to fulfil the journalistic standard of truthfulness and accuracy
- understand and describe the relationship among journalists, news sources, senior editors and media owners
PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES and ACTIVITIES
‘The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumour, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy.’
– Walter Lippmann, in News Reporting and Writing
STUDY VISIT TO A NEWS MEDIA ORGANIZATION
A field trip may be done to a media office to dialogue with the editor-in-chief or a senior editor and observe firsthand the news development process at the editorial office level. Participants will be asked to write a reflection paper on what they observed and learned during the visit.
PROCESS ENQUIRY (A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A NEWS REPORTER)
The trainee accompanies a news reporter while covering his or her beat and documents the following: (a) what elements of the news were identified and written about, compared to what happened in the field (or the process of sifting through the data gathered); and (b) how and why did the reporter tell the story (put meaning to the data) the way he or she did.