News is not always the most attractive topic for public speakers and leaders. News is generally considered boring and useless by many. News may be exciting for some. According to Oxford Dictionary, news is “a report of recent events, which usually refers to recent happenings rather than long-ago past”. A television or a radio programme often consisting of purely reports about recent events without any comment on what is happening in the world around us. A purely visual presentation of this news, as in a news programme or in a newspaper.
News has become news. Everything interesting in the world becomes news in the eyes of many. This has become a generalisation that I do not dispute, but in this particular instance I would like to challenge the generalisation. For me the definition of news has changed over time, I would say that objectivity has become the dominant feature of the modern definition. News is good news about current events that are relevant to the people who are reporting them and that are being reported by the media.
News can be of various types. It can be about the human activity that is taking place in the world or about anything that is going on in the world and then some. In the broadest sense of the word news means the reporting of human activity. In this broad sense it includes sports events, political events, international news, local news, and more.
Now in objectivity I am not claiming to be an unbiased reporter. My point is simply that news reporters have a clearly identifiable bias which they make use of to manipulate the reader into believing what they are reporting. For instance a news story about floods in a region could be totally different from a story about the same region about a drought. When objectivity is considered all this is very clear. For instance, if you were told a story about the flooding in your region and you knew nothing about that flooding except for what was in the news you would be inclined to believe that the news report was entirely true even though it was only partially true.
News is therefore not just the latest events that are taking place in any particular place but also the ones that are taking place around the world at any given time. News therefore covers political, environmental, economic and social aspects of current events. News therefore covers everything from world politics and world events to local events, celebrities, religion, ethnic groups, animals, and more. In short every aspect that human activity can involve is covered by news.
Thus we can see that the definition of news is completely dependent on human observation and media bias. Human observation is influenced by local events that impact a community and the local economy. Media bias is dependent on any significant amount of media coverage that could sway public opinion. In short we can say that news is made up of many different elements and each of them being affected by individual viewers and observers as well as media bias.