Lorraine Adams, Washington Post reporter, provides an interesting assessment on news reporting in the blog, The Browser. News is related to a reporter's sifting of facts. Facts that can be placed into neat stories. Facts that are easy to explain with the other goings on in the market.
There is little analysis because that is what portfolio managers do. Managers try and understand the facts reported and find those new facts that do not make sense or were not reported at all.
There is little analysis because that is what portfolio managers do. Managers try and understand the facts reported and find those new facts that do not make sense or were not reported at all.
I think news organisations are part of a difficult to grasp paradox: They rarely know how to deal with anything completely new. They’re best equipped to promulgate conventional wisdom.
Her assessment of Walter Lippman's Public Opinion is good food for thought.
It was written in 1922 and is an insider’s view of how news is made. That is, news is a made thing. News is not facts. News is what is easiest for a reporter to recognise, not necessarily most important for the public to know – a kidnapping, a bombing, a court filing, anything that pokes up from the irregular and massive tissue of reality and events.
That famous line – ‘Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible’ – is an overstatement. Yet it stands for a deeper problem.
The news reported is not the truth but just a view and a opinion. The internet has shown that the editing of the news, determining what stories to print or not makes all the difference in the world.
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