Public Opinion — Chapter XXIII The Nature of News

1. 1. Newspapers cannot cover all events; they rely on watchers stationed at key public places like police headquarters and city hall.
2. 2. News emerges only when an event takes a definite, overt shape, such as a bankruptcy filing or a fire.
3. 3. The news is not a mirror of social conditions but a report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.
4. 4. The certainty of news is directly related to the existence of a good system of record, like on stock exchanges or for election returns.
5. 5. Press agents have become essential because facts of modern life do not spontaneously take a shape that can be known; they must be formulated by interested parties.
6. 6. In labor disputes, the underlying causes are rarely news; instead, the overt act of a strike or disorder becomes the focus, often framed around the reader's inconvenience.
7. 7. The press's tendency to focus on sensational overt acts rather than underlying issues stems from practical difficulties in uncovering news and making distant facts interesting.
8. 8. Newspapers influence each other deeply; during World War I, the English press set the model for American war reporting due to easier access to English correspondence.
9. 9. The Russian Revolution was poorly reported because chaos is hardest to report, and censors and propagandists in Helsingfors, Stockholm, and elsewhere created stereotypes that crushed journalistic instinct.
10. 10. Every newspaper is the result of selections based on conventions, not objective standards; headlines reflect judgments about what will absorb readers' attention.
11. 11. Readers need stereotypes to engage with news; these cues tell them how to feel, such as hostility toward a 'combine' or approval of 'leading business men.'
12. 12. Once a newspaper has evoked partisanship in readers, it cannot easily change position; it often lets controversial news taper off rather than risk losing readers.