What is News?

870 Words2 Pages

Statement of the Problem
Television is a primary source of news for the majority of people (Miller & Kurplus, 2010). Thus, numerous lives are impacted by television news. It is the responsibility of news programs on television to inform the general public each day of stories considered important to bring to the public’s attention. Recently, it has been suggested that there has been an increase in the amount of news stories which may not be significant, included in the news (Boczkowski, 2009; McNamara, 2011). These particular news stories have previously been studied as they relate to different aspects of news program viewers’ (Baum, 2002; Prior, 2003; Uribe & Gunter, 2007; Merle & Craig, 2012; Nguyen, 2012). Still, news content has been studied in a small number of instances (Cleary & Adams-Bloom, 2009). Instead of analyzing the viewers’ relationship to the news stories, the current study will focus on the content of news stories and the relationship between the amount of time and the types of stories presented in the news will be examined. Through content analysis of morning news programs, this study will aim to provide information on the prevalence of fluff news stories.
Review of the Literature
News and entertainment may seem synonymous with one another, but many studies have examined the various aspects surrounding both of these topics. One aspect which is often studied is the competition between news programs. This has only recently increased because of the growth of the news found on the Internet (Meijer, 2007). The Internet may take people away from television news leaving less people for television news programs to compete for attention. Network news programs are now competing not only with numerous amounts of channels but...

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