News

The way we get our news has changed dramatically because of the internet. While TV is still the most popular news source for Canadians overall, younger Canadians rely mostly on social media. This shift means people depend less on news outlets to choose what to cover and more on what their friends share or what social media algorithms recommend. As a result, there’s a growing concern that the news people receive hasn't been fact-checked or isn’t objective.

While young people use and engage with news differently from older generations, they continue to value concepts such as trustworthiness and fairness.

At its core, news is defined by what’s considered newsworthy, a criterion that has evolved over time. Traditionally, a story is deemed newsworthy if it’s unusual, as encapsulated by Jesse Lynch Williams’ adage "a dog bites a man, that's a story; a man bites a dog, that's a good story.”

Tropes in news function as shorthand for audiences, allowing for more efficient narrative construction and reducing cognitive load, often at the cost of flattening complex realities.

Journalism is guided by a set of norms that reflect its aspirational role in society, though these norms are constantly debated and challenged. There are standard practices that guide how the industry works.

With news, more than perhaps any other kind of source, it’s important follow both steps in the information sorting process: companion reading first, to find out if a source is worth paying attention to, then close reading to make sure you’re getting the whole story.

Crime news is a highly developed sub-genre that reflects organizational priorities, audience preferences and systemic biases. This is because “the news media does not cover systematically all forms and expressions of crime and victimizations. It emphasizes some crimes and ignores other crimes. It sympathizes with some victims while blaming other victims.”

Crime news employs specific narrative frameworks to simplify complex issues, often resulting in biased and stigmatizing portrayals.

The creation of ‘crime news’ is “invariably the result of a long process of selection where the raw material is sifted, shaped, edited and recreated.” The choices made during this process often prioritize ease of production, drama and law enforcement narratives.

Les figures narratives et les pratiques de l’industrie de l’actualité criminelle ont des répercussions profondes sur la société, allant de la distorsion de l’opinion publique à l’influence sur les politiques, en passant par des préjudices bien réels pour les individus et les communautés.

To counteract the structural biases and sensationalist tropes that currently dominate crime coverage, newsrooms must deliberately shift their practices toward accountability, context and the humanization of those affected. Improving crime reporting requires journalists to articulate a new journalistic purpose and prioritize structural analysis over episodic details.

As with other kinds of news, newsworthiness is the essential element of health and science coverage. Along with the factors that generally influence newsworthiness, Boyce Rensberger, in A Field Guide for Science Writers, identifies four factors specific to science stories:

Like other genres and sub-genres, health and science news has standard tropes that are used by journalists and expected by audiences. These can have an impact on the accuracy and reliability of coverage.

Health and science reporting is influenced both by economic norms (the conditions and constraints in which journalists do their jobs) and journalistic norms, such as objectivity and balance.[1] Both of these have an impact on how reporting on these topics is done.

The following best practices guide journalists in navigating the pitfalls of exaggeration, inadequate vetting and biased framing inherent in modern news production.