Obama mania and the lost fourth estate; A transcript on upturned news values

German Physicist and genius Albert Einstein once said "Education is what remains after one has forgotten what they learned in school". Some online quack made an attempt at explaining what the 19th century scholar meant.

He says;

After (or if) you forget what you have learned from your education or indoctrination into a specific or dogmatic way of thinking your mind is open to learn. Therefore what is left is an education from curiosity, reason and experimentation resulting in experience.

One lecture that I have failed to forget was in my junior year about news values, or rather what makes an occurrence newsworthy. Of course it did start with defining 'news', which we would agree to disagree on the intrinsic element of "newness". A more decisive definition of news would be 'newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events'.

A plain non-issue given prominence at an attempt to achieve the "shock value". the classical "Dog bites man" story

Now, with a zillion events occurring every other second in every other part of the world, and a dynamic audience with equally diverse interests, news publishers are faced with the mammoth problem of deciding what to allow through and what to trash/ignore. That's where the newsworthiness metrics were born.

My educators gave me a list of metrics; timeliness, prominence, relevance, conflict, exceptional quality, impact, shock value, proximity, human interest, it goes on and on. These and host of others factors including prejudice and the ever-fallible judgment of journalists, decide not only the content of the next morning newspaper or TV bulletin but also the headline and placement of the news item in the bulletin or pagination (newspaper) . What will be labeled BREAKING or warranting live coverage is highly judged on these metrics.

Take timeliness for instance, which takes the obvious definition of the 'new'. News is that which is new, as such an event can only be reported as recently as possible or otherwise no one will pay attention. An afternoon heist at a city bank would warrant a live NTV coverage and probably make first news item in the 7:00 o'clock bulletin. However tomorrow, unless there is a major development, the same story would not be mentioned unless it’s one of those 'dry' days. It's the most basic news value which mainstream media happen to have just been robbed control over by citizen journalists on twitter.

PHOTO:theobamadiary.com

Prominence on the other hand is the media's way of telling you, that you don't matter. If a 12-year-old is bitten by a mad dog in a rural village somewhere or a teacher dies somewhere in Budalangi, the closest it can come to newsprint is in the obituaries section (paid). But if the first lady while at a charity event in the same village is bitten by that dog, journalists are sure to get interested. In fact, after that, a story on how rabies has been rampant in the area might follow.

Impact, as my then educators accented, should be the most sought after news value. It is that which goes beyond mere reportage to explaining the associated effects of the event to the audience who are the sole customers of the news business. It relates more to what is in the public interest than what interests the public. By pursuing the impact side of the story a reporter is halfway in fulfilling the media’s role of being the fourth arm that ideally tells what government doesn’t or cares not to.

The delivery of impact is in two-fold. One, is that occurrences of higher magnitude are most likely to be reported than those of a lesser degree, in terms of fatalities, geographical coverage, time etc. The second as alluded earlier, borders the precincts of news analysis.

Closely related to impact is relevance, or the ‘so what?’ of a story. News is tailored for a specific audience and as such their interests must be reflected. Tragedy is when a publisher fails to recognize the needs of its audience and goes ahead to package content for imaginary recipients. This is what is ailing Kenyan media as editors are still churning information for a media-illiterate audience that died a decade ago, seemingly oblivious of a savvy, skeptic majority.

The hashtag #KenyaMediaFailure really exhausted all the illustrations on how failed audience research can make a broadcaster bombard viewers’ with irrelevant newscasts of redundant misinformation. I really pitied some young smartly dressed journalist trying to squeeze information at the August 7th Memorial park when Obama made a stop, mostly going back and forth around three issues for a whole 10 minutes! I wonder how much an advertiser could have paid for a feature that long.

For a moment I was like, am struggling this hard to replace this guy? I mean is the media also supposed to drown in the frenzy? Of course I won’t mention the ridiculous Fashion show or Kirigo Ng'arwa’s classical creative arrogance rejoinder.

If the guys behind the scenes (editors) would have taken a peek at my news values transcript on Friday morning when they were deciding this weekend’s docket and just chose impact over prominence, am sure #SomeoneTellCNN would never have been followed by the excruciating whipping Kenyans on twitter inflicted.

It is one thing to choose what interests the public over public interest and another to fail to interest them anyway or as in this case turn the interest into apathy. Worse even is making ridiculous factual errors like that fact box on the Daily Nation that says the Obamas' met in 1989 and married in 1982!

I must ask, where is the education?

See, my online quack suggests that education begins only when you can go beyond what is taught and venture into the thrill of discovery. ‘Fresh blood’ is hired into media houses and taught how news is told, the result? Like a bimbo some replicate the same failed methods than have the decency of taking initiative and taking the unbeaten path.  And in the same breath, feign ‘experience’.