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Article: What Is This Thing Called `News'?
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- March 12, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Journalists have trouble defining the commodity we call "news."
Sometimes we'll say, "It's what we {editors} say it is." Others are
prone to quote former Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart's
definition of pornography: "I can't define it, but I know it when I
see it." The sociologist Herbert Gans, a wise student of the news
business, has written that many confused journalists say "they could
not make sense out of the enterprise in which they are engaged and
wished I would do it for them."
There is confusion as well over the elementary question of who
is or isn't a "journalist." Are Barbara Walters, Geraldo and Bob
Woodward in the same line of work? Is Diane Sawyer, a former Miss ...