When the news is for sale, the public cannot view it as objective or independent and cannot trust what they hear or read in the news media. For family planning programs, the independence and credibility of the news media are vital assets in providing the public with the facts that they need to make informed choices. Checkbook journalism cheapens these assets. He wrote this sidebar for Population Reports while he was a participant in the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program for journalists in 1995. 5.3 Essentials of News Reporting by Jawadur Rahman Only recent and hitherto unknown events make news.
Immediacy is the most important element of news.
All other elements together will not make an event newsworthy if immediacy is lacking. It gives an objective and undistorted picture of what has happened. It does not reflect the personal bias of the reporter. It tries to answer as many questions as the reader may want answered. The conventional structure of news stories is called the inverted pyramid.