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Lesson - 3 : P20423
Sources of News
The sources of news are both wide and deep. Where and how are news items collected is the content of this lesson.
There are only three central units in this lesson dealing with fields, sources and agencies concerned with the news.
On identifying a news item, a reporter has to search for answers to a variety of questions like what, why, when, where, who and how. Each reporter is allotted a beat for gathering news. In Tamil such beats are called sethikalangal. It is difficult to predict the appearance of news. Usually, reporters are given specific assignments such as accompanying a VIP or observing announced activities.
Sources of news can be listed as offices of top Government officials for Government news, political party offices, meetings and conferences for political news and police stations, hospitals, jails and courts of law for crime news. Local body offices, transport stations, public meetings and places of civil supplies will provide social news. Courts may give striking news. Markets, share market centres, centres of sale of household articles and exhibitions yield commercial news. Radio and TV may provide news specially collected by their correspondents. A series of events occurring every day will be sources of news.
News agencies are mainly meant for news-gathering and disseminating to their paid subscribers. They distribute news to several newspapers at the same time. PTI, UNI, Hindustan Samachar and Samachar Bharathi are important Indian news agencies - Roiter, Associated press and Tass are notable foreign news agencies. Teleprinters, Telex, Satellites are used for quicker disseminations. Some newspapers have their own agencies as in the case of ENS to provide news for the members of the Express group.முன்