What Is The Difference Between News And In-Depth Reporting?
Examples of news include but are certainly not limited to: quoted; quoted words; mentioned; seen; aired; aired on a news network; and written or published news. In a recent news segment on CNN, reporter Kat Carney was asked about the similarities between Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. She correctly stated; “You can’t say they’re alike because they’re both terrorist groups.” While this is technically true, the fact that Al Qaeda is an international terrorist organization and Hezbollah is primarily an Iranian group also needs to be pointed out.
It is important to remember that while journalists have the ability and sometimes the responsibility to say anything that they want, and can become quite controversial as a result, their goal is not to report any information that they personally find to be newsworthy. Examples of in-depth reporting that would fall into the category of news include; a health report about obesity, a story about a natural disaster that may have an impact on a city, and even details about the arrest of a criminal, or the latest political figure being charged with a crime. While these are examples of in-depth reporting, they also happen to be newsworthy to the reporter.
As you can see, there is a difference between in-depth reporting and news. A health report about obesity, for example, is newsworthy to the reporter, but not so much to the average person who cannot afford to pay the high costs of going to a doctor and having a procedure done. A city planning report about how to design a city block plan and why certain members of a city council don’t like the way it is designed would fall into the in-depth category of news. This in-depth reporting then is something that would fall under the category of news, rather than an in-depth story on a particular event. In the case of the two examples above, the in-depth reporting would include things like quotes from experts, pictures, and possibly videos, all of which provide valuable information to a wide variety of people.