I do agree a news conference is not "breaking." Maybe "new developments" is more accurate, but will that get viewer's attention? Or are they so conditioned that "breaking" is just white noise to them anyway?
Are people in newsroom just fooling themselves? Or is it a sign of being out of touch with the audience?
How “Breaking News” Broke the News
Breaking news used to be “news of transcendent importance.” Now it’s a joke.
TMZ got the news up first, 3:30 p.m. ET. Dick Clark was dead at 82, felled by a “massive heart attack.” Because I follow TMZ on Twitter, I got the newsbreak at 3:31. Because a lot of the people I follow also follow TMZ, Clark’s death was announced, analyzed, and (sorry, this is Twitter) joked about for 20 minutes. At 3:52 pm, the CNN app on my iPhone blurped and announced a message:
Television personality Dick Clark, the longtime host of “American Bandstand,” has died, a publicist says.
Two minutes later my phone shook again, startled by an alert from USA Today.
BREAKING NEWS: Dick Clark legendary TV entertainer, dies at 82.
Twenty-four minutes after the TMZ scoop, and this was breaking? How’s that supposed to work? Does “breaking news” have any meaning anymore?
I think the term "breaking" is over-used. With online and social media and smartphones, everything seems to be 'breaking.' I know on my phone I get multiple breaking news alerts a day, to the point I don't find them urgent to read. I think the problem is defining what is a breaking news story. In the case of Dick Clark, the news of his death was still breaking when the alert was sent within a half hour of TMZ breaking the news. But two hours later, news organizations shouldn't send it out as a breaking alert unless there are updates to the story. With so much competition to be the first to report a story, news organizations need to realize when they have been beat and use the word breaking sparingly so it can maintain its urgency.
ReplyDeleteThere's undoubtedly been a shift in the amount of time a piece of news can remain breaking. When daily print newspapers were the sole informer for the public, news could be considered breaking the next day. The question is, when news can travel from the fingers of a smartphone-equipped journalist to the public in seconds, where is the line redrawn?
ReplyDeleteIn this case, it is absurd to consider the news of someone's death "so twenty four minutes ago."
It is sad to realize that some readers equate the Internet's speed of delivery with triviality. News shouldn't be cheapened just because your phone has been updated with twenty new stories.
More importantly, the author is severely mistaken in his apparent assumption that everyone who uses the USA Today app must have already seen TMZ's tweet. "Breaking" is more than appropriate given the high number of people seeing the news for the first time. I mean, some people take longer than 24 minutes to get dressed. As much as I'm obsessed with my phone, if we begin to consider things less than half an hour old as no longer current - and that's really what breaking indicates - then I'm worried.
The definition of breaking news according to wikipedia "is a current event that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming in order to report its details." It the age of new media, it's hard to say that breaking news follows this definition. It's even difficult to say that breaking news is new information presented to the public, because "new news" is considered "old news" in 20 minutes. With the death of Dick Clark, I agree with Greg that it's absurd to think "20 minutes ago" means old news. I also see it the same way if a tsunami was to hit a country. I still believe even in the new age, that news becomes old 24 hours later. Not many people are vigorously checking their smartphone for updates.
ReplyDeleteWith the development of new technology (i.e. social media), "breaking news" now depends on the minute, or even second. Twitter, for example, is a way for news organizations to alert followers of "breaking news" events. Using the Dick Clark example, it is very easy for an organization like TMZ to tweet such information, but then provide a story later. The main goal of any news company is to get the main information out first. I know from experience that I usually learn about major breaking news stories via Twitter, but I will not get a CNN update on my phone for at least 20-30 minutes after the news was reported on Twitter. This, in turn, makes CNN look "slow" so to speak because, as I said above, breaking news now depends on the minute. It is difficult to determine what is "breaking" anymore. But it is up to every major news organization to ensure that they get "breaking" information out as quickly as possible, which is usually now used via social media.
ReplyDeleteBreaking news is definitely a tricky term these days. As Ashley noted above, it does depend on the minute or second, but I think with the advent of social networking it's become more generalized. In the past, breaking news referred to something brand-new, but now it can be in reference to something my phone picked up an hour ago. For me, something is "breaking" if it occurred within the last hour, even if other news outlets picked it up first. It is becoming overused, but I don't really mind--I've just started to anticipate that anything recent might fall under this category to attract viewers' or users' attention.
ReplyDeleteThe issue I have with this digitized world and its impact on the term is what is considered "breaking". My CNN Android app considered Beyonce's pregnancy breaking news, and yet when Moammar Gaddafi's death occurred my phone didn't even buzz (and I found out hours later via Facebook). In the effort to push news out there as fast as possible, I think meaning and relevance often falls by the wayside, and that is where the flaw in the term lies.