单项选择题

Prominently displayed on the front page of the New York Times is the company motto: "All the News That’s Fit to Print." No form of mass media can carry every newsworthy event; all are constrained by costs and availability of space and time. For instance, the average daily newspaper fills approximately 62 percent of its space with advertising, leaving a mere 38 percent for news accounts, along with human interest stories, and pure entertainment features.
Contrary to the mirror-to-society myth, news is not simply out there; it must be picked from a multitude of happenings, What then is news Perhaps the best explanation is that "news is what reporters, editors, and producers decide is news."
Although the basis of news judgment often seems vague and unarticulated, Doris Graber has identified five criteria most often used in selecting stories.
* To qualify as news the story must have a high impact on the audience, that is, the events covered must be relevant to people’s lives. Events in the Middle East, for example, are news when they have a measurable effect on American hostages there or on the supply of oil at home.
* Larry Speakes, who served as deputy press secretary to former President Ronald Reagan, once noted that no one pays attention when one hundred members of Congress come out of a White House meeting and say that the president’s program is great. "But if one says it stinks, that’s news."
* Familiarity is also an element of newsworthiness. Approximately 85 percent of the domestic news stories covered by television and news magazines involve well-known people-mostly those holding official positions. Unknown people are most newsworthy as victims of crime or natural disasters.
* Local events are more newsworthy than those far away. In a nation linked by instant communications, however, close to home may also include such familiar locations as Washington, D. C. , and Wall Street.
* Stories must be timely and novel to capture the attention of the media. As a former editor of the old New York Sun put it, "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."
Reporters rely almost exclusively on interviewing and only occasionally on the reading of documents. The dependence on the interview results partly from the need to personalize the news—especially in television journalism, with its demand for visuals. The fact that most reporters find document analysis dull and boring also increases their dependence on interviews. Whatever the cause, the result is a bias in favor of those willing and able to talk. These criteria have little to do with the intrinsic importance of news stories and stress mainly ways of keeping me audience interested. Because media outlets make their profit from the advertising, they must keep their ratings or circulations high. This concern for audience appeal has an impact on the way politics is conducted in the United States.
In general, news media are ______.