There is a vacuum in key media legislation on the definitions of ‘news’ and ‘current affairs’. Industry codes of practice offer a range of definitions of news and current affairs, with the Commercial Television Industry’s Code of Practice definition of ‘current affairs’ being extremely broad.
The definitions of the terms ‘news’ and ‘current affairs’ are nebulous, with a variety of meanings emerging from regulations and industry experts. Despite their lack of clarity in defining news and current affairs, industry codes of practice make specific stipulations about programs containing news and/or current affairs.
Industry groups and expert interviewees variously distinguish current affairs from news in terms of: the length of the item, whether it interprets and comments upon the news, depth of coverage, and “that which is not news”.
The term ‘current affairs’ in television has become confused by evening commercial ‘tabloid’, lifestyle, consumer-oriented programs such as A Current Affair and Today Tonight, relaying mixed messages about the definition and credibility of the genre. Current affairs is generally regarded as a television broadcast phenomenon, while the print media use the terms ‘features’ and ‘analysis’ to describe a similar concept. Radio current affairs is strongly associated with talkback programs
William S. Maulsbyl defined news as
News is an accurate, unbiased account of the significant facts of a timely happening that is of interest to the readers of the newspaper that prints the account.
William G. Bleyer defines news as
News is anything timely that interests a number of people; and the best news is that which has the greatest interest for the greatest number.
Hence, we will define news as an accurate, unbiased account of a current, timely event, which is reported in the mass media and is significant to a large number of people in a locality. Furthermore, in contemporary thinking, today’s news is about real life, real people, real events, real places or real issues in a real world reported in real time using any available means of communication.
