Man bites dog (journalism)
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The phrase Man bites dog describes a phenomenon in journalism in which an unusual, infrequent event is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence (such as Dog bites man). The news media generally consider an event more newsworthy if there is something unusual about it; a commonplace event is unlikely to be taken as newsworthy. The result is that rare events often appear in headlines while common events rarely do, making the rare events seem more common than they are.
The pattern is also described in the proverbs You never read about a plane that did not crash and You don't hear about the laws that a politician did not break.
The phrase was coined by Alfred Harmsworth, a British newspaper magnate, but is also attributed to New York Sun editor John B. Bogart (1848–1921): "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."[1][2] The quote is also attributed to Charles Anderson Dana (1819–1897).[3]
[edit] True-life examples
The Santa Cruz Sentinel ran a story titled "Man bites dog" about a San Francisco man who bit his own dog.[4]
Reuters ran a story about a man biting a dog in December 2007, and the AP ran a story about a woman biting a dog in April 2008 and a boy biting a dog in July 2008.
The Geelong Advertiser ran a story in November 2009 titled "Clifton Springs man bites dog to save his best Buddy" about a man who bit another dog to save his own from an attack.[1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition, ed. Justin Kaplan (Boston, London, and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1992), p. 554.
- ^ Frank Luther Mott (1941) American Journalism. A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940
- ^ Recollections of the Civil War By Charles Anderson Dana, Charles E. Rankin pp. xvi, xix
- ^ "State Briefs" column of the Sunday, November 5, 2000 edition, page B-16
