Meanings
- uncountablebroadcastingFactual reportage of events which are socially or politically significant and of a serious nature, as opposed to the reporting of entertaining, humorous, or gossipy accounts of relatively inconsequential events.
Under Editor Murray J. Gart, 56, former chief of the Time-Life News Service, the Star stressed hard news and straightforward reporting over fancy writing and instant analysis.
1981 August 3, Janice Castro, David S. Jackson, “Press: Washington Loses a Newspaper”, in Time, archived from the original on 16 Nov 20104 more examples
Even in the late 70's […] women's news was regarded as, by definition, soft news. Today, issues like sexual harassment and the difficulties of single parents are understood to be, in every sense, hard news.
1993 October 24, “News About The Magazine”, in New York Times, retrieved 06 Dec 2010Ed Bradley, who died yesterday of leukemia at age 65, […] covered hard news and soft features with equal commitment, grace and skill, and many of his stories and interviews were impossible to forget.
2006 November 10, David Bianculli, “Ed Earned his ‘60 mins.’ of TV Fame”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 06 Dec 2010Because homepages reflect the values of institutions, and Facebook and Twitter reflect the interest of individual readers. These digital grazers have shown again and again that they aren't interested in hard news, but rather entertainment, self-help, awe, and outrage dressed up news.
2014 May 15, Derek Thompson, “What the Death of Homepages Means for the Future of News”, in The AtlanticFor many young people, clicking on to Instagram to get the latest news is now as second nature as picking up a daily newspaper once was to generations before. For a site that has traditionally been a platform for sharing lifestyle content rather than hard news, this is a shift in millennials and Gen Z, at a time when news updates seem more important than ever.
2020 July 27, Katie Bishop, “Why are millennials and Gen Z turning to Instagram as a news source?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Synonyms & antonyms
Cite this entry
hard news. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hard%20news
“hard news.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hard%20news. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hard news,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hard%20news.
Source: hard news on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.