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What deserves news coverage, and what doesn't? The National in Conversation

The National in Conversation: 5 things we learned about the changing nature of news

It may feel like some issues or events are in the news every other day, while others barely make headlines, and CBC senior correspondent Susan Ormiston says she'd like more questions asked about what makes the news agenda.

"The limitations are budget, security, interest — those are the main ones," Ormiston said of why CBC may choose not to dispatch a reporter to the frontlines of a civil war, hence limiting the coverage.

Ormiston was speaking as part of The National in Conversation: The Changing Nature of News panel discussion held Friday night in Charlottetown.

"But I think the main thing is, I really need to hear from you about what you want to know," she said. "So yes, Syria is a big story now, but that was 2011, and we didn't cover it much between 2011 and 2014 all the time this war was getting horribly terrible and complex."

She said that lack of coverage points to a need to know more about what coverage the audience would like.

"We do need to listen more carefully to what people want to hear," she said. "It's not just about what we think you need to know about news, it's what are you interested in that we can help you sort out that we can try to translate in this complex world."

"I'm very much for hearing from people about whether they want us to be in Yemen or whether they want us to be in Summerside," she added.