WEEK 9 - "News Values"

WOW, it was a jam-packed lecture this week full of lots of interesting information. At first, I thought news values referred to moral or social values that journalists abide to when composing stories. It was interesting to find out that in fact news values can be defined as “the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience.” In abiding by these values, journalists tend to rely on instinct rather than logic when it comes to defining a sense of news values. Additionally, these vary according to the platforms, channels, services and cultures within which the news is being told.

But as Dr BR pointed out, the golden rule of news values is the saying “if it BLEEDS it LEADS!” and “if it’s LOCAL it LEADS!” Could this be because we are just a bunch of blood-thirsty, self-concerned citizens? It sure points this way...  We were also re-introduced to the infamous inverted pyramid as an example of news values in their purest form.

So, there are four news values:

1. Impact! ‘News is anything that makes a reader say, “Gee Whiz!”’ - Arthur MacEwen, US Editor
2. Audience identification: ‘news is anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience.’ Kurt Loder, US Journalist
3. Pragmatics: ethics, practice/practical, current affairs, 24/7 news cycle
4. Source influence: ‘Journalism loves to hate PR … whether for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet journalism has never needed public relations more, and PR has never done a better job for the media.’ Julia Hobsbawm, UK PR executive

When considering news values, it’s also important to consider ‘newsworthiness’. In 1965 Galtung & Ruge analysed international news to discover common factors and news agendas.  I have cited an article based on their work at the bottom for any curious cats out there.

There are 12+ factors that they identified that decide what can be considered newsworthy. Further research has been conducted since there study and although there have been several permutations of their work, I think theirs is quite a nice (and relevant) summary.

• Negativity
• Proximity
• Recency
• Currency
• Continuity
• Uniqueness
• Simplicity
• Personality
• Expectedness
• Elite Nations or People (I found this one particularly interesting)
• Exclusivity
• Size

The most drastic change to Galtung & Ruge’s work is that carried out by Judy McGregor (2002). She reduced the original 12 values down to just four: visualness; conflict; emotion; celebrification of the journalist.

Galtung & Ruge also identified three hypotheses they believed contributed to something being considered newsworthy:

1. The additivity hypothesis that the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news.
2. The complementarity hypothesis that the factors will tend to exclude each other.
3. The exclusion hypothesis that events that satisfy none or very few factors will usually not become news.

There are always threats to be considered, so here are some in relation to newsworthiness...

• Journalism / Commercialization of media and social life
• Journalism / Public Relations 
• Journalism’s ideals / Journalism’s reality

Herein lies the big question: “Has the audience moved on?” I am thinking about exploring this topic further for my annotated bibliography assessment due in a couple of weeks. With the increase in citizen journalists and the ability to create content on innumerable social platforms, are viewers still interested in what is traditionally know as ‘the news’?

Jay Rosen (2005) put it this way – “You don’t own the eyeballs. You don’t own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don’t control production on the new platform, which isn’t one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us. The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable. You should welcome that, media people. But whether you do or not we want you to know we’re here.”

Some further readings that I found helpful for understanding all of this stuff:

Brighton, P., & Foy, D. (2007). News values. London, Sage Publications.

Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2010). What is news? Galtung and Ruge revisited. Journalism Studies, 2(2),                261-280.