Lecture 9 - News Values

      Hello hello all, and welcome to the world of news values as I discuss what was talked about in lecture 9. Before we begin, the question must be asked: what are news values? This was the question I was musing over before the lecture began and soon I started to understand that there is SO much involved when understanding what makes a good story. News values can be defined as the degree of prominence of media outlet gives to a story and the attention that is paid by an audience. We learnt that there are four main elements to news values and these are impact, audience identification, pragmatics and source influence. Basically, impact is news that makes a reader say “Gee Whiz!” Audience identification is news 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 of your audience. Pragmatics are the ethics, facticity, practice/practical, current affairs and everyday news. Finally, source influence can be explained through how 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.

·         News worthiness was then discussed and it has a broadly agreed set of values. These particular news values vary across different news services and different countries/cultures. The inverted pyramid was briefly reviewed and how the most newsworthiness information is at the top, then details progress later. Two main sayings were then learnt that "if it bleeds it leads!" which basically means that the more violence and drama a story has, the more newsworthy it will be. The second saying "if it's local it leads" also helps with promoting news stories especially in terms of TV news. A number of quotes by journalists were then looked at. Harold Evans, the editor of the Sunday Times commented on newsworthiness by saying: “A sense of news values is the first quality of editors – they are the human sieves of the torrent of news” Then, John Sergeant, a veteran TV reporter commented that: “Journalists rely on instinct rather than logic” – especially when it comes to defining a sense of news values. Finally, Judy McGregor stated that “Journalists do not adhere to formal codes of newsworthiness that can be identified or promulgated… instead, the informal code of what constitutes a good story is part of newsroom initiation and socialisation"

      The tensions of newsworthiness were then reviewed, particularly paying attention to Johan Galtung and Ruge who analysed international news to discover common factors and news agendas. Their twelve news values included: negativity, closeness, recency, currency, continuity, uniqueness, simplicity, personality, expectedness, elite nations or people, exclusivity and size. Three hypotheses were also established: The additivity hypothesis (the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news), the complementarity hypothesis (the factors will tend to exclude each other), the exclusion hypothesis (events that satisfy none or very few factors will usually not become news). Golding and Elliott were then looked at and their particular views on what the news values should be. Their ten news values included: drama, visual attractiveness, entertainment importance, size, proximity, negativity, brevity, recency, elites and personalities. Finally, three main tensions of newsworthiness were analysed, these consist of Journalism/Commercialization of media and social life, Journalism / Public Relations and Journalism’s ideals / Journalism’s reality.

A summary of different types of stories were discussed in the lecture. There are ten main type of stories and below is a list of them:

1. The power elite – stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions

2. Celebrity – stories concerning people who are famous

3. Entertainment – stories concerning sex, show business, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or headlines     

4. Surprise – stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast

5. Bad news – stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy

6. Good news - Stories with particularly positive overtones such as rescues and cures

7. Magnitude - Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact

8. Relevance - Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience

9. Follow-up - Stories about subjects already in the news

10. Newspaper agenda - Stories that set or represent the news organisation’s own agenda

      As mentioned previously, there were originally twelve news values established, which were then condensed to ten, and now Murray Masterson further condensed this to the big six news values. These consisted of significance (impact), proximity (location plus emotional, historical, cultural  & social significance), conflict (war, government, celebs, sport, neighbours), human interest, novelty (the unusual) and finally prominence (high profile, famous for being famous). There was then a final shortening of these values once again by Judy Mcgregor who condensed these values to four major categories: Visualness (appeal to TV/Online audience), conflict (a tried and true news value), emotion (tied up with human interest) and celebrification of the journalist. 

     The next particular section of the lecture was extremely interesting as it was explained that there are also negative elements involved with news stories and values. Firstly, the fact that journalism can be lazy and incompetent in what it has to offer and that it can be untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or incomplete. Secondly, the concept of tabloidisation, which is media falsehood, distortion of facts, tactics and propaganda and use of illegal news-gathering techniques. Finally, hyper-commercialisation was examined and how media mergers are rapidly creating one huge news cartel, controlling most of what you see, hear and read. On the other hand, there are also idealised notions of journalism that should be followed in order to avoid such negative results. These include: A first obligation to truth, a first loyalty to citizens, an essential discipline of verification, independence from faction, monitoring power and giving voice to the voiceless, provision of a forum for public criticism and compromise, striving to make the significant news interesting and relevant, keeping the news comprehensive and proportional and finally, freedom to exercise personal conscience.

   

      Towards the end of the lecture, the audience was focused on and Jay Rosen provided a very concise definition of audiences, that "they are simply the public, made realer, less fictional, more able, and less predictable." These days, there is a new balance of power between the journalists and audience. So questions must be asked about the future of news values. What are tomorrow’s news values? What drives the decisions made in media organisations about what is newsworthy? What do YOU think is newsworthy? These questions will be pondered on throughout this week and decisions made as to what makes a story truly newsworthy and worth reading!