JOUR1111 Lecture 9 Reflection - News Values

In week 9’s lecture we looked at ‘News Values’, which can be explained as the degree of importance a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience.

Or, as it is explained in my favorite definition that came up in the lecture:

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”

Arthur Evelyn Waugh (English Author)

 I found this definition to be the truest for me, personally I don’t care what new haircut Justin Beiber got. When something strikes me with interest in the news, it’s generally something big. It could be something that has happened at war in Afghanistan or something that’s happened in parliament that will change the way Australia goes about an issue. Most likely though, it is probably going to have something to do with a criminal case, and that’s simply because that is what interests me.

So what are the News Values? 

Impact

•    Something that evokes a reaction or emotion from the reader.

 Audience Identification

• Anything relatable to what is happening in the world, and in areas of culture that would be interesting to your audience.

Pragmatic 

•   ethics 
• facticity 
•  practice/practical current affairs
• every day (24-7 news) 

 Source Influence

•    Sources influence how, when, where a journalist can get a story.
  •     PR controls and protects their clients at the expense of the truth but it’s a necessary part of journalism 

  What I found particularly interesting in this part of the lecture was when we started to talk about whether News Values are the same for everyone, everywhere, or if they differ. Which they do. It all depends on different news services, cultures and their audiences.

For example the Election is a huge deal in America right now, something that the country wants to stay informed about because it has a lot to do with them and their future. It is something covered all across the USA on all different platforms of media, whether it is TV, newspaper, radio or magazines. In Australia, there has been some coverage, on the most important parts of the Election, but nothing more. This is because we are different. We have different cultures and values and as a country care about different things. We are more concerned for our parliament than their presidential elections because it affects us more.  

Next we discussed News Values at work and newsworthiness.

Aside from the above diagram there are two other views of newsworthiness. “If it bleeds, it leads” with the idea of horror and death stories making great news stories. And, with the hyperlocalisation of news and World Wide Web 3.0, this changes to “It it’s local, I leads”, concerning local stories with nice, happy endings. The issue with this however is the non-transferable news due to differing geographic locations and demographics. 

In 1965, Gultung and Ruge found 12 common factors that could be used to define newsworthiness:

• Negativity – bad news e.g. deaths)
• Closeness to home - people relating better to stories that affect them in some way
• Recency – breaking news
• Currency – news deemed valuable and is popular in the news
• Continuity – events with a continued impact on society
• Uniqueness – something new/unheard of
• Simplicity – stories that are easy to explain and understand
• Personality – stories regarding people of interest
• Expectedness – The archetypal news story (opposite to uniqueness)
• Elite nations of people – stories about nations and powerful organisations
• Exclusivity – Getting the exclusive, being the first one to ‘find’ the story
• Size – the more people it will impact, the more newsworthy it is considered

Gultung and Ruge also came up with 3 hypotheses to newsworthiness:

• Additivity hypothesis – the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news
• Complementarity hypothesis - factors will tend to exclude each other
•  Exclusion hypothesis - events that satisfy none or very few factors will usually not become news

In 1979 Golding and Elliot came up with their list of News Values:

• Drama 
• Visual attractiveness 
• Entertainment 
• Importance 
• Size 
• Proximity 
• Negativity 
• Brevity 
• Recency(exclusives, scoops) 
• Elites 
• Personalities

And in 2001, Hurcup and O’neil reviewed Gultung and Ruge’s work, concluding on the following 10 principles of newsworthiness:

• The power of the elite
• Celebrity
• Entertainment
• Surprise
• Bad news
• Good news
• Magnitude
• Relevance
• Follow up
• Newspaper agenda

What’s the point of all these different ideas and principles concerning newsworthiness? Different people come from different backgroaunds and cultures therefore having different opinions on what it really consider news. Despite all this though, and despite who says it, the terminology etc. in essence, newsworthiness principles have remained the same. 

From there exists 3 Tensions of Newsworthiness that threatens newsworthiness:

• Journalism vs. Commercialization of media – ethical wall between the commercial and social functions of commercial media. 
•  Journalism vs. Public relations – journalism needing PR in order to obtain their stories but PR doesn’t always deliver the whole truth.
  (Churnalism –churning out what PR gives)
• Journalism ideals vs. journalism realities – what journalism aims to stand for, compared to what they deliver 

So what does all this mean for us in the future? Gultung and Ruge’s initial priciples from 1965 are still highly relevant, therefore it is unlikely these principles of newsworthiness will change anytime soon. 

-Laura

2/10/2012