Week 10 Lecture - News Values

This lecture carried on from last week’s lecture on agenda setting. The lecture on agenda setting identified the influence that the media has on what the public perceives to be ‘newsworthy’, so this week explored what it is that dictates what the media themselves deem ‘newsworthy’.

What is meant by ‘news values’?
News values are the degree a prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience.

Impact and Audience

What values does news hold for an audience?

Is it minimal, as expressed by English writer Arthur Evelyn Waugh when he stated ‘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.’

Or, does news have a valid place in society, as is shown by the (less cynical) approach of American journalist Kurt Loder, who thinks that ‘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.’

The view that news journalism has a ‘broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as newsworthiness’ raises the question where such values are the same across different mediums, and even more broadly, across different countries and cultures.

To determine this, it is necessary to look at examples of different news values.

Simple News Values

This takes us back to week 2, where Rod Chester showed us the inverted triangle of journalism.

Look familiar?

However within this, there are many different approaches. Take two common cited approaches:

‘it if bleeds it leads!’

‘if its local it leads!’

So how does each institution shape their own news values, what role do individuals journalists play, and to what extend are they the products of social and cultural contexts?

Harold Evans, past editor of the Sunday Times, believes that ‘a sense of news values is the first quality of editors – they are the human sieves of the torrent of news’.

John Sergeant, a veteran TV reporter believes that journalists must ‘rely on instinct rather than logic when it comes to defining a sense of news values’.

 It turns out determining the common factors and news agendas in international news is not just a past-time of JOUR1111 students at UQ, but was also deemed worthy of investigation by J. Galtung and M. Ruge.

This found that there are twelve main news values.

Gaulton & Ruge’s 12 News Values

1. Negativity
2. Closeness to home
3. Recency
4. Currency
5. Continuity
6. Uniqueness
7. Simplicity
8. Personality
9. Predictability
10. Elite natinos/people
11. Exclusivity
12. Size

This lead Galtung & Ruge to form 3 hypotheses.

1.       The additivity hypothesis – the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news.

2.       The complementary hypothesis – the factors will tend to exclude each other.

3.       The exclusion hypothesis – events that satisfy none or very few factors will not become news.

The Modern Approach

Modern review of Galtung & Ruge has adapted the 12 news values into 10 that are pertinent today.

1.       The Power Elite

2.       Celebrity

3.       Entertainment

4.       Surprise

5.       Bad News

6.       Good News
7.       Magnitude
8.       Relevance
9.       Follow-Up
10.   Newspaper Agenda

In my opinion, I think the adaptations made accurately reflect the increasing fickle and superficial nature of society. Now days people seem to have an unreasonably high interest in those with power and money, a short attention span which dictates news must pander to a desire for news that either amuses them or satisfies a slightly morbid curiosity for disaster and blood (hence the news value slogan ‘if it bleeds it leads!’)

Threats to Newsworthiness

-          Journalism and the commercialisation of media and social life

-          Journalism and public relations

-          Journalism’s ideals and journalism’s reality

Just as I expressed my reservations above, the current trajectory of the journalism industry has given rise to comments and criticism such as 'churnalism', 'junk news', and 'the assault on your need to know'.

In juxstaposing idealised notions of journalism, such as the obligation to tell the truth, thorough verification and giving a voice to the voiceless, with the seemingly 'harsh realities', attention is drawn to the questionable state of modern journalism.

The Reality

• ‘too much of what has been offered as news in recent years has been untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or incomplete’
• 'media falsehood and distortion; PR tactics and propaganda; the use of illegal news-gathering techniques'
• ‘media mergers are rapidly creating on huge news cartel controlling most of what you see, hear and read. These mergers further corrupt the news process’

But what about our say? In amongst all of the debate it is imperative not to disregard the opinions of those who are on the receiving end of such developments. What does the audience think?

Jay Rosen, an American media critic, writer and professor of journalism, has not forgotten. In fact, Rosen is not afraid to bring it to the table,  proving this through his 2006 article 'The People Formerly Known as the Audience'.

‘The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard about.

Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own… The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak – to the world, as it were.

You don’t own their 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.’

Here, here, Jay Rosen!  

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 are certainly questions that I will take off the PowerPoint slides, out of the lecture theatre and keep in the forefront of my mind.