RESEARCH 6 - News Values

NEWS VALUES

 News values, or sometimes called the news criteria determine how much importance a news story is given by a media outlet, and the attention it is given by the audience. Among the many lists of news values that have been drawn up by scholars and journalists, some, like Galtung and Ruge's, attempt to describe news practices across cultures, while others have become remarkably specific to the press of certain (often Western) nations. By having these values it makes the journalists think about what stories will be heard and what isn’t, sometimes the pressure of living up to these values could lead to biased or unethical stories. This has made news organizations more open to audience input and feedback, and forced them to adopt and apply news values that attract and keep audiences. Here are some examples of news values and the definitions of what they are.

1.      Threshold - These are the facts and events that have the greatest impacts on the audience and is usually more news worthy. The more bigly the news the better outcome it will have on the audience.

2.      Negativity – This is when the bad news is always rated better than the good news.

3.      Timelessness – These are the events that have happened recently or people who are current, generally are more newsworthy.

4.      Proximity – These are stories that involve people from their own county, and is locally, emotionally and physically close the audience.

5.      Prominence – This is when people in the public eye tend to be more newsworthy than those that are not.

6.      Conflict – These are events and people that have featured in a conflict. These people/events are usually more newsworthy.

7.      Currency/Continuity – These are stories that have been going on for a certain amount of time and have created a continuing impact on the audience to find out more about the story for example the Madeleine McCann case.

8.      Oddity – This is news about weird or unusual people in different places. This allows the audience to be interested in the story because it is about things you don’t hear about every day.

9.      Human Interest – These are stories that play with the human emotions and make the audience sympathise with the stories. These stories can be very newsworthy, and are usually ordinary people.

10.  Elite nations or people – This is a story about a powerful country or person.

11.  Exclusivity – This is when a story is the first to publish a particular story, this way they will be very highly rated by the audience.

12.  Expectedness/Predictability – This a story that was expected to happen or something predictable for the target audience or newspaper.

 

 

     I believe that all these values are important because this is what we as the audience expect from the news and without having these guidelines it would be hard for the journalists that find these stories to choose what to write about because it has to be suitable enough for the audience. I also believe that all these values are important because it narrows down the stories that we enjoy for a certain type of audience, for example people that are interested in the politics side of news will look more on about the elite nations and people, and people that enjoy reading/listening about issues that are happening locally will look at stories that are generalised by proximity. Overall, I believe that without these news values it would be hard for us an audience to understand everything, and it would be hard for all the journalists and editors too because it allows them to have a sense of what to put out on air, and makes things a lot more easier.

Source: Class notes/ A presentation from ( http://www.slideshare.net/MrRichards/news-values-3299801 )