LECTURE 9 REVIEW: NEWS VALUES

"If it bleeds, it leads!"

That statement pretty much sums up most news values, to be honest.

News values are the degree of prominence and attention we pay to a story, regardless whether we are journalists or the audience.

So, what are news values? They are:
i) IMPACT
ii) AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION
iii) PRAGMATICS
iv) SOURCE INFLUENCE

From there, we are lead to newsworthiness. As A. Boyd said:
"News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as 'newsworthiness'..."

The main question here is
Are news values the same across different news services? How about across different countries/cultures?

NO.

News values differ across all platforms. However, what remains constant is that they always follow the inverted pyramid.

How are news values shaped? Do the individual journalists have roles to play? Or is it just the big media moguls who decide all these? A lot of people will argue that journalists rely largely on their instincts rather than logic when it comes to what is newsworthy or not.

"A sense of news values is the first quality of editors - they are the human sieves of the torrent of news, even more important than an ability to write or a command of language."

 ~ Harold Evans

Galtung & Ruge (1965) identified 12 Factors of Newsworthiness:

• Negativity (bad news)
• Closeness to home - proximity (how does audience relate)
• Recency (e.g. breaking news!)
• Currency
• Continuity - events that continue (e.g. war)
• Uniqueness
• Simplicity
• Personality (centered around a particular person)
• Expectedness (& predictability)
• Elite Nations / People
• Exclusivity
• Size (yes people, SIZE DOES MATTER!)

From there they drew 3 hypotheses - additivity, complementary, and exclusion.

All these factors were further developed on through the years and most recently, Judy McGregor reduced the 12 factors to only 4 bases in 2002, where she brought up a curious point - celebrification of the journalist.

Threats to newsworthiness have identified 3 tensions:
i) Journalism vs commercialisation of media and social life
ii) Journalism vs Public Relations
iii) Journalism's Ideals vs Journalism's Reality

These 3 points draw towards the fact that journalism has become lazy and incompetent; the PR influence over journalism has somehow made the whole thing a tabloidisation; and of course, hyper-commercialisation. All of these therefore assert pressures on the newsroom and in term, to put it bluntly, crappy work is produced.

To prove a further point, the term "Churnalism" has been coined. It refers to stuff coming from PR outlets as PR is influencing journalism more and more nowadays.

We, as journalism students, have to take note that there is a difference between an idealised notion of journalism that we have, and the harsh reality of the newsroom. What we expect is often not what we can get.

Lastly, the people formally known as "The Audience"...

HAVE THEY MOVED ON?

Now with the uprising on citizen journalism, blogs and social media, the Audience has become the Public. They are now involved in the news instead of just reading it.

So, what does this hold for the future of news values?

Oh, and one small thing, just before I go... Remember how Dr Redman was talking about the factors of newsworthiness and he mentioned that "DOG BITES WOMAN" is not as interesting as "WOMAN BITES DOG"?

So yeah, next thing you know, "WOMAN BITES DOG" makes the news headlines the next day...

Drunk US woman charged over biting dog. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1198468/1/.html

What a coincidence!

And that's all folks!