News Values

THE GROUND RULES FOR DECIDING WHAT MAKES

A GOOD STORY.

News Values

“The somewhat mythical set of criteria employed by journalists to measure and therefore to judge the

‘newsworthiness’ of events”

- Franklin, Hamer, Hanna, Kinsey, Richardson. Key Concepts in Journalism.

‘Somewhat Mythical’

“These ground rules may not be written down or codified by the news organisations, but they exist in

daily practice and in knowledge gained on the job.”

- Harcup T. and O'Neill D. (2001) What is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited

Defining News Values

COLLATING NEWS VALUES

Summary

Journalists

experience

The two methods for collating News Values

The Academic Approach; summarizing the themes of a sample news report after it is written.

In essence working backwards.

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

12 News Values

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

1960 CONGO1960 CUBA

1964 CYPRUS

Summary

Galtung & RugeFrequency

Intensity

Unambiguity

Meaningfulness

Predictability

Unexpectedness

Continuity

Composition

References to elite peoples

References to elite nations

Personification

Negativity

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

FrequencyEvents being favoured over processes.

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

CompositionA fair balance of stories.

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

PersonificationAdding a Human Element.

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

Negativity.Bad news is better than good news.

Summary

Galtung & Ruge

The more an event satisfies these criteria the more likely it is of being reported as

news.

Summary

Defining News Values

COLLATING NEWS VALUES

Summary

Journalists

experience

The two methods for collating News Values

The summary of factors that journalists believe make a good story.

Defining the factors that journalists try find in their stories.

Journalists

experience

Alistair Hetherington

Former Editor of The Guardian and journalists for nearly 20 years.

Journalists

expreience

Alistair Hetherington

7 News Values

Journalists

expreience

Alistair HetheringtonSignificance

Drama

Surprise

Personalities

Sex

Numbers

Proximity

Journalists

expreience

Alistair Hetherington

“…anything which threatens people’s peace, prosperity, and well being is

news and likely to make headlines.”

Journalists

expreience

Alistair Hetherington

“The instinctual news value of most journalists simply is: ‘does this interest

me?”

Journalists

expreience

Updated Studies

Harcup & O’Neil

Criticism of the 12 values

“…by focusing on coverage of three major international crises Galtung and Ruge ignored day-to-day coverage of lesser, domestic and bread-

and-butter news”-Harcup &O’neil 2001

Harcup & O’Neil

10 News Values

Harcup & O’Neil

Reference to the power elite.

Individuals, organizations and nations.

Harcup & O’Neil

Reference to celebrity.

Harcup & O’Neil

Entertainment.Sex, human interest, drama.

Harcup & O’Neil

Surprise.

Harcup & O’Neil

Good News.Rescues, personal triumph.

Harcup & O’Neil

Bad News.Tragedy, accident.

Harcup & O’Neil

Magnitude.

Harcup & O’Neil

Relevance.Cultural proximity, political importance.

Harcup & O’Neil

Follow-up stories.

Harcup & O’Neil

Newspaper’s agenda.Politically and structurally.

Public Interest versus Public Demand

Deciding a potential story’s newsworthiness properly could include both the commercial profits

of selling newspapers and the responsibility to deliver stories in the public Interest. Both mean

making editorial decisions and are at the mercy of gate-keeping.

Critiscism of fixedNews Values

“News values” are one of the most opaque structures of meaning in modern society. All ‘true

journalists’ are supposed to possess it: few can or are willing to identify and define it. Journalists speak

of ‘the news’ as if events select themselves. We appear to be dealing, then, with a ‘deep structure’

whose function as a selective device is untransparent even to those who professionally

most know how to operate it.” -Hall, 1973

Evolving News Values “News values are thus working rules, comprising a corpus of occupational lore which implicitly and often expressly explains and guides newsroom practice. It is not true as is often suggested that they are beyond the ken of the newsman, himself unable and unwilling to articulate them. Indeed, they pepper the daily exchanges between journalists in collaborative production procedures.”-Golding and Elliott (1999)

Who’s Values?

“There have been numerous attempts to distil the essence of [newsworthy] qualities of events, although there are some fundamental reasons why it is impossible to reach any definitive account of ‘news values’ that has great predictive or explanatory value in accounting for any particular example of news selection…

Who’s Values?

…One problem lies in the fact that value has to be attributed and there are competing sources of perception. Although by definition, journalists and editors are the most influential judges of value (since they decide on relative value), the actual perceptions of diverse audiences cannot be ignored, nor can the views of powerful sources and others affected by the news. “-McQuail (2000)

A quantifiable definition.

Frequency

Intensity

Unambiguity

Meaningfulness

Predictability

Unexpectedness

Continuity

Composition

References to elite peoples

References to elite nations

Personification

Negativity

Significance

Drama

Surprise

Personalities

Sex

Numbers

Proximity

Personal News Valuesimpact; power; impact; impact and consequences; significance, magnitude; impact on nation and national interest; impact on large numbers of people; significance for the past and future; threshold; disasters, actual and averted; disasters abroad; negativity ; bad news; disasters; good or bad social effects); crisis; consequence; scale of events; significance; tragedies and accidents; number of people affected-(warner, 1970). (gans, 1979) (macdougall in palmer, 1998), (herbert, 2000)