Our Top Story Tonight...

News values. We finally get into the nitty gritty of what constitutes a news story. As I sat down to write this, my first thought was of the opening of The West Wing season 1 episode 7.  While I can’t find a (legal) video to upload of the opening sequence, I have found a transcript:

C.J.So, let me see if I have this. 

[looks at Josh] A hurricane's picked up speed and power and is heading for Georgia. 

[looks at Sam] Management and labor are coming here to work out a settlement to avoid a crippling strike that will begin at midnight tonight. 

[looks at Toby] And the government's planning a siege on 18 to 40 of its citizens, all the while we host a state dinner for the President of Indonesia.  

[Sondra the journalist walks in and tries to get C.J.'s attention]  

C.J.Amazingly, you know what I'll get asked most often today? 

JOSHWhat? 

C.J.Sondra?  

SONDRAI'm sorry, C.J.... 

C.J.[Describing the first lady’s shoes] Black suede and velvet. Manolo Blahnik slides with a rhinestone and mother of pearltoe buckle.

The West Wing is a show about the inside workings of the White House. C.J. is the White House Press Secretary and despite all the other highly relevant stories of the day (the hurricane, potential workforce strike and hostage situation) the press wants to know about the First Lady’s outfit to the state dinner – typical!

So, let’s get back to the lecture content. A. Boyd says that "News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as 'newsworthiness'...”

News values can be broken down into four sections:

1.      Impact
- the gee-whiz effect from the audience

2.       Audience Identification
- working out what’s of interest to the audience, be it global, cultural, social, etc

3.       Pragmatics
- What is in the news and its creation, the ethics, facticity, practice/practical, current affairs, everyday (24/7 news)

4.       Source Influence
- Where does the information come from, especially in relation to the love-hate relationship that the PR-spin-doctors and journalism have

Of course we’re not all the same when it comes to news values, that’s why they differ from countries/cultures and even between different news services in the same area. For any news station, the news it produces takes the inverted pyramid form. Not only are the individual stories ordered from most to least important information, so too are the news stories presented in an order which news outlets believe to be the most relevant and engaging with the audience.

Traditionally news had the slogan “if it bleeds it leads” promoting stories about death, war, violence and accidents. However, with the vast emergence of local news stations, it’s turned somewhat more to “if it’s local it leads” with recent stories such as the floods and elections. Personally, when watching the news, I see the traditional slogan in use more often… probably because the producers have more fun using the rhyme to create the news!

So how do news stories take the order that they do? How do particular institutions shape their own news values? Obviously it’s all about ratings (at least for commercial media).  As such, it comes down to what their audience wants to see, and how they get more people to use their media.

Numerous academics/journalists have constructed and updated what they believe to be the criteria for news values. Galtung and Ruge outlined 12criteria in 1965:

Negativity

Closeness to home (Proximity)

Recency

Currency

Continuity

Uniqueness

Simplicity

Personality

Expectedness (Predictability)

Elite Nations or People

Exclusivity

Size

Further to this, Galtung and Ruge created three hypotheses:
The additivity hypothesis that the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news.

The complementarity hypothesis that the factors will tend to exclude each other.

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

News values over the years have been transformed, moved around and edited. Judy McGregor in 2002 reduced it to four news values

Visualness – Appeal to TV/Online audience

Conflict – a tried & true news value… if it bleeds it leads!

Emotion – tied up with human interest

Celebrification of the journalist

It’s interesting to note that the latest set of values is from 2002. With the increase of internet news, it should be easier to track the news stories that have prevalence with audiences. For example, you only have to look on the home page of numerous sites to see the highest viewed trending articles. Though, I suppose, when viewing articles on pages such as Ninemsn the highest trending articles are rarely ever the hard hitting news and only the sensationalized or celebrity gossip stories. On that, it’s interesting to note that online sites, even when going on to look at the Seven and Nine news websites, the local news stories rarely ever go to the top of the news, and it’s the national/international/celebrity stories which continually make it to the top.

As for everything we have idealized notions, and journalism is no different. These include:

·         A first obligation to the truth

·         A first loyalty to citizens

·         An essential discipline of verification

·         Independence from faction

·         Monitoring power and giving voice to the voiceless

·         Provision of a forum for public criticism and compromise

·         Striving to make the significant interesting and relevant

·         Keeping the news comprehensive and proportional

·         Freedom to exercise personal

·         Conscience

What are the threats to newsworthiness? Three different aspects have been identified:

·         Journalism / Commercialization of media and social life

·         Journalism / Public Relations

·         Journalism’s ideals /Journalism’s reality

The harsh realities in relation to newsworthiness are that journalists have become lazy and incompetent, with information being untrustworthy, stories incomplete, misleading or just irresponsible. PR has also had a great effect on journalism, with churnalism taking over news stories, and PR tactics, propaganda, media falsehoods and distortion all effecting the news the audiences are exposed to. Hyper-commercialization also has allowed news cartels to form, controlling what news stories make it to the public eye.

We’ve also seen a shift in the audience. We as individuals are no longer just take in media, we can make our own stories – for example, a blog! As Jay Rosen says

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. 

From Gultung and Ruge in 1965 to Judy McGregor in 2002, we see changes in media news value and general newsworthiness. We longer take a back seat, but create our own, and in view of threats to journalism it’s probably not a day too late. News is changing from day to day. We have different stories everyday, so it’s safe to say, each day brings new news values.

“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 Eveyln Waugh