JOUR1111 Lecture 9 - News Values

New Values are what can either make and then quite literally break a story or what can render a story obsolete. In essence News Values are general guidelines which determine the news worthiness of a story. News Values are not universal and are subject to a variety or influences including culture and location.

News Value can be defined as "The degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience." Or as Arthur Evelyn Waugh put it,  “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.”

News Values depend upon four factors, that is; impact, audience identification, pragmatics and source influence.

Impact: The impact and effect the story has upon its audience and the interest it therefore creates.

Audience Identification: Anything that the audience can relate to or identify with. A story that may be close to their region or culture or simply the world and that they find interesting.

Pragmatics: the forever-changing context of news. eg. ethics, facticity, practice, practical, current affairs  

Source Influence: As Julia Hobsbawm, UK PR executive once stated "Journalism loves to hate PR … whether for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the 

truth. Yet journalism has never needed public relations more, and PR has never done a better job for the media." Source influence is the influence held over journalists by the source of the story which can then manipulate the outcome. 

News worthiness can further be founded in the simple notion of the inverted triangle. The more valuable news values are found at the top of the triangle, and essentially form ‘front-page’ news. Those less important, and less likely to be read, aren’t found on the front page, but latter in the news platform.

Since the birth of journalism, what defines news as being newsworthy and what makes a story into a news story has been analysed in an attempt to define News Values. The question of what will lead a TV or Radio News bulletin or what will become the headline or online feature has forever been analysed, this is essential what journalism is built around. The following are some conclusions of the most important factors by various analysers. 

Newsworthiness:  Common factors and news agendas as analysed by Galtung and Ruge (1965)

Negativity: Bad news - involving death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or simply extreme weather conditions - is always rated above 'positive' stories (royal weddings, celebrations etc)

Closeness to home (Proximity): Audiences supposedly relate more to stories that are close to

them geographically, or involve people from their country, or those that are reported that way (eg '12 Taiwanese aboard Australia Crash Plane'). News gatekeepers must consider carefully how meaningful a story will be to their particular audience.

Recency: Newspapers are very competitive about breaking news - about revealing stories as they happen. 24 hour news channels such as Sky News, CNN and BBC World also rate this value very highly. However, as we have seen with the events of September 11, stories may take a while to develop, and become coherent, so recency is not always the best value to rate.

Currency: This is almost opposite to recency, in that stories that have been in the public eye for some time already are deemed valuable. Therefore a story -for instance about the abduction and murder of a child - may run for weeks and weeks, even if nothing new really happens.

Continuity: Events that are likely to have a continuing impact (a war, a two week sports tournament) have a high value when the story breaks, as they will develop into an ongoing narrative which will get audiences to 'tune in tomorrow'.

Uniqueness: 'Dog Bites Man' is not a story. 'Man Bites Dog' is. Any story which covers a unique or unusual event (two-headed elephant born to Birmingham woman) has news values.

Simplicity: Obvious, but true. Stories which are easy to explain ('Cat stuck up tree') are preferred over stories which are not (anything to do with the Balkan or Palestinian conflicts).

Personality: Stories that centre around a particular person, because they can be presented from a 'human interest' angle, are beloved of newspapers, particularly if they involve a well-known person. Some say this news value has become distorted, and that news organisations over-rate personality stories, particularly those involving celebrities (‘Shane Warne and Liz Hurley may be engaged'). 

Expectedness (Predictability): Does the event match the expectations of a news organisation and its 

audience? Or, has what was expected to happen (violence at a demonstration, horrific civilian casualties in a terrorist attack) actually happened? If a news story conforms to the preconceived ideas of those covering it, then it has expectedness as an important news value.
Elite Nations Or People: Any story which covers an important, powerful nation (or organisation) has 

greater news values than a story which covers a less important nation. The same goes for people. Kevin Rudd is newsworthy at the moment whatever he does or wherever he goes. Charlie Sheen was in this boat for some time as well.
Exclusivity: Also a major factor when setting the news agenda. If a newspaper or news program is the first and only news organisation breaking a story, then they will rate that very highly. The UK Sunday papers are very fond of exclusives, and will often break a story of national or international importance that no one else has.

Size: Size does matter when it comes to news stories. The bigger impact a story has, the more people it affects, the more money/resources it involves, the higher its value. This is also known as ‘threshold’

Three hypothesis drawn from  Galtung and Ruge's analysis were:

1. The additivity hypothesis that the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news.
2. The complementarity hypothesis that the factors will tend to exclude each other. 
3. The exclusion hypothesis that events that satisfy none or very few factors will usually not become news.

Lanson, Gerald and Mitchell Stephens in 'Writing and Reporting The News' in 1994, nearly 30 years after Galtung and Ruge's analysis, described News Values as being based around the following eleven factors:

Impact: The facts and events that have the greatest effect on the audience are the most newsworthy.

Weight: The significance of a particular fact or event lies in its value with respect to other facts or events.

Controversy: Arguments, debates, charges, countercharges, and fights increase the value of news.

Emotion: Take into account human interests that touch our emotions.

The Unusual: When a dog bites a man it's not news. But when a man bites a dog, it is news.

Prominence: More prominent individuals are given more attention.

Proximity: Concentrate on news that is of local interest; the closer to home the better.

Timeliness: Emphasize what is new.

Currency: Take into account what is on people's minds.

Usefulness: Help the audience answer questions and solve problems in their daily lives.

Educational Value: Make readers more knowledgeable rather than merely informed.

Since the publication of the original 1965 values by Galtung and Ruge news values have been repeatedly analysed. Most recently Harcup and O'Niel in reviewing and extending on the original theory of Galtung and Ruge's and through a study of the UK press, described the following ten factors as the basis for News Values.

1. THE POWER ELITE. Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions.

2. CELEBRITY. Stories concerning people who are famous.

3. ENTERTAINMENT. Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or witty headlines.

4. SURPRISE. Stories that have an element of surprise and / or contrast.

5. BAD NEWS. Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy.

6. GOOD NEWS. Stories with particularly positive overtones such as rescues and cures.

7. MAGNITUDE. Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact.

8. RELEVANCE. Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience.

9. FOLLOW-UP. Stories about subjects already in the news.
10. NEWSPAPER AGENDA. Stories that set or represent the news organisation’s own agenda. 

However in today's society and technologically driven world, there is no doubt that newsworthiness faces various threats. These threats are predominately found in the form of public relations, commercialization and the constant struggle between ideals and reality in the field of journalism. Quite simply put, PR is giving journalists an easy way out which is rendering them more and more lazy, commercialisation is slowly but surely destroying quality and the increasing pressures of reality are forever blurring the search for journalistic ideals. 

I believe that as future journalists we must strive to distil quality practices and performances into our stories and work and never stop in the pursuit of 'good journalism'.