Week 9: News Values

This week we discussed News Values.

This was probably one of my favorite lectures thus far in the course and this is why: RELEVANCE!

We basically looked at what news values are according to many many different sources. Essentially, news values determines the 'newsworthiness' of a story. Thus, the level of prominence a news sources gives a particular story and (as Dr. Redman put it) the attention that the audience pays to the story as a result.

I was so intrigued by this lecture because once we started to look at all the different news values determined by various people such as Galtung & Ruge and Golding & Elliott, I started to see how this can be applied to all major news stories.

For example: news values as defined by Galtung and Ruge (1965) were...
1) Negativity
2) Proximity
3) Recency
4) Currency
5) Continuity
6) Uniqueness
7) Simplicity
8) Personality
9) Expectedness
10) Elite Nations or People
11) Exclusivity
12) Size

Hence, when I tried to apply relevant news values to a current 'hot' story I saw how many corresponded with the level of prominence of the story.

I.e. The Story of Missing Mother - Allison Baden-Clay
What news values apply to this story?
1) Negativity - it is bad news (tragedy, possible death, etc)
2) Proximity - it occurred in Queensland and thus is close to home - audiences supposedly relate more to stories that are close to them geographically
3) Recency - the news broke soon after she was reported missing
5) Continuity - there is a big likelihood that this story will have a continuing impact as the search for her body continues
12) Size - the bigger impact a story has, the more people it affects, the more money/resources it involves, the higher it's value... a lot of people were affected by the story and involved in the search (which also required resources and people) and thus it was a story that had a high 'threshold'

So we can see that many popular news stories can be seen to relate to these prescribed news values.

Additionally, I feel that the three 'newsworthiness' hypotheses (as deemed by Galtung & Ruge) can be easily applied.
1) The additivity hypothesis that the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news.
2) The complementary 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.

Particularly, the additivity hypothesis is seen as applicable to this story because it became such a popular news story and it satisfied many of the factors listed above.

The exclusion hypothesis is also important because when I was trying to apply news values on my preferred online news source I could see that none of them didn't satisfy any of the news value factors. So, clearly if the story doesn't satisfy enough of the factors, it simply isn't considered newsworthy.

Reiterating why I enjoyed this lecture so much and why I thought it was relevant is because I could actually apply this theory to real life journalism and when I looked at this theory in practice I could see it influencing the stories that were published on many news sites. Being able to understand how theory influences practice enables me to appreciate the theory more and better understand how to apply it.

In future, if I had to, I feel I would be able to better predict what sort of stories would be popular since I now know what sort of factors affect the newsworthiness of a story.

I think there are differences between what news values we hold dear today vs. the past. For example, as discussed in our tutorial, we seem to value stories and information regarding our health much more than the past. Health and wellness appears to be a 'trending' story in the media nowadays. In terms of what are tomorrow's news values... It's very hard to predict but since the news values determined by Galtung and Ruge were written in 1965 and they are still pertinent today then I believe they will remain determinant factors of newsworthiness well into the future.

Finally, what do I think  is newsworthy? I think anything that informs or educates the public, raises awareness about something that the public should know about (regardless of whether they find it interesting) and, finally - though perhaps this is of less importance, things that people find entertaining as well.