This week we
focused on News Values; a concept defined as the degree of prominence an outlet
gives to a particular story. By this definition, the important thing to
consider is that the audience’s ‘attention’ is essentially dictated by the
degree of prominence given by the outlet.
However, before
news values can be discussed, we need to know exactly what news is. The word
itself derives from a plural of ‘new’ – first attested in the late 14th
century to mean “new things.” Still today the word retains this meaning, at
least from the perspective of news outlets; Arthur Evelyn Waugh described news
as “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.”
So if ‘news’ exists
as stories of what has happened recently, how do journalists, in a society
where the events of the entire world are known, sift through the unimaginably
huge amount of events that take place each day to present to an audience? This
depends on the socio-cultural context of news outlet, and is decided by the
news values that they hold.
According to Dr Redman,
four factors influence an outlet’s News Values: impact, audience
identification, pragmatics and source influence.
Impact refers to the media’s (and thus the journalist’s) dual role: to inform
and to entertain; news shocks and generates interest, whether it be through
obscurity, disgust or appreciation. Audience identification is imperative; in the calamity of the day’s events
world-wide, an audience places value on what is been happening in their
immediate geographical, cultural or social context, as these stories are more
likely to affect their lives directly. Pragmatics refers to the practical side of telling news; the news that is both
ethical and easy to report. Source influence plays a major role
due to the paradoxical roles of journalism and public relations. “Journalism
loves to hate PR, whether for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or
protecting clients at the expense of the truth” says UK PR executive Julia
Hobsbawm, “yet journalism has never needed public relations more, and PR has
never done a better job for the media.”
Newsworthiness
The
news values of an outlet inform what is known as ‘newsworthiness’ – the value
placed on different types of news stories. Newsworthiness is illustrated in the
inverted pyramid structure, where information is presented in decreasing order
of worth. Because news values inform newsworthiness, the factors of Impact and Audience
Identification are demonstrated. This is how we get terms like “if it bleeds it
leads” and “if it’s local it leads.” The role of an editor is to have a deep
understanding of their respective institution’s news values, and to identify
newsworthiness by acting as “human sieves of the torrent of news” (Harold Evans
- The Sunday Times editor, 1967-1981). This role can only be adopted through
experience in the newsroom – what Evans eloquently refers to as the “college of
osmosis.”
Both editors and
journalists rely on experience and instinct rather than logic when defining
news values, and because of this role newsworthiness exists in an entirely
informal manner. Never written down, news values are passed on socially and
verbally through the generations of journalists that pass through the newsroom,
espoused by the editors as if they are elders passing on some ancient story.
While different
news outlets are all different in their own way, there are some inherent
factors that influence a sense of newsworthiness. A number of core factor lists
have been compiled, each different in length depending on how much depth is
being considered. The most famous of these is undoubtedly Galtung & Ruge’s (1965)
twelve factors:
- Negativity
- · Proximity (closeness to home)
- · Recency
- · Currency
- · Continuity
- · Uniqueness
- · Simplicity
- · Personality (i.e celebrity)
- · Expectedness (predictability)
- · Elite Nations or People
- · Exclusivity
- Size
From these
factors, Galtung & Ruge proposed three rather obvious theories (the
hypotheses of additively, complementarity and exclusion), which basically
explain that more of these values equals more newsworthiness. These factors reflect
have been re-interpreted, re-written and shortened many times in many lists
since 1965, but all of these emphasise the importance of emotion (i.e shock or
interest), locality (‘if it’s local, it leads’), practicality (whether is it
suitable for TV/radio/online and the length of time that journalists can milk
the story) and the tendency to value the stories of certain people or nations
over others (i.e we rarely hear of the three thousand African children who die
of malaria every day, but quite a lot about shopping-centre shootings on the
Gold Coast).
A dark future for News Values: Churnalism, Parasitic PR and the Mass Media Merge
· Yes, that’s
right folks; it’s time for Grim Future
Mondays! Three major threats concerning news values lurk in the future.
Firstly, the
commercialisation of journalism is impeding upon news values and therefore the
output of many media institutions. Intense commercial competition has led to
the need for rapid news cycles, and with it a universal change in news values
aimed at being the first to report a story. The result is incomplete and
untrustworthy news.
Furthermore, inadequate
training and general laziness on behalf of the journalist and editor has led to
an epidemic rise in PR power; incompetent journalists are undergoing less
analysis of press releases, instead simply reusing and publishing. As such, the
journalist’s (possibly imagined ) noble role as the guardian of truth with
sworn loyalty to the public is being degraded as irresponsible, untrustworthy
and biased news is being permitted publication under a new definition of new
values.
Finally, the
media is beginning to merge into a single entity. The key problem with this is
that this ‘media cartel’ (I imagine a group of elderly men in suits with eye
patches smoking cigars, laughing hysterically) will control almost all the
stories that reach the public. The issues associated with an information
dictatorship are easy to imagine.
Thankfully,
salvation may come with the new media. The brilliant Jay Rosen explains to the
increasingly commercialised and lazy media cartel that
“you don’t own the eyeballs. You don’t
own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don’t
control production on the new platform, which isn’t one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us. 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.” (2005).
However, even if
the truth can be accessed by the public, the threats to news values still
exist. Whether or not the vast majority of news corporations retain their
credibility depends on how well the news values that they rely upon are upheld.
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