News value and newsworthiness✅

News value and newsworthiness

  • Events that are eventually reported in the news have been through some kind of gate keeping or filtering process, with journalists, and particularly news editors, deciding what is newsworthy and what is not.

  • Research has shown that journalists operate with values and assumptions - called news values - which guide them in deciding what events are newsworthy and therefore what to report and what to leave out, and how what they choose to report should be presented.

  • So news doesn’t just happen, but is made by journalists. In this sense, it is socially constructed.

  • Galtung and Ruge suggested newsworthy items included some of the news values included below. The idea of news values means that journalists tend to include and play up those elements of a story which make it more newsworthy, and the stories that are most likely to be reported are those which include many newsworthy aspects.

  • The importance of news values is also underpinned by the economic pressures of needing to make a profit, by constantly striving to attract readers and viewers through news flashes, scoops and exclusives of all kinds.

News values and immediacy

  • Stories are also more likely to be reported if the media, particularly TV and the new media, can combine news values with the impression of immediacy - of being present at events as they unfold.

  • The new media have enables news organisations to give a perception to audiences of immediacy, as they are no able to provide instantaneous, live coverage of events as they happen.

  • This is aided by the growing volume of material recorded on mobile phones through citizen journalism. This was particularly evident during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011, during the popular uprisings in the Arab world, and the Israeli military operation in Gaza in 2014, when the mainstream media organisations included much video footage shot on mobile phones when they had no reported of their own present, or were unable to access some locations.

News Values and its features

Composition - Events that fit the style of a paper or TV channel, the balance of items (human interest stories, political news, domestic and foreign news, crime stories, etc), its political slant and the values of the journalists

Continuity - Events that are likely to have a continuing impact - the running story, which is also convenient as the news reporters and cameras will already be there

Elite nations or people - Stories or pictures which involve what journalists and media customers perceive as important - powerful nations, people or organisations, are seen as more newsworthy than lesser ones.

Frequency - Events that fit into the routine schedules of a newspapers or new programmes or websites reporting and broadcasting or publishing cycles are more likely to be scheduled. Such as events that occur quickly and are of short duration

Meaningfulness - Events which, it is assumed, will have meaning and be of interest to the readership or audiences this essentially involves giving the readers and viewers what journalists think they want

Negativity - Bad news is nearly always rated above positive stories. A good news story is often bad news, as bad news, such as death, violence, urban riots, floods etc, involves many newsworthy aspects that encourage journalists to report the event

Personalisation - Events that can be personalised and linked to individuals in some way, and given a human interest angle, with some human drama attached to them

Proximity - This generally involves items which will have some cultural meaning or proximity to news audiences. For example, events in Britain are generally considered more meaningful han those happening in the rest of the world, and national events are generally considered more important than local ones

Threshold - Events that are considered large and significant enough to be in the news, and to have an impact, a single rape might make it into a local paper, but a serial rapist might become a national story

Unambiguity/Clarity - Events that are clear, easily understood and not too complicated, without the need for lots of background explanation and detail

Unexpectedness - Events that are in some way unexpected or out of the ordinary. Events that involve drama, conflict, excitement and action, such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks, are more likely to be reported than predictable everyday events