Lecture 9: News Values

The definition of news values is “the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story and the attention that is paid by an audience.” But does news have value to the audience? Arthur Evelyn Waugh said, “News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And its only news until he's read it. After that it’s dead.” Although I do not totally agree with Waugh’s point of view, it sometimes seems to me that many news outlets record events that those that do not care about much will read.

When deciding on what news stories take precedence three main areas come into practice. Firstly, the impact, will the audience be absorbed by the story. Secondly, audience, a sports program on a local channel will most likely broadcast the sources of local teams. Thirdly, identification, events and stories in areas of culture of interest to the audience. The other to areas that are important to news values are pragmatics, and source influence. It is important to note that news values will not be the same across different countries and cultures as the audience’s interests will change.



Galtung's 12 Factors

Professor Johan Galtung came up with the twelve factors of newsworthiness. From these factors, he hypothesised that the more factors and event satisfied the higher the probiblity of it becoming news. Over time Galtung’s factors have slightly changed, or been made more concise but the same hypothesis stands. As Bruce mentioned in the lecture the current factors that often secure a place on the news are terrorism, the Global Financial Crisis, health, fitness and diet and the environment. 

Galtung's 12 Factors

One phrase Dr Redman bought up was ‘if it bleeds it leads.’ I recently read that crime in Queensland and Australia wide is decreasing, but if the news was anything to go by it could be assumed that it was on the rise. This could partly be attributed to the for mentioned phrase. While I think it is important to publicise crime, and crime rates as to keep the public aware, it is unnecessary to create a public dominated by fear, similar to that in America.