News values vary between media outlets as well as across countries and cultures, due to religious, political, environmental and social values held within the community. A local variation would be a news story aired on ABC that may be different to a news story aired on Channel 7, similarly, news stories aired in England would be different to news stories aired in Australia.
There are 4 general topics that determine the value of news:
Media outlets filter what news they produce. They filter stories in newspapers by assessing its rank of importance: the most prominent stories are found on the front page and towards the start of the newspaper, with information deemed less important towards the back. This also goes for the layout of each individual story:
Two typical ways in which media outlets decide which stories are newsworthy are:
1. 'If it bleeds, it leads'
Stories related to concerning and sinister topics that will interest the reader or viewer such as death- especially murder, rape, major car collisions, shootings, war or tragedy is the article that is seen most frequently on the front page or at the start of a news bulletin.
2. 'If it's local it leads'
Local news can cover a wide arrange of occurrences, providing the "proximity" of the story is relevant. This means the news must show what is happening within the local community or within the state. For example local news in Queensland, Australia, may provide information on topics such as sporting teams, crimes, politics and events.
Newsworthiness
Over the years, lists of news values have been created by well known media figureheads. These examples are just some of the values:
It has been concluded that the more values an article contains, the more likely it will be chosen to become news. It is evident that even though lists have been modified over the years, many news values have remained the same. These values include proximity, negativity, celebrity, prominence and emotion.
Although news values within consumed articles had previously not been noticed, they are now not easy to miss. News values stand out just by switching on the news and listening to the outline, scrolling down the main page of an online news site or walking past a newspaper stand and glimpsing the front page. News values run the agenda as to what information is produced and are therefore extremely important in the world of media.
Newsworthiness Threats
Three tensions have been identifies as:
As previously discussed, commercial media focuses on entertainment and not education. They are profit driven and therefore rely on their audience to keep their business running. Outlets often produce news stories that are low in quality and the commercialization of media had been labeled as untrustworthy and corrupt.
Thousands of consumers have a social life. They do no longer need to reply on what the media tells them and they do not need to listen to one article, these days people have the technology to research stories to gather more information as well as the accuracy or truthfulness of the text.
Reusing Public Relations (PR) can also cause issues for media outlets (see an example of this in the next blog). Reusing PR is called "churnalism" and this refers to when an outlet reuses a press release without first re-writing the story or even checking the facts to ensure they are accurate. Although it is easier to publish a press release rather than write a story, many media outlets have been left red faced by incorrect information.
Ideals of journalism include the obligation to tell the truth, discipline of verification, giving a voice to the voiceless, a form for public criticism, compromise and discussion, freedom to exercise personal conscience, striving for significance and relevancy and keeping the news both comprehensive and proportional. The harsh reality of journalism is that the industry has been overcome by Public Relations, there is a lack of serious coverage, both locally and on important world wide happenings, there is a limited diversity and lastly, commercialization has lessened the quality of news, making it untrustworthy and frankly irresponsible.
Future of News Values
News values do not change drastically overnight. Over the years the values have remained the same- proximity, celebrity, emotional, positivity and negativity. I therefore presume they will be the same tomorrow.
I think the general public 'drives' the decision made in media organizations about what is newsworthy, considering the organization should be providing information that is of interest and relevance to the audience.
I think that stories covering negative, emotional news is more popular, however what I personally think of as newsworthy stories, are the stories that have proximity to the audience, as well as stories that impact them and provide them with interesting, relevant information. The audience wants to know what is happening globally as well as locally, however local news is more meaningful to them and this is what is important.
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