-- Stuart Hall, 1973
I liked that quote. ^
Anyway, today's lecture was about news values, I concept I was quite keen to learn about. I knew it had something to do with what goes into a story, which stories are chosen over others and why, and of course I knew about the infamous line 'if it bleeds it leads.'
For example, (just going off on a tangent here) I moved to Brisbane about 4 months ago from Sydney, a place I adore. I have lived in Sydney since I was 10 and honestly, it is one of the best places in the world and very much home to me. In Brisbane, I work at a local supermarket, and they have their own radio station, so I am able to hear the news from both in Queensland and outside of Queensland. When I listen to the hourly update of news, there is ALWAYS something that happened in Sydney featured, without fail. It's always about drink driving, shootings, underage drinking... and plenty of other criminal offences, all of which have taken place in Sydney. There is no doubt in my mind that these sorts of things happen where I'm from, but I just find it interesting that these stories are featured more than others, especially since there are a lot of positive and happy things that happen in Sydney every single day. Just something I've observed and found interesting!
So back to the lecture, sorry if that was a really boring paragraph and sorry if you wasted 5 minutes of your life reading it.
News values. There are 4 concepts that shape news values:
1. Impact
2. Audience Identification
3. Pragmatics
4. Source Influence
Briefly:
- Impact: so any news that shocks or surprises the reader
- Audience Identification: relevance in regards to the interests of targeted audience
- Pragmatics: ethics, current affairs, availability (24/7 news), ongoing stories, updates
- Source Influence: how the story is effected by where it came from
If it's local, it leads! <- also very true
So what exactly do these two phrases mean?
"If it bleeds, it leads" means that if a story has any kind of death, injury, violence or crime within it, it is usually more popular and read by people from a wide community. The reason for this is that it is intriguing, people are itching to know what happened, who was involved, why it happened... Some even form conspiracy theories and of course their own opinions about what actually happened.
"If it's local, it leads" means that if a story that contains the same elements as addressed above, but happened within an individual's community, it becomes very popular and read by many people. The reason for this is the same as above, people are intrigued by something that is happening within their community.
An example that fits both of these is the disappearance of Maddy McCann. Even though Maddy disappeared 5 years ago, her story is still very relevant in the news spectrum today.
There are many different news values that have been simplified and re-analysed by many people over time. Here are a few examples of people who have compiled a list of what they consider to be news values. A few areas overlap in some places, but in others new concepts are introduced...
Galtung & Ruge (1965) said there were twelve:
- Negativity
- Closeness to home
- Recency
- Currency
- Continuity
- Uniqueness
- Simplicity
- Personality
- Expectedness
- Elite nations or people
- Exclusivity
- Size
Galtung & Ruge also came up with 3 hypotheses in regards to newsworthiness:
- Additivity: the more factors an event in the news meets, the more publicity it will receive
- Complementarity: the factors that tend to exclude each other
- Exclusion: the factors that satisfy no factor will not become news
Judy MacGregor reduced Galtung & Ruge to 4 factors including that of visualness (their appeal to TV, online audience or advertising), conflict (a true news value), emotion (something that appeals to human interest) and celebrification of the journalist .... interesting. Personally I think G&R covered more areas than MacGregor.
Golding & Elliot (1979): Personalities, Size, Proximity, Negativity, Brevity, Importance, Entertainment, Visual attractiveness, Drama, Recencies & Elites. (Quite similar to G&R)
O'Neill & Harcup: (A review of Galtung & Ruge)
- Power elite: so stories that involve powerful members of society, e.g. politicians
- Celebrities: stories that involve famous people, e.g. movie stars, singers, sportspeople
- Entertainment: drama, gossip, wit, humour e.g. scandals or an ongoing drama
- Surprise: stories that shock the audience e.g. the unexpected result of an ongoing drama
- Bad news: stories that have negative undertones e.g. a plane crash or violent crimes
- Good news: stories that positive overtones e.g. cure for a disease, a successful rescue, a discovery
- Magnitude: stories that are significant in size e.g. closeness to home, amount of people involved
- Follow up: an update of a story alreading circling in the media e.g. a result of a crime investigation
- Newspaper agenda: stories that set or represent a company's own agenda
Murray Masterton: (Big 6): Significance, Proximity, Conflict, Human interest, Novelty, Prominence.
So of course, there are tensions that threaten newsworthiness, and they include the influence of public relations in journalism, reality of being a journalist (constant pressure to produce stories, results in potentially lazy or incompetent journalism) and the commercialisation of media and social life.
Gathering news unethically (such as the News of the World scandal), tactics of public relations companies in order for their stories to sell to the journalists, untrustworthy and false representations of news... all of these factors have implications for newsworthiness.
Here is where the audience comes in. In this lecture, Dr BR was saying that the audience is potentially losing faith in their journalism, which is a huge threat to newsworthiness. What happens if the audience simply stop reading, watching or listening to news because of the fear that it is untrustworthy or fake? That would also significantly impact journalism as a practise too...
And what about the different interpretations of what is newsworthy? We all have different interests, so what happens if people simply ignore news because it doesn't meet their standards or affect their interests directly.
Journalists have a huge responsibility to live up to. Althought I already had some idea of this, this lecture really opened my eyes to the reality of becoming a journalist, and what they have to do every day in order to deliver news to us. Although I have so much more to learn, this lecture was a great introduction to what could potentially lie ahead of me in my life!
Very interesting stuff.
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