"All the news that is fit to print"
The definition that Dr Redman gave us was that News Values are 'The degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience.'
This seemed to me to be a pretty broad and no direct concept as it could refer to anything from morals to the issue of newsworthiness. This was affirmed by Redman and Stuart Hall who stated ''...News Values are one of the most opaque structures of meaning in modern society...''. Through expanding population, our developing society and the increasing ease of access to information we only a partial to a tiny percentage of news that is processed. A system of values is used to determine news value and worthiness.
1. Impact: Immediate engagement, ability to hold a reader
2. Audience Identification: Audiences interest in article. Partial to how it is relevant to them, impacts them, involves them. Ownership of the issue by audience.
3. Pragmatics: What is bankable, profitable- high interest, what is ethical and likely to be received with no backlash from public.
4. Source Influence: Reliability and practicality of source. Reliant on PR, Public relationships with the journalist.
News values vary according to news programmes and countries/culture it is subjective to the broadcaster/producer and is in accordance with their ethics, values, goals and opinions. In saying that a lot of news today is not ethical but rather formulaic high interest pieces that play on fear, sex, conflict and artificial controversies (celebrity). Realistically for commercial networks,
If it bleeds or is local, it leads
Newsworthiness is relative to this.For news to be worthy it most first satisfy the criteria of visual appeal, conflict, emotion and celebration of the journalist. Galtung and Ruge and later McGregor defined modern thinking on news value in relation to newsworthiness with their hypotheses concerning additivity, complementarity and exclusion.
Additivity - the more of the top news values an event satisfies the more likely it is to run.
Complementarity - factors that exclude each other
Exclusion - oppositie to additivity
Newsworthiness is threatened by the rising level of commercialised media and it's tendency to produce low cost and low quality news and programming. Also the push toward a reality where journalist must compromise their ideals inorder to maintain their job and remain competitive in a growing market.
No comments:
Post a Comment