Another interesting lecture, this time explaining the news values that underlie the news and media business.
When thinking of news values I had a preconceived notion that I now know was far more akin to an ethical code. I saw news values as the moral code that all news media was judged by. This lecture on the topic has corrected my misconceptions.
News values are the set of criteria that decides which of the infinite possible stories that could potentially become news are deemed to be newsworthy.
News values have four core considerations.
Impact: The immediate impact and engagement that a story will cause in an audience.
Audience Identification: The audience must feel a certain level of identification with the story. It must be related to the interests of the audience on a personal level. A degree of ownership must be felt by the audience.
Pragmatics: Pragmatics include the correct ethics, factuality currency and practicality of the news. Without appropriate pragmatics the feasibility of the story as news is doubtful.
Source influence: The influence of PR on the news story.'Journalism loves to hate PR... whether for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet journalism has never need public relations more, and PR has never done a better job for the media.' - Julia Hobsbawm, UK PR Executive.
While these considerations are universal, the manner in which they are applied is culturally and geographically subjective.
Newsworthiness:
To determine the newsworthiness of a story there are four elements that must be taken into account:
Visualness: The appeal of a story to an online of television audience.
Conflict: The most tried and true news value. Conflict is guaranteed to draw attention.
Emotion: Represents the human interest and emotional appeal of a story.
Celebrification of the journalist: The level of involvement that the journalist plays within the story.
The final subject of this lecture was the threats to newsworthiness.
There are several tensions in modern journalism that affect newsworthiness.
Journalism vs Commercialisation
Journalism vs Public Relations
Journalistic ideals vs Journalistic Reality.
These conflicts affecting the journalism industry are embodied by several issues.
Hyper commercialisation: This is the situation of oligopoly in the news industry that results in a biased allocation of news values. Media mergers result in a small number of companies controlling all that consumers view in news media.
PR Influence- Tabloidisation: The distortion of news through PR tactics and the use of illegal news gathering techniques.
Lazy, Incompetent Journalism: The lack of proper journalistic method in modern news results in poor representations of stories in the media.
This lecture has shown me that although news values are designed to serve the audience, modern influences on journalistic method result in reduced clarity, coverage and diversity of modern media.
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