News values: notes

In 1965, media researchers Galtung & Ruge analysed news stories to find out what factors placed them at the top of the news agenda.

They came up with the following list of news values - a kind of scoring system to work out what might become news. A story which scores highly on each value is likely to be at the top of a TV news bulletin. Some of the news values they suggested include:

Negativity
Bad news - involving death, tragedy, natural disasters or political upheaval - is rated above 'positive' stories (royal weddings etc.) 



I would say that this is a negativity story as it is upsetting and it also involves death and tragedy. 

Audiences relate more to stories that are close to their home, or involve people from their country.

Immediacy
How recently did it happen? TV news is very competitive about breaking news – although it is now beaten by social media.

This is breaking news as it is happening when it is being broadcasted when the story happens. 

Simplicity
Simple stories are preferred by TV news.  Palestine is complicated, a plane crash is easy to follow.












I chose this news story as it is simple to follow.


Uniqueness
‘Dog bites man’ is not news. ‘Man bites dog’ is. Unusual stories make it into the news – especially if there is good video to go with it.

I chose this as uniqueness as it

unusual story and it is also a interesting story.Elite nations or people
Stories that focus on important countries or people are likely to make the news. Obama and USA = news, Outer Mongolia not so much.

I chose this as this is news that may be important news that countries may want to hear about.

24 hour TV news

There are some critical differences between a regular news bulletin and 24 hour news:

• A bulletin contains carefully constructed ‘news packages’ and fully scripted presentation
• 24 hour TV news is perfect for live, breaking news as it happens
• 24 hour TV news is more dependent on dramatic pictures or video that will grab the audience and keep them watching

News values blog task

For each of the six news values we have learned, find a clip on YouTube from Sky News (24 hour news) and explain how it fits that news value. The Sky News YouTube channel is here.