All the News That's Fit to Print

News values are one of the most opaque 

structures of meaning in modern society … 

Journalists speak of “the news” as if events 

select themselves … Yet of the millions of 

events which occur daily in the world, only 

a tiny proportion ever become visible as 

“potential news stories”: and of this 

proportion, only a small fraction are 

actually produced as the day’s news …

That's what a news value is. What deserves to receive attention.

I don't really know how to feel about that... I mean, I understand that there is just too much going on for it all to be reported. But everything that happens is going to have an affect that will impact someone. So shouldn't people know about this? What do I know? I'm a first year uni student, I'll learn in time.

In this modern age we need to make everything appealing, even the news, because lets face it, people need to know what's happening around them no matter how dull it is. So everything is transient according to the general public. Life is only a series of unrelated events...

As Arthur Evelyn Waugh puts it:

News is what a chap 

who doesn't care much 

about anything wants to 

read. And it's only news 

until he's read it. After 

that it's dead.

There are four main aspects of news values:

IMPACT

AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION

PRAGMATICS

SOURCE INFLUENCE

These aspects result in what news values is all about

NEWSWORTHINESS

Despite all sources of media trying to be relevant to the public, we can't say that news values are universal across all cultures and societies. And to me, that will make working in the media fun. I intend to travel and work overseas after uni, so I'm really looking forward to the challenge of working with a new culture and new people. My education is going to teach me to how report what is worthy of people knowing about, while travelling is going to teach me what is worthy to different people.

But there are two values that people who work in media across different cultures believe in:

If it bleeds, it leads

It it's local, it leads

People are drawn to tragedy. A sad and morbid fact. So, serious hard hitting stories are going to get people's attention. And of course, people want to know what's going on in their local community.

News values shape these ideas because news values determine them. News values are what makes journalists chose stories full of blood and tragedy, and at the same time, stories close to home. Values vary from place to place, but they serve the same function: to keep an audience.

I think John Sergeant sums up news values pretty well:

Journalists rely on 

instinct rather than 

logic when it comes 

to the defining a 

sense of news 

values.

There have been three main hypothesise about news values. Firstly by Galtung and Ruge, second by Golding and Elliot, and third by O'Neill and Harcup. They all try to explain what is newsworthy, essentially. And my first thought about them is that they appear very Western in their outlook... But that's just me and I haven't read anything else about them to really back up my claim.

However, news values have been threatened over the past couple of years by three factors:

Commercialisation of of Media and Social Life

Public Relations

Journalism's Ideals/Journalism's Reality

These three factors are limiting the reliability and quality of news in various forms of media. This then makes people question the values held by journalists and discredits the field.

One particularly interesting threat to news values is something called 'churnalism.' This is when journalists just churn out information from press and media releases by PR companies rather than write original reports that contain relevance to an audience.

Like I said in a previous blog post, I'm a massive fan of British comedy. It's just so much better than American comedy, and most Australian comedy for that matter. My favourite British comic (and lets face it, my favourite comic of all time) is Stephen Fry. I'm sure most of you know him from shows like Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie and QI. But he was in another show called Absolute Power, which is my favourite show with Stephen Fry in it.

Absolute Power is about a PR company, headed by Stephen's character Charles Prentiss, who disregard all forms of ethics and morals in order to do their job. I find hilarious as well as a quite thought provoking about the media. And it wasn't until I started JOUR1111 that I really began to fully understand the dynamics of the company and media in general.

In this episode, they are hired by a right-wing political party to handle their PR. Absolutely hilarious and raises questions about values in the media (sorry for the awful quality)

Part 1

Part 2

Another questionable client. They go ahead with it, by the way.

Another episode about politics

Part 1 This time with people that matter

Part 2 Taking it a step further...

Shaping public opinion

And my favourite episode. A comedy actor beats his heavily pregnant girlfriend in the car park at Ikea. And Charles takes on the challenge to sort out the wife beater's PR, with absolutely hilarious results.

This episode needs to be watched to be believed. The degree of manipulation and moral cowardice is enough to make you cringe yet piss laugh hysterically. Truth be told, Absolute Power is what got me interested in the media. I was really tempted to study PR. But I decided against because I knew I would never be as brilliant as Charles Prentiss, even though I lack a moral compass.

In our tute for JOUR1111 on ethics and news values, Carmel showed us this video about churnalism and the relationship between PR and journalism (I couldn't link the video like I did with the others for some reason...).

See any connections between Absolute Power and Chris Atkins' investigation?

Watch a full episode of Absolute Power. It will blow your mind how similar it is to Chris Atkins' video. And it's bloody hilarious. More than anything, watch it because it's funny and has Stephen Fry in it.

Values underpin everything in society. Not only do I have values as a (future/aspiring) journalist, I also have values as a student.

I went with good grades and enough sleep. I'm going to be a socially inept journalist/foreign affairs adviser one day. I try to make the right decision and I'm still disadvantaging myself.