News Values

Gatekeeping

The idea that the news we see is controlled by a few people in positions of power in news institutions. These news editors decide what stories make the news bulletins.
Some people think this means we only see a very small proportion of what is really happening in the world, and only news that these gatekeepers think is interesting.
Bias and news values means we might only see news that is chosen by the news editors – most of these tend to be white, middle-aged, middle-class men.

Galtung & Ruge's News Values

In 1973, media researchers Galtung & Ruge analysed international news stories to find out what factors they had in common, and what factors placed them at the top of the news agenda worldwide.

They came up with the following list of news values which is a kind of scoring system - a story which scores highly on each value is certain to come at the start of a TV news bulletin, or make the front page of a newspaper.

1. NEGATIVITY

Bad news (Involving death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or simply extreme weather conditions) is always rated above 'positive' stories (royal weddings, celebrations etc).

2. RECENCY

The recency of the news is really important because people want to know about stories as they happen.

3. EXCLUSIVITY

News outlets are very competitive about breaking news. If a newspaper or news programme is the first and only news organisation breaking a story, then they will rate that very highly.

4. SIZE

The bigger impact a story has, the more people it affects, the more money/resources it involves, the higher its value. This is also known as threshold.

5. PROXIMITY

Audiences supposedly relate more to stories that are close to them geographically, or involve people from their country, or those that are reported that

6. CONTINUITY

Events that are likely to have a continuing impact (a war, a two week sports tournament) have a high value when the story breaks, as they will develop into an ongoing narrative which will get audiences to 'tune in tomorrow'. These stories stay in the public eye for some time and are deemed valuable. The story may run for weeks and weeks, even if nothing new really happens.

7. UNIQUENESS

Any story which covers a unique or unusual event (two-headed elephant born to Birmingham woman) has news values.

8. SIMPLICITY

Stories which are easy to explain are preferred over stories which are not (Consider the Palestinian conflicts).

9. EXPECTEDNESS

Does the event match the expectations of a news organisation and its audience? If a news story conforms to the preconceived ideas of those covering it, then it has expectedness as an important news value.

10. ELITE NATIONS OR PEOPLE

Any story which covers an important, powerful nation (or organisation) has greater news values than a story which covers a less important nation. The same goes for people.

11. PERSONALISATION

Human interest stories that are about real people.

Task: Complete Newspaper analysis

Find a complete edition of a newspaper, either by buying one from a shop or here. You need to look through the newspaper and explain how the paper is ordered to make the newsworthy stories come first. You need to look at the front page but it is up to you which other two pages you will look at.

Task: The Sun analysis

Look at the front cover from The Sun. It was released on 25 May 2019 - a day after May’s resignation as the PM. How does this front cover demonstrate some of the news values and what representations does this create?

Possible answers

Simplicity - simple headline with use of exclamation mark suggests their excitement linking to the political alignment of the readership.
The front cover links to Elite people - suggestive that BOJO is the man for the job.
Theresa May is represented as devoted and showing genuine care denoted through her crying. Anchored by the headline ‘Teario Theresa’.
Continuity - Brexit was dominating the media suggesting that this might finally be over.
Size of the story - demonstrated though the physical size of the story - means it is impactful and going to have lasting consequences on the individuals/readers of The Sun.
Advertising links to the demographic of the readership.

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