1. Media Studies Exam 2015 : Studies on News Values:
GALTUNG & RUGE (1965)
News Value
Description
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)
Closeness to
home (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 way(eg '12 Hong Kongers aboard
Australia Crash Plane'). News gatekeepers must consider carefully
how meaningful a story will be to their particular audience
Recency
Newspapers are very competitive about breaking news - about
revealing stories as they happen. 24 hour news channels such as
CNN and BBC World also rate this value very highly. However, as
we have seen with the events of September 11, stories may take
a while to develop, and become coherent, so recency is not
always the best value to rate.
Currency
This is almost opposite to recency, in that stories that have been
in the public eye for some time already are deemed valuable.
Therefore a story - for instance about the abduction and murder
of a child - may run for weeks and weeks, even if nothing new
really happens.
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'.
Uniqueness
'Dog Bites Man' is not a story. 'Man Bites Dog' is. Any story which
covers a unique or unusual event (two-headed elephant born to
Birmingham woman) has news values
Simplicity
Obvious, but true. Stories which are easy to explain ('Cat stuck up
tree') are preferred over stories which are not (anything to do
with the Balkan or Palestinian conflicts)
Personality
Stories that centre around a particular person, because they can
be presented from a 'human interest' angle, are beloved of
newspapers, particularly if they involve a well-known person.
Some say this news value has become distorted, and that news
organisations over-rate personality stories, particularly those
involving celebrities ('Kate Middleton Goes Shopping'). What do
you think?
Expectedness
(Predictability)
Does the event match the expectations of a news organisation
and its audience? Or, has what was expected to happen (violence
at a demonstration, horrific civilian casualties in a terrorist attack)
actually happened? If a news story conforms to the preconceived
ideas of those covering it, then it has expectedness as an
important news value
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. Barack and
Michelle Obama are newsworthy whatever they do.
Exclusivity
Also a major factor when setting the news agenda. If a newspaper
or news programme is the first and only news organisation
breaking a story, then they will rate that very highly. The UK
Sunday papers are very fond of exclusives, and will often break a
story of national or international importance that no one else has.
Size
does matter when it comes to news stories. 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
2. Homework :
Try and find a news story from this week that fits 8 of the news values from
above. Explain which value is present and why that story fits.
News value present Explanation of story and why it fits
