News values

News values, sometimes called news criteria, determine of what 'news means and the role of the news industry.[6]
how much prominence a news story is given by a media
outlet, and the attention it is given by the audience. A.
Boyd states that: News journalism has a broadly agreed 1 Conditions for News
set of values, often referred to as 'newsworthiness...[1]
News values are not universal and can vary widely be Frequency: Events that occur suddenly and t
tween dierent cultures. In Western practice, decisions
well with the news organizations schedule are more
on the selection and prioritization of news are made by
likely to be reported than those that occur gradually
editors on the basis of their experience and intuition, alor at inconvenient times of day or night. Long-term
though analysis by J. Galtung and M. Ruge showed that
trends are not likely to receive much coverage.
several factors are consistently applied across a range of
news organizations.[2] Some of these factors are listed be Familiarity: To do with people or places close to
low, together with others put forward by Schlesinger[3]
[4]
home.
and Bell. According to Ryan, there is no end to lists
[5]
of news criteria. Among the many lists of news val Negativity: Bad news is more newsworthy than
ues that have been drawn up by scholars and journalists,
good news.
some, like Galtung and Ruges, attempt to describe news
practices across cultures, while others have become remarkably specic to the press of certain (often Western)
Unexpectedness: If an event is out of the ordinary
nations.
it will have a greater eect than something that is an
everyday occurrence.
Galtung and Ruge, in their seminal study in the area put
forward a system of twelve factors describing events that
together are used as a denition of 'newsworthiness. Fo Unambiguity: Events whose implications are clear
cusing on newspapers and broadcast news, Galtung and
make for better copy than those that are open to
Ruge devised a list describing what they believed were
more than one interpretation, or where any undersignicant contributing factors as to how the news is constanding of the implications depends on rst unstructed. Their theory argues that the more an event acderstanding the complex background in which the
cessed these criteria the more likely it was to be reported
events take place.
on in a newspaper. Furthermore, three basic hypotheses
are presented by Galtung and Ruge: the additivity hy Personalization: Events that can be portrayed as
pothesis that the more factors an event satises, the higher
the actions of individuals will be more attractive than
the probability that it becomes news; the complementarone in which there is no such human interest.
ity hypothesis that the factors will tend to exclude each
other; and the exclusion hypothesis that events that sat Meaningfulness: This relates to the sense of idenisfy none or very few factors will not become news.
tication the audience has with the topic. Cultural
A variety of external and internal pressures inuence
proximity is a factor here -- stories concerned with
journalists decisions on which stories are covered, how
people who speak the same language, look the same,
issues are interpreted and the emphasis given to them.
and share the preoccupations as the audience receive
These pressures can sometimes lead to bias or unethimore coverage than those concerned with people
cal reporting. Achieving relevance, giving audiences the
who speak dierent languages, look dierent and
news they want and nd interesting, is an increasingly imhave dierent preoccupations.
portant goal for media outlets seeking to maintain market
share in a rapidly evolving market. This has made news
Reference to elite nations: Stories concerned with
organizations more open to audience input and feedback,
global powers receive more attention than those conand forced them to adopt and apply news values that atcerned with less inuential nations.
tract and keep audiences. The growth of interactive media and citizen journalism is fast altering the traditional
Reference to elite persons: Stories concerned with
distinction between news producer and passive audience
the rich, powerful, famous and infamous get more
and may in future lead to a deep-ploughing redenition
coverage.
1

2 AUDIENCE PERCEPTIONS OF NEWS

Conict: Opposition of people or forces resulting
in a dramatic eect. Stories with conict are often
quite newsworthy.
Consonance: Stories that t with the medias expectations receive more coverage than those that
defy them (and for which they are thus unprepared).
Note this appears to conict with unexpectedness
above. However, consonance really refers to the medias readiness to report an item.
Continuity: A story that is already in the news gathers a kind of inertia. This is partly because the media organizations are already in place to report the
story, and partly because previous reportage may
have made the story more accessible to the public
(making it less ambiguous).
Composition: Stories must compete with one another for space in the media. For instance, editors
may seek to provide a balance of dierent types of
coverage, so that if there is an excess of foreign news
for instance, the least important foreign story may
have to make way for an item concerned with the
domestic news. In this way the prominence given
to a story depends not only on its own news values
but also on those of competing stories. (Galtung and
Ruge, 1965)

Data: Media need to back up all of their stories with

data in order to remain relevant and reliable. Reporters prefer to look at raw data in order to be able
to take an unbiased perspective.

2 Audience perceptions of news

Conventional models concentrate on what the journalist
perceives as news. But the news process is a two-way
transaction, involving both news producer (the journalist)
and the news receiver (the audience), although boundary
between the two is rapidly blurring with the growth of
citizen journalism and interactive media.
Little has been done to dene equivalent factors that determine audience perception of news. This is largely because it would appear impossible to dene a common factor, or factors, that generate interest in a mass audience.
Basing his judgement on many years as a newspaper journalist Hetherington (1985) states that: anything which
threatens peoples peace, prosperity and well being is
news and likely to make headlines.

Whyte-Venables (2012) suggests audiences may interpret

news as a risk signal. Psychologists and primatologists
Competition: Commercial or professional compe- have shown that apes and humans constantly monitor the
tition between media may lead journalists to endorse environment for information that may signal the possibility of physical danger or threat to the individuals social
the news value given to a story by a rival.
position. This receptiveness to risk signals is a powerful
and virtually universal survival mechanism.
Co-optation: A story that is only marginally newsworthy in its own right may be covered if it is related A 'risk signal' is characterized by two factors, an element of change (or uncertainty) and the relevance of that
to a major running story.
change to the security of the individual.
Prefabrication: A story that is marginal in news
terms but written and available may be selected
ahead of a much more newsworthy story that must
be researched and written from the ground up.

The same two conditions are observed to be characteristic of news. The news value of a story, if dened in
terms of the interest it carries for an audience, is determined by the degree of change it contains and the relevance that change has for the individual or group. Anal Predictability: An event is more likely to be cov- ysis shows that journalists and publicists manipulate both
the element of change and relevance (security concern)
ered if it has been pre-scheduled. (Bell, 1991)
to maximize, or some cases play down, the strength of a
Time constraints: Traditional news media such as story.
radio, television and daily newspapers have strict Security concern is proportional to the relevance of the
deadlines and a short production cycle, which se- story for the individual, his or her family, social group and
lects for items that can be researched and covered societal group, in declining order. At some point there is
quickly.
a Boundary of Relevance, beyond which the change is
no longer perceived to be relevant, or newsworthy. This
Logistics: Although eased by the availability of boundary may be manipulated by journalists, power elites
global communications even from remote regions, and communicators seeking to encourage audiences to
the ability to deploy and control production and exclude, or embrace, certain groups: for instance, to disreporting sta, and functionality of technical re- tance a home audience from the enemy in time of war, or
sources can determine whether a story is covered. conversely, to highlight the plight of a distant culture so
(Schlesinger, 1987)
as to encourage support for aid programs.

Evolutionary perspectives

An evolutionary psychology explanation for why negative

news have a higher news value than positive news starts
with the empirical observation that the human perceptive system and lower level brain functions have diculty
distinguishing between media stimuli and real stimuli.
These lower level brain mechanisms which function on a
subconscious level make basic evaluations of perceptive
stimuli, focus attention on important stimuli, and start basic emotional reactions. Research has also found that the
brain dierentiates between negative and positive stimuli and reacts quicker and more automatically to negative
stimuli which are also better remembered. This likely has
evolutionary explanations with it often being important to
quickly focus attention on, evaluate, and quickly respond
to threats. While the reaction to a strong negative stimulus is to avoid, a moderately negative stimulus instead
causes curiosity and further examination. Negative media news is argued to fall into the latter category which
explains their popularity. Lifelike audiovisual media are
argued to have a particularly strong eects compared to
reading.[7]
Women have on average stronger avoidance reactions to
moderately negative stimuli. They point to negative news
as the main reason for avoiding international news. The
stronger avoidance reaction to moderately negative stimuli can be explained evolutionary as it being the role of
men to investigate and potentially respond aggressively to
the threat while women and children withdraw. Men and
women also dier on average on how they enjoy, evaluate, remember, comprehend, and identify with the people in negative news depending on if the news are negatively or positively framed. One explanation may that the
negative news are framed according to male preferences
by the often male journalists who cover such news and
that a more positive framing may attract a larger female
audience.[7]

See also
Afghanistanism
Agenda-setting theory

Notes

[1] Boyd, A. (1994) Broadcast Journalism,Techniques of Radio and TV News. Oxford: Focal.
[2] Galtung, J. & Ruge, M. Holmboe (1965): The Structure of
Foreign News. The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and
Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers, Journal of
Peace Research, vol. 2, pp. 64-91; online edition (JSTOR
access required)

[3] Schlesinger P. (1987) Putting 'Reality' Together, 2nd edition London: Methuen.
[4] Bell A. (1991) The Language of News Media. Oxford:
Blackwell.
[5] Ryan, C. (1991) Prime Time Activism: Media Strategies for
Grassroots Organizing Boston: South End Press. p. 31.
[6] News values. IT and citizen journalism. URL accessed
March 27, 2011.
[7] Maria Elizabeth Grabe. Evolutionary perspectives on
sport and competition. In Roberts, S. C. (2011).
Roberts, S. Craig, ed. Applied Evolutionary Psychology. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/
9780199586073.001.0001. ISBN 9780199586073.

6 References
Hetherington A. (1985) News, Newspapers and
Television. London: Macmillan, p.40.
Whyte-Venables J. (2012) What is News? Amazon
(Kindle) KAPPA! ASIN: B008HOADC6.

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