News Values: Blog tasks

 Read Media Factsheet 76: News Values and complete the following questions/tasks. 

Our Media Factsheet archive is available here - you'll need your Greenford Google login to access.

1) Come up with a news story from the last 12 months for each of the categories suggested by Harriss, Leiter and Johnson:

• Conflict - the conflict in Armenia and Azerbaijan 
• Progress - legalisation of gay marriage in some countries 
• Disaster - COVID 19
• Consequence - Californian forest fires
• Prominence - Sean Connery's death 
• Novelty - world's oldest meteor lands in UK garden

2) What example news story does the Factsheet use to illustrate Galtung and Ruge's News Values? Why is it an appropriate example of a news story likely to gain prominent coverage?

Asylum seekers could pose a threat to culture, safety of a country at stake. The story cements fearful views. 

3) What is gatekeeping?

the process of filtering imformation prior to disemination

4) What are the six ways bias can be created in news?

selection + omission - editor's bias 

placement - where it is in the newspaper (front or back page)

headline - it's the most important part of the front cover

photos, captions, and camera angles - certain photos can be deceiving

names - media often use labels and titles to describe people, places, and events

choice of words - negative or positive connotations

5) How have online sources such as Twitter, bloggers or Wikileaks changed the way news is selected and published?

They have a much bigger sense of transparency as they are doing it for no profit, it doesn't matter to them whether a story is relevant or not

6) Complete the task on the last page of the Factsheet regarding Sky News and Twitter:

• What does this reveal about how Sky views Twitter as a news source?

Immediacy is key to the spread of important news

• What does it say about how news is being produced?

Citizen journalism is the fastest growing type

• What role does the audience have in this process?

they are the creators and sharers of this news

• Why might this be a problem for journalistic standards?

normal citizens lack the journalistic knowledge

 

7) In your opinion, how has the digital age changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? 

It's decreased the reliability of the news values such as elite nations, it could bring in national bias. Citizen journalism decreases the value of news values. 

8) How would you update them for 2018? Choose TWO of Galtung and Ruge's news values and say how they have been affected by the growth of digital technology.

ambiguity - posts on social media, especially from bystanders, make a developing situation much more clearer for news companies

 exclusivity - social media leaks may prevent exclusives developing

E.g. Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on Twitter or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken so different angles might be required. Newspapers now contain more comment or opinion rather than the breaking story.