My JOUR1111 lecture this week was of great value. Great news
values, that is!
News values are the degree of prominence given to a story
and the resulting attention given by the audience, and are often dictated and
elected by media organisations. You don't really think sports and celebrities
are interesting! It's all brainwashing! Unless that's what they want us to
think....
Anyway, there are more news values and ways of organising
them than you can poke an aerial at. Everything comes down to newsworthiness.
These values are even different across different services,
countries and cultures. While the phrase, "if it bleeds, it leads" is
true for some media outlets, with lead stories tending to be tragedies, TV
channels like Ten and 9 take on the "if it's local, it leads"
approach.
Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981,
stated in 2000 that editors are the 'human sieves' of torrent news. They
ultimately determine the news values and what is newsworthy.
Drama, visual attractiveness, entertainment, brevity and
other values are examples of such factors valued by different media. In 1996,
Masterson came up with his own little dandy list:
1. Significance
2. Proximity
3. Conflict
4. Human interest
5. Novelty
6. Prominence
Seems fair enough? Duh-duh. In 2002 Macgregor reckoned he
could top that and concocted another:
1. Visualness
2. Conflict
3. Emotion
4. Celebrification of the journalist
So which is right? THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. How unfair is
that? It's really got me worried for the Journalism Quiz.
And yet with all these values in place, newsworthiness is
under threat more than ever. Journalism and the commercialization of media and
social life, journalism and PR and the difference between ideals and reality of
news reporting all jeopardise quality journalism. PR influence causes
tabloidisation and lazy incompetent journalism. Then as the media apocalypse
reaches its worst, hyper-commercialization sets in and as I've previously
prophesised, we all get crap news.
So what actually drives the decisions made in media
organisations about what is newsworthy? The audience is not just the audience
any more. We're the distributors too and there's a new balance of power.
So let us join hands the cease this decline of journalism!
If people from all over the world stand on a giant globe, join hands and sing,
maybe things will miraculously get better. That's what we've been told before
so it must be true and important.