News Values

Paul Brighton, Dennis Foy

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781446233320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Written by two practitioner-academics (who between them have more than fifty years of news industry experience), News Values analyses the shape of the news industry - a world of rolling news and multimedia platforms, and a world where broadcast news is increasingly considered another element of show business.

Detailed chapters include critiques of existing theories, close study of the newspaper, radio, television and internet news channels, plus informative chapters on the many factors that shape the news we read, watch and hear including the role of the citizen journalist, user-generated content, spin doctors, and the new wave of press barons. Further chapters provide detailed analysis of the way in which the same story is treated across different media channels, and how journalists and editors work to keep breathing new life into rolling news stories.

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Analysing News Values	1
The Key Analysis of Galtung and Ruge’s Structuring and Selecting News

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Many books on journalism and news contain sections which either attempt to define and codify news values, or review previous attempts to do so. It is important to look at some of these previous attempts to set the scene for our own analysis, and to help us see how the authors’ own backgrounds tend to determine which kind of news values analysis they conduct.

Broadly, previous accounts of news values tend to be of two kinds. The first examines news stories from the perspective of the working journalist, and tries to isolate the features of an event which make it likely to qualify as newsworthy. The second attempts to take a broader approach – incorporating areas such as ideology, cultural conditioning, technological determinism and others. We will review both of these approaches in detail but will also argue that a third approach is needed in conjunction with these two existing schools of thought. This third approach is necessary because of changes within individual media, and because of a shift in the nature of the relationships between providers and consumers of news. (Terms such as ‘professional’, ‘sociological’ and ‘cultural’ are used as convenient and recognisable shorthand in this context.)

In their seminal article on the process of establishing a set of values which turn an event into a news item, Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge drew an analogy with radio broadcasts; in essence, for broadcasts to mean something they need to make a cultural connection with their audiences. If they do not do so, they are simply a form of noise, essentially worthless. The key premise of their argument is that we need to attune to events for them to mean anything, and for them to mean anything they need to have some form of cultural connection.

Galtung and Ruge wrote as social scientists, as people to whom human behaviour and all that it entails is of significance and interest. The magnitude of this perspective cannot be overstated; it sets the core agenda and colours their work. A journalist, reporter or researcher would take a different perspective, one which is determined, at least in part, by the audience at which that publication of broadcast is targeted. As Max Hastings observed when he became editor of the Daily Telegraph: ‘Readers have no rational idea of what they do or do not want in their newspaper – by proxy they employ editors to decide for them.’ (Hastings, 2002: 100).

It is worth beginning with a brief overview of the criteria that Galtung and Ruge decided would best fit their prognosis, in the order in which they were introduced to the readers of 1965:

Relevance The effect on a likely or potential audience.

Timeliness Is it a recent occurrence? Is there a good chance the audience will previously have been unaware of this development?

Simplification Can it be described simply and straightforwardly?

Predictability Could the event have been foreseen and, if appropriate, planned for?

Unexpectedness Was it something entirely out of the ordinary, and not capable of being planned for in advance?

Continuity Is it a new and further development in a sequence already established?

Composition Is it particularly suitable to the demands of that medium or news outlet?

Élite peoples Is the subject of the story already famous?

Élite nations Does it affect our nation, or nations we consider important?

Negativity Is bad news always likely to be good news to the journalistic community?

Galtung and Ruge applied a further set of qualifiers which affect their core value system:

Frequency The time span needed for an event to unfold itself and acquire meaning.

Amplitude Threshold expands beyond the normal, and the unexpected becomes news.

Clarity the less ambiguity a signal has, the more the event will be noticed

Meaningfulness Cultural relevance and social consonance or dissonance of an event.

Predictability Expect and/or desire an event to happen, and it becomes a news item.

Continuum Once an event has become news it gathers its own momentum.

Composition Internal relevance of items within a programme or publication, as a system for determining running order.

Naturally, these headings will be considered, along with examples and possible revisions, during the course of this book. Galtung and Ruge’s work remains an ideal starting-point for any serious discussion of news values.

From a social scientist’s perspective, there is much in favour of their analysis. From an editorial perspective, it is less satisfactory. There is, for instance, no room within these criteria for individual perspective or ambition of a news gatherer, of a publisher, of an editor. No room for the corruption that comes from a publisher’s or broadcaster’s reliance on advertising revenue – revenue that could be compromised by an adverse piece of editorial work. Nor is there room for the quasi-political manoeuvring that is integral to the pacts between the angels and devils of the public relations and journalistic trades. Such pacts are made on a daily basis – and it is for the reader to decide which of the two types, angels or devils, the two opposite branches of the news generation and reportage industry fall. Not that it is always the case that those people stay on the same side of the fence at all times; they can jump from one side to the other and back again, dependent on the story. Or from one job to the other, as Alastair Campbell proved (whose notoriety in a high-powered public relations role was cemented by a six-year stint as Director of Communications for the Labour government of Tony Blair). Campbell worked his way up from being a junior reporter to becoming Political Editor of the Daily Mirror, before resigning to become spokesman for Blair when the latter was still in opposition. Since resigning his government post in 2003 Campbell has returned to writing occasional columns in newspapers. We will examine more closely Campbell and his role in the news processes surrounding the Iraq invasion of 2003 in a subsequent chapter.

Since Galtung and Ruge wrote, other media academics have revisited their conclusions, and suggested amendments. For instance, Denis MacShane (1979: 46) subdivided newsworthy events into the following categories:

Conflict

Hardship and danger to the community

Unusualness (oddity, novelty)

Scandal

Individualism

It is worth noting that MacShane was writing as a practising journalist; though he later became a professional politician and served as a British government minister in the Blair administration. Hartley (1982) attempted to account for differing news agendas as being driven by the following areas: politics, the economy, foreign affairs, domestic stories, one-off stories and sport.

As we can see already, the danger in attempting to codify news values is that we can end up simply listing subject headings of stories – almost like an account of the sections of an extensive broadsheet newspaper.

Harcup and O’Neill’s (2001) study of the printed press resulted in their attempt to revise and update Galtung and Ruge. They identified these headings:

Power élite

Celebrity

Entertainment

Surprise

Bad news

Good news

Magnitude

Relevance

Follow-ups

Media agenda

Some of these are more concerned with the subjects of, and actors within, the story (power élite, celebrity), while others are more conceptual (relevance), and yet others are accounts of media practice (follow-ups, media agenda). All three of these areas will be considered in detail later. Harrison, summarising previous authors’ conclusions (2006: 137) also lists a number of criteria by which news stories can be judged and listed:

Availability of pictures or film (for TV)

Short, dramatic occurrences (which can be sensationalised)

Novelty value

Capable of simple reporting

Grand scale

Negative (violence, crime, confrontation, catastrophe)

Unexpected

Or expected

Relevance/meaning

Similar events already in the news

Balanced programme

Élite people/nations

Personal or human interest framing

These, too, contain elements of media practice (the creation of what is perceived as a balanced programme) as well as more recognisably journalistic headings.

Sociological and cultural accounts of news values

This is a more contested, varied and complex area. A number of widely different approaches have been taken. Harrison (2006: 18–38) refers to three types of views of news – common sense (broadly from the perspective of the consumer), practitioner (as reviewed above) and academic. Within the academic, she distinguishes between Marxist/political, culturalist, organisational product and new media theory approaches.

In this section, we will look at how previous academic discussions of news values – often within the areas outlined by Harrison – have approached the question of news values.

One of the most influential analysts of news values is Stuart Hall. In ‘The determination of news photographs’ (Cohen and Young, 1981), Hall specifically distinguishes between what he terms ‘formal’ news values (broadly the approach analysed in the last section, starting with Galtung and Ruge) and ‘ideological’ news values. His ‘formal’ news values are:

Linkage Is the story linked, or capable of being linked, with a prior event, happening, occurrence?

Recency Has it happened recently?

Newsworthiness of event/person This criterion may be thought to pose or beg more questions than it answers!

Crucially, Hall goes on to distinguish between the sort of formal news values outlined by Galtung and Ruge (and Ostgaard), and what he terms ideological news values. He contrasts the foreground structure of news and the events reported with the hidden ‘deep structure’. This involves what he describes as the ‘consensus knowledge’ of the world, which, he argues, provides a framework within which the news operates.

Within Hall’s broad approach, there are several views of the extent to which the operation of news within a broadly manufactured consensus of values is conscious or unconscious. Young (Cohen and Young, 1981: 393–421) refers to a number of theories of news as crisis. As well as the market and the consensus paradigm theories, to which we will return, he also includes the manipulative theory. As its name implies, this infers a conscious manipulation of news agendas and news organisations – with consequent effects on news values – by individual proprietors or the power of market capitalism. This is an area of media activity which has also been explored in some depth by Noam Chomsky and by Robert McChesney, amongst others. The outcome is the perpetuation and reinforcement of market capitalist and social consensus values. While the role of individual journalists may not be a conscious participation, the net effect of their activity is the maintenance of the effects of such manipulation. Young himself, it should be noted, does not subscribe to this view.

Hall also does not see this ‘consensus knowledge’ as the result of an overt conspiracy by media practitioners and journalists. Writing with Chritcher, Jefferson, Clarke, and Roberts (in Cohen and Young, 1981), Hall attributes the reinforcement of such value systems to:

1. Time pressures in newsrooms leading to the increased reliance on ‘pre-scheduled events’
2. Notions of impartiality, balance and objectivity. This, they argue, leads to extensive reliance on ‘accredited sources’ which tend to be sources embodying or buttressing existing power structures. This, in turn, they argue, leads to over-representation of existing power élites in news output. This results in yet further perpetuation and strengthening of the existing power élites. These power élites become what Hall et al. refer to as Primary Definers of the news discourse and the news agendas. They have the power, consequently, to become framers of the contexts within which problems are addressed and discussed.

Within this context, Hall et al. talk about structural imperatives, rather than an overt conspiracy of the type implied in Young’s ‘Manipulative theory.’ This, they argue, embraces:

Selectivity Different slants on the reporting of events.

Coding Use of specific types of language and imagery.

Also influential, but adopting a different starting-point, is the work of Herbert Gans. His 1979 book Deciding What’s News was reissued on its 25th anniversary in 2004 with a new Preface, taking (brief) account of developments in the intervening years. In his original text, in an important discussion of story selection, Gans (2004:78–79) outlines four theories of the way such selections and decisions are made:

Journalistic judgement

Organisational requirements Commercial pressures – including circulation/ratings; the structure and hierarchy of the organisation and its effects on story choices

The Event/Mirror Theory The idea that journalism and the journalist, in Shakespeare’s words, are holding a mirror up to nature

External determinism This involves factors such as Technology; Economy; Ideology; Culture; Audience, and Sources

Equally important is Gans’s subsequent categorisation of criteria for story suitability. He enumerates the following:

Importance Impact (e.g. on numbers of people). Past or future significance.

Interest People. Role reversals. Human interest. The expose. The Hero. ‘Gee-whiz’ stories.

Factors of the product The Medium. The Format.

Novelty (‘Internal’ novelty. The...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Analysing News Values
• 2 How to Study News Values
• 3 National Daily Newspapers
• 4 National Television News
• 5 Sunday Newspapers
• 6 Rolling News
• 7 Radio Broadcast News
• 8 Smaller Markets and Niches
• 9 Regional and Local Television News
• 10 The Rise and Rise of Citizen Journalist
• 11 Corruption of Values
• 12 Same Story, Different Media, Different Treatments
• Conclusion
• References
• Index