Newspapers: News Values

Read Media Factsheet 76: News Values and complete the following questions/tasks. 
Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets

1) Come up with a news story from the last 12 months for each of the categories suggested by Harriss, Leiter and Johnson:
  • Conflict-  MI5 believed black people posed security risk, papers reveal Full story here
  • Progress-
  • Disaster- 
  • Consequence- Saudi Arabia to hit back in case of sanctions over Jamal Khashoggi  Full story
  • Prominence 
  • Novelty
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?
Britsh woman dies after Afghan bomb blast. As a young British soldier has died elsewhere, because they are British it gains cultural proximity as a British audience would view them as 'one of their own'. Especially as she is a woman, it is considered more newsworthy as it is unusual.

 3) What is gatekeeping?
The process of filtering information prior to dissemination. This is usually done by the editor.
4) What are the six ways bias can be created in news?

  • Bias through selection and omission
  • Bias through placement
  • Bias by Headline
  • Bias by photos captions and camera angles
  • Bias through use of names and titles
  • Bias by choice of words


5) How have online sources such as Twitter, bloggers or Wikileaks changed the way news is selected and published?
Wikileaks is a raw source of information for news. It hasnt been mediated, regulated or censored. News institutions will use the information for their own news agendas. Twitter also provides first hand footage as news source as people upload photos of live events. The use of social media and the internet in general gives the news more sources to use and are able to tell the story in more detail as people who are actually there can provide footage.

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?
This shows how Sky view Twitter as a reliable source as if they didnt believe it was, they wouldn't have used the content from it.
  • What does it say about how news is being produced?
News footage is becoming more centralised around citizen journalism. For a major story to be covered well, using what the public shoot adds to the realism and allows news sources to report stories in more detail.
  • Why might this be a problem for journalistic standards?
It is harder for journalists to catch their own footage as they cant be everywhere. They can't predict when something will happen for them to be there and ready to
7) In your opinion, how has the digital age changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? 
The digital age has changed news

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.

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.

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