News Values

News Values are similar to a set of codes and conventions that articles are required to follow, in order for the public to receive news stories that are significant to them. There are a total of twelve news values, and they can be split into the following three classifications -

Impact
• Threshold: The bigger impact the story has, the more people it affects, the more extreme the effect or the more money or resources it involves, the better its chances of hitting the news stands.

• Frequency: Events, such as motorway pile-ups, murders and plane crashes, which occur suddenly and fit well with the newspaper or news broadcast's schedule are more readily reported than those which occur gradually or at inconvenient times of day or night. Long-term trends are unlikely to receive much coverage.

• Negativity: Bad news is more exciting than good news. Stories about death, tragedy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval, etc are always rated above positive stories such as royal weddings or celebrations. Bad news stories are more likely to be reported than good news because they are more likely to score high on other news values, such as threshold, unexpectedness, unambiguity and meaningfulness.

• Unexpectedness: If an event is out of the ordinary it will be more likely to make it into the news than an everyday occurrence would.

• Unambiguity: Events which are easy to grasp make better articles than those which are open to more than one interpretation, or where understanding of the implications depends on first understanding the complex background to the event.

Audience identification
• Personalisation: People are interested in people. News stories that centre on a particular person, and are presented from a human interest angle, are likely to make the front page, particularly if they involve a well-known person.

• Meaningfulness: This relates to cultural proximity and the extent to which the audience identifies with the topic. Stories about people who speak the same language, look the same, and share the same preoccupations as the audience receive more coverage than those involving people who do not.

• Reference to elite nations: Stories concerned with global powers receive more attention than those dealing with less influential nations. This also relates to cultural proximity — as those nations which are culturally closest to our own will receive most of the coverage.

• Reference to elite persons: The media pay attention to the rich, powerful, famous and infamous. Stories about important people get the most coverage. Hence, the American President gets more coverage than an Isle of Wight Councillor.

Pragmatics of media coverage
• Consonance: Or Corrospondance, stories which match the media's expectations receive more coverage than those which contradict them. At first sight, this appears to contradict the notion of unexpectedness. However, consonance refers to the media's readiness to report an item, which they are more likely to do if they are prepared for it. Journalists often have a preconceived idea of the angle they want to report an event from, even before they get there.

• Continuity: A story which is already in the news gathers a kind of momentum – the running story. This is partly because news teams are already in place to report the story, and partly because previous reportage may have made the story more accessible to the public.

• Composition: Stories must compete with one another for space in the media. For instance, editors may seek to provide a balance of different types of coverage. If there is an excess of foreign news, for instance, the least important foreign story may have to make way for an item of domestic news.