TREATMENT OF NEWS

What are news values really?

• “Passed down to new generations of journalists through a process of training and socialization” (Harrison, 2006, p.153)

News Values: A Slippery Concept

• “Instead they see a lot of news judgments being made swiftly and surely and seemingly based on nothing more scientific than gut feeling.” David Randall (2000,p.24)

• Galtung & Ruge (1965) focusing on newspapers and broadcast news, devised a list describing what they believed were significant contributing factors as to how the news is constructed

“How do events become news?”• Galtung & Ruge (1965) presented 12 factors that they

intuitively identified as being important in the selection of news:

1. Frequency An event that unfolds within a publication cycle of the

news medium is more likely to be selected

2. Threshold Point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect (the more gruesome the more the impact)

Galtung & Ruge “How do events become news?”

3.Unambiguity : absence of clearness Understanding of an event

4. Meaningfulness Culturally familiar

5.Consonance: ‘harmony or agreement among components’ News selector might have the ability to predict events “pre-image” of an event

Galtung & Ruge “How do events become news?”

6.Unexpectedness Rare event is more likely to be selected

7.Continuity An event already in the news…

8. Composition Intrinsic news value overlooked priority given to

events that fits into the overall composition

Galtung & Ruge“How do events become news?”

9. Reference to elite nations

10. Reference to elite people

11.Reference to persons

12. Reference to something negative

An Alternative Approach

An Alternative Approach• Galtung & Ruge (1965) suggested that journalists should be

encouraged to counteract the dominant notion

• “Alternative Media” Alternative media are media (newspapers, radio, television,

magazines, movies, Internet, etc.) which provide alternative information to the mainstream media in a given context, whether the mainstream media are commercial, publicly supported, or government-owned.

Alternative Media

• Galtung & Ruge (1965) recommendations to journalists- critique and rejection of news values dominant in the media which guides much Northern news coverage of the South

The central argument for Alternative Media

- Avoid catastrophic images in favor of political, structural and natural root causes

- Preserve human dignity by providing sufficient background info.

- Provide accounts by the people concerned rather than interpretations

The central argument for Alternative Media

- Provide more frequent and more positive images of women

- Avoid all forms of generalizations, stereotyping and discrimination (NGO-EC Liasion Committee, 1989)

Writing a lead for a crime story

• Who? Two men• What? robbed a jewelry store• Where? Royal Gems, at 55 West 47th Street, in

the heart of Manhattan’s diamond district• When? Saturday, March 13• Why? No information• How? The men carried pistols, police said,

adding that the men bound three employees and a customer and stole gems and money. The police also said that no one was injured in the holdup.

EVALUATE YOURSELF

• Are the 5 W’s and H stacked most important to least?

• Is the lead free of unattributed opinion?• 30 words or less?• Active voice?• Free of unfamiliar proper nouns?