"News Values & News Production" In this journal, Peter Golding and Philip Elliot discuss news values and its production in relation to how the news is presented to consumers. Golding and Elliot begin by stating that news values are present in today's broadcasting. They state that, "News values are used in two ways. They are the criteria of selection from material available to the newsroom of those items worthy of inclusion in the final product. Second, they are the guidelines for the presentation of items, suggesting what to emphasis, what to omit, and where to give priority in the preparation of the items for presentation to the audience". The media selects its available stories, and then rates them from the most important to the least important. By creating which news they want to deliver it shows that there are news values which they base their decisions upon. Now that we know how they are used, Golding and Elliot will tell us where they come from. Golding and Elliot state that, "News values derive from unstated or implicit assumptions or judgments about three things: 1.Audience 2.Accessibility and 3.Fit". The audience is important to consider when making news decisions because they are the ones who consume it. Therefore, it must come from something that will appeal to their interests. They measure accessibility in two ways: "prominence and ease of capture". Prominence is how well known a story is and ease of capture is how convenient a story is. They say this can determine how much time and effort a station will need to put into covering a story. Fit is how well a story will integrate into the news. These three items make up where news is born from, and what they are based on when deciding if they will fill a headline slot. Golding and Elliot go into further detail by breaking the three derived sources of news into sub-categories. They say that, "News values are attached to the practice of job, they are story values. Some of the more important are as follows. The first four derive from considerations of the audience, the remainder from a mixture of the three factors described above".
Drama "News stories are, as the term suggests, stories as well as news". Since the news is told like a story, it appeals to people and gains their attention. They note that by positioning the news like a story it is much more enjoyable and even entertaining.
Visual Attractiveness Here they notice that visuals are much more pursued than other forms of media. Therefore, since the news is mainly broadcast on television, it is to their advantage. They also notice that an "eyewitness" account is another appealing benefit. Audiences want to feel like they are there, therefore they assume they can understand a story on a different level.
Entertainment The news must not only present the news, but also be a form of entertainment. Consumers want to enjoy the news while staying updated. Golding and Elliot state that, "For some broadcast
journalists there is a tension between the desire to ensure audience attentiveness and interest by following entertainment values, and a concern to maintain standards of seriousness and the plain honest narration of facts; between information and entertainment". Therefore, news broadcasters try to integrate both. If a station is known for being entertaining but also delivering the news, it will be highly consumed by audiences.
Importance The importance of a story is high on the list of priorities of a news station. Golding and Elliot state that, "The most frequently cited reason for including a particular items in news bulletins is its importance". It is knowledge that is vital to audiences because of its importance, and consequences.
Size The bigger the story the more likely it is to make headlines. They state that, "The bigger the story the greater the likelihood of its inclusion, and the greater prominence with which it will be presented. This simple rule of course begs the question of just how events are measured and which dimensions are relevant. The most common considerations are the numbers or type of people involved, or the scale of the event as an instance of a type". The size of the story is based on its ability to make headlines, or how we regard an event, person, or the group of people that are involved.
Proximity They divide proximity into two groups, cultural and geographical. They state that, "Stories are culturally proximate if they refer to events within the normal experience of journalists and their audience". If the audience is able to understand the news that is presented it is cultural proximity. "Geographical proximity refers to the simples rules of thumb that suggest the primacy of domestic news and the allocation of news from the rest of the world according to their nearness to the audience". A story that is "closer to home" will be much more important to a viewer than one that is a great distance.
Brevity Brevity explains how the news is "formatted." It includes the timing of a news cast, and the time each story receives. By tailoring the news into organized segments allows for a better flow of stories and well as understanding from the audience. "Limiting news stories to their apparently more obvious elements is essential if there is to be rooms for even a minimal selection of the day's events. This limit seems to emphasise the necessary objectivity of broadcast news while in fact merely disguising the vast edifice of assumptions and cultural packaging which allows such brief items to make sense at all". Not only the time formatting but also the cultural understanding comes into play here. News stations are able to broadcast
in this form because of the "cultural packaging" they do. The audience is able to make sense of the quick pace because they put it into terms that the audience can grasp quickly.
Negativity "Bad news is good news". The more controversial, the higher consumption will be. It is something people want to see. They notice that this is not true in Western countries. "It is worth noting that negativity is not a universal primary news value. What western journalists often see as the tediousness and irrelevance of broadcast news in eastern Europe has much to do with the convention in many of these countries of presenting positive news while excluding accident, violence, crime, and other negative categories prominent in news elsewhere". However, many countries rest their foundation on negative news because of its strong appeal to audiences.
"The next three values are derived more from production requirements than the perceived demands of the audience”. Recency The news must be recent. Recency related to news occurrences and the time it takes to turn them around back to the viewers in story form. They say that it derives from two factors. "First, traditional journalistic competition puts a premium on the supply of 'earliest intelligences' ahead of rivals". This means that whoever is privileged to have the knowledge first will be ahead of its rivals. "Second, the periodicity of news production itself sets the frame within which events in the world will be perceived. Thus daily production sets a daily frame, and news events must have occurred in the twenty-four hours between bulletins to merit inclusion". News stories must be recent, ground-breaking, or up-to-date in order to be included in a news report.
Elites "As a value within 'bigness' news values emphasise that big names are better news than nobodies, major personalities of more interest than ordinary folk". Audiences would rather see a high-profile individual or celebrity make the news than their neighbours. It draws their attention much more than hearing a story about the average Joe.
Personalities "News is about the people, and mostly about individuals. This news value emphasises the need to make stories comprehensible by reducing complex processes and institutions to the actions of individuals". By making the news more "personal" and "person oriented" makes it something audiences can relate to and understand. The news broadcasters take this a step further by depicting situations as people with humanistic adjectives. "The analogies appear in the terminology of the emotions which characteristics institutional or national relations". By making situations seems like an individual, it is more appealing and better understood by audiences because its a level on which they can relate.
Bias, Objectivity and Ideology "It is possible to see broadcast news as simply the result of the bias of individual journalists, committed either to professional notions of how news should be structured, or to social views of the ideas it should convey". Journalists are bound by professional standard to deliver news in a certain way, and they are also naturally inclined to shape it in a particular way based on themselves. "The news caster is the visible tip of the news production plant, a visual or aural reminder that it is a process handled by people; fallible, biased and opiniated, like the rest of us". Here, Golding and Elliot recognize that the news is biased. Professional standard are even a form of bias. They remind us here that, the news does not just deliver itself, handled and composed by individuals who in turn whether conscious or unconscious put their opinions into the news reports.
They make two distinctions of bias here, impartiality and objectivity. "Impartiality implies a disinterested approach to news, lacking in motivation to shape or select material according to a particular view or opinion". This is where news is not as heavily manufactured or there is not a high amount of input. "Objectivity, however defined, is clearly a broader demand than this". Objectivity is news that is biased. "In other words we should distinguish bias as the deliberate aim of journalism, which is rare, from bias as the inevitable but unintended consequences of organisation". Objectivity news is biased, but it is not the main aim of an organization, it is unintended, something that seems natural. They later say that these "terms" journalists must endure are part of their professional lifestyle. "News is ideology to the extent that it provides an integrated picture of reality". News forms a snap of pictures for us that in turn poses as reality. It is something that is very real to audiences. "The claim that news is ideology implies that it provides a world view both consistent in itself, and supportive of the interest of powerful social groups. This can come about in two ways". First the news appeals to a group of elites, people who recognize the news. Second, news appeals to a wide range of cultural expectations and understandings. They later go onto state the news ideologies can be divided into three groups. "First it focuses our attention on those institutions and events in which social conflict is managed and resolved". The news offers a story, and also a solution or advice on how to resolve a conflict. "Second, broadcast news, in studiously following statutory demands to eschew partiality or controversy, and professional demands for objectivity an neutrality, is left to draw on the values and beliefs of the broadest social consensus". Although the news reports on controversial topics, it is limited to what is can say and report, it must stay in the "norms" of what is culturally accepted. "Third, as we have seen, broadcast news is, for historical and organizational reasons, inherently incapable of providing a portrayal of social change or of displaying the operation of power in and between societies. It thus portrays a world which is unchanging and unchangeable". Although the news acts an informing agent, it also serves as an ideology that the world is changing but as a whole is unchangeable.
