News Values

News values are the factors defined by Galtung and Ruge that help to explain how journalists and editors decided that certain news stories an image were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not. While they applied these factors to news stories in newspapers, they can also be applied to radio news bulletins.


Immediacy- has it happened recently? is the story 'breaking'? 
This often pushes a news story to the front page of a newspaper or in our case, to the top of a radio news bulletin.

Familiarity- is it culturally or geographically close to us in London/Britain/Europe/the USA? 
This news value becomes even more prominent with local news coverage.

Amplitude- is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people? 

Frequency- does the event happen often?






Impact- can we identify with the story as having a profound effect on our lives? Does the story contain elements that would make us feel threatened? 
The often has the effect of pushing a news story higher up the news agenda.

Predictability- Did we expect it to happen? 

Surprise- Is it an unusual or unexpected event? 
This news value, more then predictability, tends to push a story further up in the news agenda. Surprise as a news value can relate to positive as well as negative stories.





Continuity- Has the story already been defined as news? is it part of an ongoing or lone-running story?
Many news bulletins contain stories with continuity as a news value. However most of the time the news story will be further down the news agenda. Often there will be 'breaking' elements to a story that has already been defined as news.





Conflict- Does the story contain drama in describing disagreements, arguments, fights or battles between two or more people/organisations? 
Most news stories will contain this news value






Elite people- Does the story concern well-know people, such s celebrities? 
Certain types of newspapers (such as tabloids including the sun, the mirror and the star), certain television news broadcasting (such as E News) and certain radio stations (such as capital radio) are dominated by stories including this news value.
There are many that only become 'news worthy' because they involve celebrities.





Personalisation- Is it a human interest story?
This is a prominent news value providing an emotional response from the audience. This is one of the most frequent news values because a large percentage of the audience can relate to them.






Negativity- Is it bad news?
News bulletins and news papers are frequently dominated by bad news stories.






Scandal- Is the story likely to provoke moral outrage from part of the audience? 
Scandal, particularly involving elite people or members of society in positions of trust feature high up on the news agenda.

Balance- The story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death. 
Whilst 'good news' stories don't tend to dominate news bulletins, they are often found towards the end of a bulletin as an antidote to the bad news that has dominated.

When I analyse news in more detail i'll make a note of all of the news values. Determining what news values are in stories will help me when I am creating my own news stories, helping me think about a story's suitability for inclusion.