Analysis of News
Audiences, on the whole, tend to regard the news as reliable, as coming from an authoritative, largely impartial source. They therefore tend to trust the information they receive as news, and believe it to be "true". This is not necessarily the case, as you will know if you have ever been involved in a news story yourself. As a Media Studies student, you will be asked to appraise the news with a critical eye - you may be surprised at some of the "truths' that you uncover about this very important media form.
News is often identified with the person reporting it - whether that is the journalist writing the story or the one fronting the TV report. However, a great deal of the news is fed from other sources - the journalist is only summarising a wire report, or official statement. News is often supplied to newspapers, radios and TV stations by a news agency. Two of the most famous are Reuters and Agence France Presse (AFP). Check out their websites and the services they offer.
Some agencies concentrate on a particular region or nation, and may have a distinct ideological slant. Try
Therefore, those who present the news to us construct it from other sources in the same way that any other media textmaker would. News consists of an artificial narrative, with stories shaped around a beginning, middle and an end. There is also a hierarchy of news - a series of news values that editors and other gatekeepers use in order to decide which news stories to communicate - and in what order.
The basic questions you always need to ask about a piece of news are
- WHO did this story happen to?
- WHAT happened?
- WHERE did it happen?
- WHEN did it happen?
- WHY did it happen?
You might also want to ask
- WHO wants to read this story?
- WHAT is going to happen next?
- WHERE are effects of this story going to be felt?
- WHEN did this story first appear?
- WHY is this story categorised as important news?
For the answer to this last question you need to think about news values.
In 1965, media researchers Galtung & Ruge analysed international news stories to find out what factors they had in common, and what factors placed them at the top of the news agenda worldwide. They came up with the following list of news values. - a kind of scoring system - a story which scores highly on each value is certain to come at the start of a TV news bulletin, or make the front page of a newspaper. Journalists and editors also draw heavily on their experience - of what an audience expects, of what stories have had a major impact on public consciousness in the past, of what is important - and each news organisation will have their own system of setting a news agenda.
| Value |
Description |
| Negativity |
Bad news - involving death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or simply extreme weather conditions - is always rated above 'positive' stories (royal weddings, celebrations etc) |
| Closeness to home (Proximity) |
Audiences supposedly relate more to stories that are close to them geographically, or involve people from their country, or those that are reported that way(eg '12 Hong Kongers aboard Australia Crash Plane'). News gatekeepers must consider carefully how meaningful a story will be to their particular audience |
| Recency |
Newspapers are very competitive about breaking news - about revealing stories as they happen. 24 hour news channels such as CNN and BBC World also rate this value very highly. However, as we have seen with the events of September 11, stories may take a while to develop, and become coherent, so recency is not always the best value to rate. |
| Currency |
This is almost opposite to recency, in that stories that have been in the public eye for some time already are deemed valuable. Therefore a story - for instance about the abduction and murder of a child - may run for weeks and weeks, even if nothing new really happens. |
| Continuity |
Events that are likely to have a continuing impact (a war, a two week sports tournament) have a high value when the story breaks, as they will develop into an ongoing narrative which will get audiences to 'tune in tomorrow'. |
Uniqueness |
'Dog Bites Man' is not a story. 'Man Bites Dog' is. Any story which covers a unique or unusual event (two-headed elephant born to Birmingham woman) has news values |
| Simplicity |
Obvious, but true. Stories which are easy to explain ('Cat stuck up tree') are preferred over stories which are not (anything to do with the Balkan or Palestinian conflicts) |
Personality |
Stories that centre around a particular person, because they can be presented from a 'human interest' angle, are beloved of newspapers, particularly if they involve a well-known person. Some say this news value has become distorted, and that news organisations over-rate personality stories, particularly those involving celebrities ('Posh Goes Shopping'). What do you think? |
Expectedness
(Predictability) |
Does the event match the expectations of a news organisation and its audience? Or, has what was expected to happen (violence at a demonstration, horrific civilian casualties in a terrorist attack) actually happened? If a news story conforms to the preconceived ideas of those covering it, then it has expectedness as an important news value |
| Elite
Nations Or People |
Any story which covers an important, powerful nation (or organisation) has greater news values than a story which covers a less important nation. The same goes for people. George Bush is newsworthy whatever he does. |
Exclusivity |
Also a major factor when setting the news agenda. If a newspaper or news programme is the first and only news organisation breaking a story, then they will rate that very highly. The UK Sunday papers are very fond of exclusives, and will often break a story of national or international importance that no one else has. |
|
Size |
does matter when it comes to news stories. The bigger impact a story has, the more people it affects, the more money/resources it involves, the higher its value. This is also known as threshold |
Further Reading on News Values
Each news story is reported from a particular angle or slant. This may be one of the news values listed above, or it may be political or personal, depending on the journalist's (or the publication they work for's) beliefs.
The main ways in which to influence a news story are;
- Selection/omission
- Placement
- Headline
- Photo, Caption, Camera Angles
- Names & Titles (ie how you describe a person)
- Statistics
- Use of source
- Tone, or mode of address
Read more about these here:
Detecting Bias In The News - 8 ways in which a particular slant can be given to a piece of news
Bias In The News - more explanations plus examples.
Alternative Views
We are often told that we live in The Information Age, and that regular, recent updates of information (ie news) are vital to our survival. However, some say that the news is nothing but infotainment, and does not bring us any closer to the truth.
Jake Sexton stopped watching TV news a while ago ("better to be uninformed than misinformed"). You can read his reasoning here.
You could also check out FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) which seeks to correct some of the twisted truths currently masquerading as facts in our newscape.
