A-Level Media: News and Online Media
Introduction:
For this section of the exam we need to focus on complete editions of national
newspapers. We will look at the Daily
Mirror, the Daily Mail and The Daily
Telegraph and two front covers from the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and two front covers from The Daily Telegraph. We will be paying attention
to the web-sites and online versions of these products (media industries and
audiences) and a selection of articles from several different newspapers
web-sites. (media language and representation) plus relevant Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram feeds from each news organisation. We also need to look at how we
discuss and debate news stories across areas of social media.
As part of
this section, you will need to find and select a current news story. You will
need to attempt to track its progress through the newspapers and their social
forums and include debates and discussions around the story. You therefore need
to try and select a story that has a
certain amount of mileage to it, or as it is known in news terms ‘NEWS VALUES’ You will be given a sheet
to help you track and analyse your chosen story. In preparation for this task you first need to
understand what is meant by ‘NEWS VALUES’.
Galtung
and Ruge’s list of news values
A
ground-breaking list of news values was drawn up by media researchers Johan
Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge. They 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. Although their research was conducted
in 1965, virtually any media analyst’s discussion of news values will refer to
most of the characteristics they list. This list provides a kind of scoring system:
a story which scores highly on each value is likely to come at the start of a
television news bulletin or make the front page of a newspaper. The values they
identified fall into three categories:
Impact
Audience Identification
Pragmatics of media coverage
TASK:
Your task is
to read the definition for each news value in the three categories and attempt
to find a news story that meets that particular news value. A story can be used more than once as it may
well fit more than one news value.
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, bankruptcy,
violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or simply extreme
weather conditions 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. As Charles A. Dana famously put it, “If a dog bites
a man, that’s not news. But if a man bites a dog, that is news!”
Unambiguity
Events which
are easy to grasp make for better copy than those that are open to more than
one interpretation, or where understanding of its implications depends on a
broader knowledge of the complex background to the event. In other words, the simpler and more
straightforward a story is the more likely it is to appear in newspapers.
Audience Identification:
Personification
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. Some people claim this news value has
become distorted, and that news editors over-rate personality stories,
especially those involving celebrities.
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. 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 your local councillor.
Pragmatics of media coverage:
Consonance
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. Indeed,
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 inconsequential item of domestic news. In this way the prominence
given to a story depends not only on its own news value but also on those of
competing stories. This is a matter of the editors’ judgement, more than
anything else.
PRAGMATICS OF MEDIA COVERAGE:
IMPACT:
AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION:
