What Are The Seven News Values?
We often speak of seven news values held by news media gatekeepers – impact, timeliness, prominence, proximity, bizarreness, conflict, and currency.
Impact: The number of people whose lives will be influenced in some way by the subject of the story. For instance, a bakery strike may have less impact than a postal strike.
Timeliness: Recent events have higher news value than earlier happenings. Of particular value are stories brought to the public ahead of the competition. These are known as scoops.
Prominence: For the same occurrence, people in the public eye have higher news value than obscure people. For example, we cared that Magic Johnson had AIDS, while an ordinary citizen with AIDS would not have commanded the attention of the national news media.
Proximity: Stories about events and situations in one's home community are more newsworthy than events that take place far away. For example, journalists assess the value of a news item reporting tragic deaths by comparing the number of deaths with the distance from the home community. For instance:
if 1,000 persons drown in a flood in a faraway country, the story has about the same news value as a story describing how 100 persons drowned in a distant part of the United States.
- In turn, that 100 person story has about the same news value as a story concerning 10 flood victims within our own state.
- Finally, a story about those ten victims has about the same value as a story describing a flood which drowns one person in our local community.
Bizarreness: A classic example of this is dog-bites-man vs. man-bites-dog. Man-bites-dog is more bizarre. Dog-bites-man usually is not news.
Conflict: Strife is newsworthy.
Currency: More value is attributed to stories pertaining to issues or topics that are in the spotlight of public concern rather than to issues or topics about which people care less. Stories come and stories go. For example:
- At the beginning of the 1990s, there were stories about the First Gulf War, the Savings and Loan Crisis, and Senate confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court.
- As time passed, those stories became less interesting and were replaced by the Los Angeles Riots, the Miami hurricane, the new World Wide Web, a comet colliding with Jupiter, and the presidential elections.
- In turn, those stories were replaced by Somalia, Bosnia, O.J., Haiti.
- In 1997, the death of Princess Diana, the Hong Kong handover, Pathfinder on Mars, cloning, McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and Big Tobacco money.
- In 1999, JFK Jr. died in a plane crash, the Clinton impeachment trial, Microsoft monopoly, war over Kosovo, Columbine school shooting, and The Millennium, followed In the 2000s by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- In 2004, the stream of earlier stories were replaced by the President's vision of travel to Mars, same-sex marriage, the hanging of American contractors in Iraq, evidence of water on Mars, the Madrid train attack, the Iraq prison abuse scandal, the 9/11 Commission findings, hurricane Charley, the Olympics in Greece, hurricane Frances, high gas prices, hurricane Ivan, Fallujah, hurricane Jeanne, the presidential debates.
- And so on...
© 2004 ARC