This week’s lecture is on news values. What I gathered is that
news values are the defining features of what something needs to be to be news
worthy. The lecture broke these values into impact, audience identification, pragmatics
and source influence. I really love the definitive nature of this because I’m
the sort of person who likes defined rules for things, at least so I know when I’m
breaking them, and these four points make a really good checklist for knowing
what’s worth writing about. As if to illustrate the functionality of these
values a friend of mine was telling me just the other day that he will read
anything provided it is about “The World’s Something-iest Something”. This may
serve as the most single minded demonstration of the attraction of impact.
At the same time these values do show the consumerist nature
of the news. Its purpose in the end is to sell and for this to happen is has to
be what people want, it has to entertain them in some manner and these values
really do play to that need. No matter
how large, relevant or important the news if it doesn’t adhere to the values people
don’t want to hear about it and it may never see the light of day. The overall
effect of this phenomenon seems to me to be a remarkable focus on samey, pop news
which is relatively minor in the scale of things.
But really is that such a bad thing; I’m painting consumerism
in news in a negative light I realise but since when is ignorance a sin and
furthermore who am I to decide. People are interested in what interests them (I
state in a wondrous piece of redundancy). It makes perfect sense for people to only want
to hear what they care about and what’s your integrity worth if no one is
paying any attention to it. This point brings us full circle, it’s not news
unless someone cares and that’s why we have news values; to say what people
care about.
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