News Values: Blog tasks

 News Values: Blog tasks

Read Media Factsheet 76: News Values and complete the following questions/tasks. 
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1) Come up with a news story from the last 12 months for each of the categories suggested by Harriss, Leiter and Johnson:

• Conflict - Un security council calls for negotiated settlement of Yemeni crisis. 

• Progress - Half of Scottish population vaccinated as sturgeon praises "phenomenal  progress"

• Disaster - St. Vincent volcano eruption.  

• Consequence - "people who spread false news should face consequence"

• Prominence - Harry and Meghan's Oprah interview will go ahead as couple insists despite the backlash over "lack of respect"

• Novelty - Man murders wife for giving birth to a girl. 

2) What example news story does the Factsheet use to illustrate Galtung and Ruge's News Values? Why is it an appropriate example of a news story likely to gain prominent coverage?

The news story example given to illustrate Galtung and Rugue's New Values would be the "Afghan bombs kills British female soldier", this is an appropriate example of news of getting lots of coverage because the killing of male soldiers has been normalised, and if a women is killed there would be more of an outrage. 

3) What is gatekeeping?

Gatekeeping is the filtering of information because it is either selective or sensitive, this can be done by the journalist, editor or other media consumers. 

4) What are the six ways bias can be created in news?

The six ways in which biases can be created in news would be;

- Headline

- Use of names or title (star power0

- placement

- Selection and omission

- Photos, captions and camera shots

- choice of words.

5) How have online sources such as Twitter, bloggers or Wikileaks changed the way news is selected and published?

Online sources have changed the ways in news are published and selected because they now audiences have wider access to the media they consume. This means that "audiences become the producers" like Shirky had said. As a result, they reflect new values as audiences are sectionally, the judge on what they read, meaning they will make the active decision whether a news article is important enough for them to read. 

6) Complete the task on the last page of the Factsheet regarding Sky News and Twitter:

• What does this reveal about how Sky views Twitter as a news source?
• What does it say about how news is being produced?
• What role does the audience have in this process?
• Why might this be a problem for journalistic standards?

7) In your opinion, how has the digital age changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? 

Due to the digital age, Galtung and Ruge's News values has drastically changed, as "news" can now be published anywhere by anyone. This means that the importance of a news story becoming breaking news is much more harder, this is because people have become desensitised to the news they hear and news values aren't a construct journalist abide by nowadays. 

8) How would you update them for 2018? Choose TWO of Galtung and Ruge's news values and say how they have been affected by the growth of digital technology.

One; Time span

Due to the growth of digital technology in media consumerism, news articles can now be published anywhere at any time 

Two; Socio-cultural

Due to the growth of digital technology, news articles can be formed without having an impartial agenda, this means that anyone can create news that fits their agenda i.e. fox news. 

E.g. Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on Twitter or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken so different angles might be required. Newspapers now contain more comment or opinion rather than the breaking story.