News Values

News values are the factors of the news that help to explain how journalists and editors deeded that certain news stories and images that are accepted as newsworthy. They are also applied to in radio news bulletins and newspapers.
These are the definitions:
Immediacy: has the story happened recently? Often this will push the news story to the top of the bulletin

Familiarity: is it culturally or geographically close to us, this is important when it comes to the local news

Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people, the more people involved means that the news story will be pushed to the top of the news bulletin

Frequency: how often the event happens, depending on the nature of the story frequency can push the story down the news bulletin (if the audience have become tired of hearing about this type of event), or it can also push the story to the top of the news bulletin if the audiences are outraged that the same thing keeps happening

Impact: can we identify with the story as having a profound effect on our own lives? does the story contain elements that would make us feel threatened, this is like amplitude a key news value pushes the story to the top of bulletin

     

Predictability: was this expected to happen

Surprise: is it an unusual or unexpected event?


Continuity: has this story already been defined as news? is it part of an ongoing to long running story? this has the effect of pushing the story down news bulletin

Conflict: does the story contain drama in describing disagreements, arguments, fights or battles between two or more people or organisations? this is the heart of most stories

Elite People: does the story concern well-known people? This is important for gossip which usually involves celebrities, musicians, sportsmen and politicians, this is also a key factor in tabloid newspapers.

Personalisation: is the story a human interest story? does this moves us emotionally?

Negativity: is it a bad news story? This will move up the news bulletin depending on how severe the story is.

Scandal: is the story likely to provoke moral outrage from parts of the audience? An example of this could be law authorities breaking the law, it can also involves money and people in charge not acting responsibly.

Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance out with a news story containing death or tragedy. Positive news stories will balance out the bad news stories.