We are bombarded with news every single day: the happenings both in the world around us, in our towns, and with famous people. However, the question is, why do certain stories capture our interest and end up being covered by the newspapers on the front page, and others end up vanishing into thin air? It is a very easy question: they qualify for some criteria known as News Values.
The concept of news values is some things that reporters and editors have a checklist on. They determine which events should be of importance to report. The interpretation of this checklist will allow you to perceive the way the news is selected and the reason why some headlines attract your attention.
Concept of News Values: The Editor’s Guide
The only way to really know how news works is to find out the fundamental rules. These are the rules that are followed by news editors. You will understand how the news works by investigating the nature of news values as the fundamental process of journalism. This basic concept filters through all the events of the day to identify the most important things to you, the reader.
The most effective stories tend to have multiple of these news values collaborating with each other to further enhance their significance. We can consider the six key ones, and real-life examples will demonstrate how they influence the headlines and affect the involvement of the audience.
The 6 Major News Values as Spelt out in a Simple Way
1. Timeliness: It Must Be Now?
This is the simplest news value. News has to be new. In case something occurred long ago, it is not news, it is history. The timeliness value implies that the information about a current story, a crisis, a developing event, a trial, etc., will always be more important than the old one.
Real Life Case: Take the situation of a hurricane that is approaching the shore. Its timeliness is high in terms of the minute-by-minute coverage of its track and the instant warnings. After the storm has died, this value is lost in the story. Breaking news alerts are there due to this value; the news should be in progress. This immediacy requirement keeps the masses active, but it also puts a strain on news organizations to be first in reporting news.
2. Proximity: It Must Be Close
Individuals are most concerned with what is going on around them. Proximity as a news value refers to intimacy, which is geographic (physical) and mental (psychological). A little issue in your city will receive more media attention than a large issue distant since it is closer and more real to you. It is more newsworthy when it touches your neighborhood.
Real-Life Example: A local newspaper will commit the entire first page to a discussion about the shutting down of a community school (Proximity). A foreign news company may only make a cursory reference to a civil war in a foreign country through enhancing a sense of psychological Proximity. The news should be physically or emotionally close to the reader in order to attract his or her attention. It is the reason why even international things, such as fluctuations in interest rates, are frequently localized.
3. Prominence: Celebrity Personality Sightseeing
News pieces on famous individuals, locations or large corporations inherently possess more news value. This is Prominence. Where a political leader is talking, it is news. The comment of a famous actor is news. Their position renders their actions significant to a large number of people, although the action may not be global.
Real-Life Case: When an average citizen contributes a large amount as a donation to a charity, then it is a local story. When the same donation is made by a globally known technology billionaire, it is an international headline. Their current Prominence is the determinant.
The Narrative Drivers: Conflict, Emotion, and Consequence
Where the former three news values focus on when and where a story occurs, these following news three values focus on why the audience should care, both in their emotions and intellect.
4. Conflict: The Fight Sells Papers
Humans are drawn to drama. Dispute, battle, an argument, or a disagreement, is a massive news generator. This may be a war between nations, an enormous tussle between politicians, or even a championship between two sports teams. War provides a narration with tension, and people wish to know who emerges victorious.
Real-Life Case: A political policy argumentation in which two political leaders calmly agree is hardly news. But the news that is dominated by a televised debate in which they exchange personal and sharp attacks with each other (Conflict) is the main news. Equally, the anxiety and competition of a sports championship event, whereby there is direct conflict amongst the teams, contribute to colossal ratings and coverage.
5. Human Interest: Can You Share the Story That Makes You Feel?
This worth appeals to our feelings. Human Interest stories revolve around individuals struggling with difficult moments, being exceedingly kind or doing something extraordinary with the odds stacked against them. Such stories do not necessarily need to be related to great events that happen in the world, they matter as they make us feel sympathetic, hopeful or inspired.
Real-Life Story: A story of a veteran who walked across the country to raise money for a cause, or a simple story of a pet saving its owner is almost solely dependent on Human Interest. These are stories that might be short-lived or not especially significant, but they touch so deeply by tapping into the universal emotions and reminding us that we are not the only humans in the world. They are like a much-needed break to the depressing flow of hard news.
6. Impact: How Many People Are Affected?
This is concerning the magnitude of the tale. Impact questions: How many lives will this event impact, and how profoundly? The high impact is on having a new law that alters taxes on millions. The discovery of a new cure for a prevalent illness is enormous. Provided that an event impacts a great number of individuals significantly, then it has to be covered.
Real Life Story: When the national central bank alters interest rates, it will have a direct impact on millions of mortgaged homes, savings accounts and investments in businesses. This huge Impact makes the news appear on the first page of all financial sections. Conversely, a change in a niche regulation that will impact a few thousand individuals will be reported with much less importance, as it has low Impact. Such an amount usually determines the reporting of important science, health, and economic news.
The Synthesis: How News Values Control the Headlines You See
It is these six news values that allow an editor to rank a hundred stories when an editor is looking at the stories. A story of high Impact and high Conflict (as a major, violent political protest) will nearly always be at the top of the page since it rates well on many necessary levels.
Multi-News Values Case Study
The first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic are an ideal situation when the story has all six news values at the same time:
Impact: Billions of people around the world were affected by the virus, economies closed, and the daily way of life changed. The result was catastrophic and general.
- Timeliness: It was a minute-by-minute crisis that was quickly evolving. The news cycle was 24-hour and the updates were very urgent.
- Proximity: It began very distant but soon the virus began to spread and has now become a threat to all the communities; it is local.
- Conflict: The war between the virus and mankind, governments and protesters, medical specialists and politicians was heated.
- Prominence: The crisis featured world leaders, key scientists, and international health institutions, such as WHO, which are all well-known people.
- Human interest: Hundreds of stories about nurses working on the front line, families who have been separated due to lockdowns, and neighbors helping their neighbors speaks directly to our feelings of compassion.
This media storm of values ensured it was the only and the most dominant, news around the globe over a year later, and this proves how the interplay of values makes news unstoppable.
Ethical Decisions: The responsibility of the Gatekeeper
The concept of news values also shows the ethical side of the journalist. It is a balancing game and as an editor, one should consider what is interesting and what is important. The tendency by editors to pass on a high-conflict or high-human interest story instead of a high-impact policy change would result in a preference for emotion and drama over serious civic information.
Professional journalists are being trained to make sure that though they are eager to find an interesting story, they do not allow sensationalism (being overly focused on Conflict and Prominence) to completely overshadow the issues that have a vast Impact on the lives of the masses.
It is the daily challenge of the editor that the interest-grabbing (such as celebrity gossip) and the important (such as climate change policy) have to be pushed and pulled. Their decisions finally build a societal meaning of what people learn, the issues they focus on and the quality of democracy discourse. This is the final gatekeeping role in the media, which is influenced by the news values.
