Lecture Nine

Lecture Nine for JOUR1111 was predominantly concerned with News Values. 

What do we mean by News Values? 

Essentially, News Values can be defined as the degree of prominence a media outlet gives a story and the attention that is paid by an audience (as a result). Stuart Hall interestingly described News Values as ''the most opaque structure of meaning in modern society." He went on to state that "Journalists speak of 'the news' as if events select themselves ... Yet of the millions of events which occur daily in the world, only a tiny proportion ever become visible as 'potential news stories': and of this proportion, only a small fraction are actually produced as the day's news." In regards to News Values there are four things which are very important: (1) Impact, Audience Identification (2), Pragmatics (3), and Source Influence (4). 

Are News Values the same across different news services? Countries? or Cultures?

The answer to this question is a resounding no. Effectively, news values vary significantly from news service to news service, country-to-country and culture-to-culture. It is, however, an old saying in Journalism circles that, "if it bleeds, it leads" - a grotesque thought indeed. A more modern thinking is the idea that "if it's local, it leads." This philosophy is adopted most evidently by Channel Nine and Channel Ten who focus their news on the hyperlocal. 

"Newsworthiness" 

Harold Evans, former Editor of The Sunday Times once stated, "a sense of values" is the first quality of editors - they are the "human sieves of the torrent of news." Evans is essentially saying that what is most important for an Editor is to be able to identify what good news is. He created the idea of "The College of Osmosis" which suggests that once in the workplace one, from experience, knowledge and other factors, will be able to identify what good news is, without receiving guidance from anyone. Veteran Television Reporter and Journalist John Sergeant reinforced Evans' sentiments, opining that "Journalists rely on instinct rather than logic" when to comes to defining a sense of news values. 

Galtung and Ruge identified 12 factors of newsworthiness. They analysed International News to discover what they describe as the "common factors" of newsworthiness. The factors were as follows:

1. Negativity 

2. Proximity

3. Recency

4. Currency

5. Continuity

6. Uniqueness

7. Simplicity

8. Personality

9. Expectedness

10. Elite nations or people

11. Exclusivity

12. Size 

They also formed three hypotheses around these common factors:

 

Golding and Elliot in 1979, identified different factors they felt were common to news that appeared of "worth". They were drama, visual attractiveness, entertainment, importance, size, proximity, negativity, brevity, recency, elites and personalities. 

In 2001, O'Neill and Harcup outlined what they saw to be the common factors of newsworthiness now in modern society. They placed particular importance on the factors of: the power elite, celebrity, entertainment, surprise, bad news, good news, magnitude, relevance, follow-up, agendas of outlets/organisations. 

Further, a year later, in 2002, Judy McGregor condensed the relevant factors of newsworthiness into only four common factors: visualness, conflict, emotion and celebrification of the journalist. 

Interestingly, Dr. Redman ended this section of the lecture by convincingly arguing that there now exist, in contemporary society, new news values which have yet to be identified. These include: Terrorism, the Global Financial Crisis, Health, Fitness and Diet, and anything in relation to the Environment. 

Healthy Eating is now a concern of many modern Australians and as such is arguably very "news worthy"

Threats to Newsworthiness: 

Downie and Kaiser argue that a threat of newsworthiness is lazy and incompetent journalism. Such a fact is exemplified by their statement that, "too much of what has been offered as news in recent years has been untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or incomplete." Conversely, Davies argues that a threat to newsworthiness is tabloidisation: "...media falsehood and distortion; the PR tactics and propaganda; and the use of illegal news-gathering techniques." Further, Rowse maintains that a significant threat is posed by hyper-commercialisation as "media mergers are rapidly creating one huge news cartel ... controlling most of what you see, hear and read. These mergers further corrupt the news process." 

Has the audience moved on? 

Things like citizen journalism now means that, in some respects, the power held by the media outlets is beginning to shift. Jay Rosen supports this notion stating to the Media outlets in general that, "you don't   control production on the new platform which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and use ['the audience']. The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable." 

Future of News Values?

The moving on of the audience has raised many questions for the future of News Values. Indeed, what will tomorrow's News Values be? What governs what a media organisation sees as news worthy?

Artist: John Contrell

There is something, that I can't quite put my finger one, about Byron Bay Artist, John Contrell's works that I love. Maybe its the vibrancy and freshness of his artworks  or the playful shapes he uses to cover the entire canvas. Regardless, his paintings are quirky and beautiful in their simplicity. 

Collider

Birdy and Baby Mammoth 

7 Signs

Red Eye 

Lecture Eight

This week’s lecture focused on the role of ethics in Communication, in Journalism and in Public Relations. The lecture was taken by Donna MeikelJohn, an academic from the University of Queensland who currently teaches media law and ethics and who has previously worked in the field of journalism as a foreign correspondent.

We began the lecture by looking at some advertisements in light of questions such as: Is the advertisement offensive or upsetting? Is it ethically wrong? We looked at the following advertisement which offended many people but which I personally did not find to, in any way, upset my sensibilities (honestly, I found it very funny).

Ethics are indeed a very philosophical area of inquiry and MeikelJohn in the lecture posed many philosophical, thought-provoking questions such as: How do we know what is good or bad? How do we know what is moral and immoral? Can we and should we know instinctively if something is right or wrong? She told the very personal and poignant story of how she had, as a young journalist, been sent to interview a couple who had lost their three children in a freak canoeing accident. Her superiors had told her if she did not come back with an interview she would be effectively fired. MeikelJohn, after much apologising, did get the interview, however, the question arises of whether what she did was ethical? Such a question is truly dependent on the ethical theory one adopts.

Predominantly, there exist three main ethical theories: Deontology, consequentialism and virtue. Adopting a deontological approach, one acts ethically if one follows the rules and duties. As such, MeikelJohn can be seen to have acted ethically in tracking down the couple for an interview as she was fulfilling the duty she had been assigned. Comparatively, under the theory of consequentialism, something is ethical if it results of a "good" outcome, regardless of the means by which this outcome was reached. Moreover, this approach puts emphasis on the idea of 'the greatest good for the greatest number.' Lastly, the ethical theory of virtue is concerned with what is right and what is wrong and whether the action in questions aligns with the type of person you want to be? As such, "goodness," MeikelJohn notes comes from "morally good habits of character" - the idea of character building. 

Codes within Journalism, Communication and Personal Relations outline what is "ethical" and sometimes what is so unethical that is it seen as illegal (e.g. Discrimination on the basis of race, gender, etc. Refer to the State's respective Anti-Discrimination Acts). The codes that exist within Australia are the following: 

MeikelJohn posed the questions of whether our codes of ethics fail us? Essentially, as MeikelJohn stresses, "[a] code of ethics is only as powerful as the sanctions behind it, and the wilingness of the codes keepers to enforce those sanctions." 

Is an intrusion into someone's privacy ever justified? Arguably, it is when the public interest is concerned. Many argue that the public has a right and need to know as such issues can affect people directly or even affect national security.  

Ethical limits in relation to photojournalism are also important and sometimes hard to define. Kevin Carter's image of a young and evidently very sick African girl received much criticism as many agued his work was unethical - instead of taking the picture Carter should have helped the girl. But did the public have a right to see the image? Can some good come from the public seeing thing scene that Carter captured? I argue in the affirmative. I believe awareness is the most powerful tool in us, as a global community, fighting problems such as poverty and famine. It is also of considerable importance to note that Carter, after taking his photograph, helped the girl as much as he possibly could. Poignantly, unable to deal with the onslaught of criticism he received, Karter took his own life in 1944. Arguably, his death is a warning to those of us of more sensitive dispositions to avoid a career in Journalism. It makes me think, would I have been able to cope with such criticism? Am I "hard" enough to be a journalist reporting on the serious and important things happening in our world, that people, particularly those blessed enough to live in Australia, ought to know about? I  hope so. 

The infamous photograph taken by Carter