“Journalism is the first draft of
history.”
In this afternoons
lecture Dr Redman talked about news values, and what makes something news
worthy. As of this week in JOUR1111 we
will be focusing on journalism studies subjects, which is the more heavy duty theoretical
journalism material. News values are
based on the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the
attention that is paid to the story by the audience. Media outlets can determine what the audience
gives attention to by deciding what to publish and give importance to.
“Journalists rely on instinct rather
than logic when it comes to defining a sense of news values.”
– John Sergeant
Dr Redman took us
through the history of news values and how newsworthiness has developed and
changed over time. The 12 factors of
news worthiness was very interesting and basically summed up the importance of
news values. We also discussed how new
news values can often be created, some examples are, religion and terrorism. In the past, these two subjects would not be
considered news values, but events that have occurred in the past ten years
have made these two subjects very prominent in news today. Religion and terrorism are issues that people
want to read about and discuss.
News that is
worthy and has good news values has an impact on people; the audience can
identify its relevance and find interest in the story. A news value that I find to be particularly
important is relevance. People want to
read stories that are relevant to their lives.
Even if it is an international story it should be localised so readers
can relate to the story. In the 21st
century I believe another very important news value is visualisation. With so much now being posted online, readers
want to see formatting and images that draw them into the story.
“Journalists do not adhere to
formal codes of newsworthiness that can be identified or promulgates... instead,
the informal code of what constitutes a good story is part of newsroom
initiation and socialisation.”
– Judy McGregor
Today Dr Redman
introduced us to the term ‘Churnalism’.
Churnalism refers to journalists just grabbing press releases and
publishing stories without checking the facts.
Churnalism can lead to untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading and incomplete
journalism. It shows how much journalism
has been affected by public relations.
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