News Values

12 important questions on News Values

Reference to elite nations (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Stories concerned with global powers receive more attention than those concerned with less influential nations.

Reference to elite persons (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Stories concerned with the rich, powerful, famous and infamous get more coverage.

Conflict (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Opposition of people or forces resulting in a dramatic effect. Stories with conflict are often quite newsworthy.
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Consonance (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Stories that fit with the media's expectations receive more coverage than those that defy them (and for which they are thus unprepared). Note this appears to conflict with unexpectedness above. However, consonance really refers to the media's readiness to report an item.

Continuity (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

A story that is already in the news gathers a kind of inertia. This is partly because the media organizations are already in place to report the story, and partly because previous reportage may have made the story more accessible to the public (making it less ambiguous).

Composition (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Stories must compete with one another for space in the media. For instance, editors may seek to provide a balance of different types of coverage, so that if there is an excess of foreign news for instance, the least important foreign story may have to make way for an item concerned with the domestic news. In this way the prominence given to a story depends not only on its own news values but also on those of competing stories. (Galtung and Ruge, 1965)

Competition (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Commercial or professional competition between media may lead journalists to endorse the news value given to a story by a rival.

Co-optation (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

A story that is only marginally newsworthy in its own right may be covered if it is related to a major running story.

Prefabrication (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

A story that is marginal in news terms but written and available may be selected ahead of a much more newsworthy story that must be researched and written from the ground up.

Predictability (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

An event is more likely to be covered if it has been pre-scheduled. (Bell, 1991)

Time constraints (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Traditional news media such as radio, television and daily newspapers have strict deadlines and a short production cycle, which selects for items that can be researched and covered quickly.

Logistics (News factors according to Galtung & Ruge)

Although eased by the availability of global communications even from remote regions, the ability to deploy and control production and reporting staff, and functionality of technical resources can determine whether a story is covered. (Schlesinger, 1987)

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