Similar to its print counterpart, online news values can also be categorised as object-driven, when the valuation of newsworthiness is based on the nature of events or the strength of events that makes online news. This will only be a brief discussion of news values of the online news, as further discussion in Chapter 7 will consider newsworthiness and readership.
In terms of news values, compared with mainstream news printed in newspapers, online news such as user-generated content news including citizen journalism usually has a more
‘bottom-up’ approach to information gathering, and this is seen as newsworthy. Such an approach is possible when news is gathered from people’s contribution including news reports, digital photographs, video footage, telephone shots or audio clips, and this has raised popularity among citizen where, Stuart Allan (2006) noted, online news increased. The birth of the BBC Online News and active blogging activities are examples of how the definition of news has been revised to accommodate a more ‘personal form of journalism’. Such news is usually less newsworthy, but carries a more direct impact on people’s lives. Thus, it is not strange to find that among blogs, the main news value identified is sensational scandals (Allan 2006).
For general news values of online news, the main emphasis of the online news value is
‘relevance’ (Jorge 2008) or what the audience is interested in reading (Curtain and Mersey 2007). These are news values applicable to print newspapers as well, because generally, relevant news is one of the factors considered as meeting readers’ needs. However, in online news, it relates more to the preference of the readers. Readers now have an abundance of news that they can just choose with the click of a button. They do not even have to glance at other news
51
unrelated to the key words that have been typed. Other than relevance, credibility and utility are two traditional news values important among online editors (Gladney et al 2007). Some other criteria are valued more on the web than in print. Immediacy, ease of use, exclusivity and hyperlocal are important criteria among online news editors compared with print editors (Gladney et al. 2007).
As apparent again here, news values theory can merely explain some similarities and differences between online and traditional news. For instance, when comparing print and online news values, Jorge concluded, “the old and the new (news values) will continue to coexist in our lives for some time” (Jorge 2008: 67). Moreover, Brighton and Foy (2007) also concluded that the new media share a similar news values system as the traditional media. It does add to knowledge when one wants to know about what is usually covered by these media, but it does not explain anything about the mechanics of online news production. A major production context, which is the organizational context, remains untouched.
Similarly, in a study of online Brazilian and Argentinean news portals in the hard news sections called Ultimas Noticias in uol.com.br (UOL) and Ultimos Momentos in clarin.com (Clarin), Jorge (2008) conducted a content analysis of 675 news in terms of both news text and multimedia materials, and revealed that the most common news values found on both sites were:
Celebrity, Exoticism, Human Interest, Sex, Conflict/Power, Love, Mystery, Money, Death/Crime/Violence, Leisure, Health, Beauty, Ecology, Education, Religion, the Arts and Work. This suggested that the “news areas on the web are guided by the same criteria of newsworthiness as in the printed product” (Jorge 2008: 68). However, from this long list, a question remains unanswered: how do these various online news criteria explain precisely the way in which certain events become online news and how does the readership take into account the construction of newsworthiness?
Nevertheless, in contrast with the many studies reviewed in discussing news values in the new media, Braun (2009), in his content analysis of popular political blog Daily Kos, found that news values are not really a useful explanation of newsworthiness if the intention is to compare news values in traditional media and the new media. However, he admitted that news values
52
constitute “one of the more common academic models of gatekeeping” (Braun 2009: 2), that suggests the popularity of the theory in explaining newsworthiness. But Braun also suggests (similar to print news values) that news values theory is limited in explaining newsworthiness in the new media because there are external forces that must be considered (see Chapter 3).
2.4 Conclusion
Thus, it can be argued that the main weakness of news value theory is the inability to explain news construction in different contexts. Although it has the ability to explain why certain events become news, to predict news (Schwarz 2006) and give a prior sense of newsworthiness (Braun 2009), it lacks explanation based on external contexts such as organisational, political and cultural from real practice. This is, however, imperative in understanding news and news making as news production is not produced in a vacuum. The whole process does interact with the context it is in, and there is no practice that can be relied on to support the explanations.
This is why discussions about news values are always done as if news values are
‘neutral’. As discussed, this is actually the weakness of news values theory as it does not explain what is should explain, albeit a shallow explanation about newsworthiness. However, because news values theory provides a simplified version of the complex process of newsworthiness construction, and that is sought after by certain academia, often news values are perceived as neutral, especially among mainstream newspapers readers (Hall 1973). Hall emphasised that in reality these values are ideologically embedded, with the elite voices as the main sources of news. Hence, political explanations should not be ignored. This means that what becomes news is not always neutral as it is projected in news values theory, and as the list of news values appears to be. This could be the reason why news values theory is seen as ‘isolated’ from other branches of understanding news (Braun 2009).
However, among journalists, news values still operate unconsciously when they decide news (Bell 1991). However, the actual meaning of news values is still vague; as John Hartley (1982: 80) noted, “news values are neither natural nor neutral. They form a code which sees the world in a very particular (even peculiar) way”. This is because, Hartley (1982) added, events and issues often become news without needing to score highly on any news value. This suggests
53
that newsworthiness construction is also mediated with subjective interpretation of journalists, as studies of gatekeeping reveal (Manning 1950/1997, Reese and Ballinger 2001, Shoemaker et al 2009). Such subjectivity may be associated with various factors besides personal subjectivity, such as organisational, political and/or cultural forces (See Chapter 3).
With the weaknesses of news values theory pertaining to lack of context and lack of real news practice, the attempt to rely merely on this theory in explaining newsworthiness construction can lead to the widening gap between journalists’ definition of newsworthiness and that of academics (Cole and Harcup 2010, Harrison 2006, Niblock 2007, Zelizer 2004, Zelizer 2005, Zelizer 2009). This is apparent in Stromback et al’s. (2012) study of Swedish journalists as regards the determinants of news content. They found that among journalists, whatever types of news published, the actual event properties are to increase knowledge. Thus, they conclude,
“journalism practice does no equal journalism theory, which needs to be taken into account in further research on news and news selection as well as news values and standards of newsworthiness” (Stromback et al 2012: 9). If we continue to rely on object-driven news values to explain newsworthiness, the gap might widen, because we ignore the imperatives of what makes news. It is in the next chapter that I discuss other main approaches in examining news, that include external forces in news production, seen by many as a move among the academics to bridge such a gap.
54 CHAPTER 3
SUBJECT-DRIVEN NEWS VALUES