News Values and Newsworthiness

The study of news values/factors has a long and rich history in journalism and communications research. Conceptually, they encompass not only the newsworthy aspects of happenings or news actors but also external aspects that impact journalism practice, such as the influence of proprietors or advertisers, meeting deadlines or competition among news providers to get exclusive stories. Some view news values as existing in the actual events and people who are reported on in the news, that is, in events in their material reality (a material perspective). Others conceive news values as existing in the minds of journalists (a cognitive perspective). News values are also constructed in the discourses involved in the production of news (a discursive perspective). The focus in this article is on this third perspective, with the aim of demonstrating what a discursive approach to news values can add to the two other, theoretical and analytical perspectives. The article has an additional focus on the much neglected area of visual analysis and investigates the construction of news values in news photography.

Studies on news values have provided many insights into what gets reported in the media. In this study we use the concept of news values to examine how journalists perceive the newsworthiness of party messages. Taking an innovative approach, fictional party press releases are used to test for the influence of five important news values in the context of political news in a factorial survey experiment. This allows us to study those news values in relation to one another in a controlled experimental setting, an advantage over traditional gatekeeping studies. Political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands were asked to indicate whether they would consider these press releases for reporting or not. Findings show that the power status of the party, unexpectedness, and the magnitude of the political action announced influence journalists’ perception of newsworthiness. Messages from parties that were part of government were more likely to be selected for coverage in the Netherlands, whereas the party did not matter in Switzerland, where power is distributed more evenly. This shows that political system characteristics influence the work of journalists. Opposed to results from content analyses of news output, some news values (personal status, conflict) did not prove to be relevant. In the conclusion section we elaborate on potential explanations.

In a study of Swedish news media, 1912-84, a distinction is made between news values, regarded as more or less permanent, and changing news ideologies, conceived as an outflow of other ideologies. In statements concerning the broadcasting media three periods of different news ideologies are identified. They all seem to have had a strong impact both on the selection of news and on the selection of perspectives applied in the news.

Drawing on a content analysis of television news and newspapers during the 2015 UK General Election along with semi-structured interviews with the heads and/or senior editors of news or politics from each broadcaster examined, we explore the intermedia agenda-setting influence of the national press during the campaign. Overall, we found similar policy-orientated agendas, with more stories emanating from right-wing newspapers and moments when front-page splashes dominated television news coverage. Many broadcasters were editorially comfortable with covering stories originating from newspapers if further context was supplied. Our findings do not point towards any deliberate political bias among broadcasters. We suggest instead that a range of structural constraints and professional routines encouraged broadcasters to feed off stories that were more likely to be supplied by right-leaning newspapers. Since news values are not politically neutral, we argue that if journalists or editors routinely rely on newspapers to help shape the political agenda it compromises their ability to make impartial judgements about news selection. Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, we conclude, could help to better understand the editorial processes behind the selection of news and to more carefully interpret intermedia agenda-setting than large N studies can supply.

Environmental journalists, as gatekeepers, often become arbiters of risk and benefit information. This study explores how their routine news value judgments may influence reporting on marine aquaculture, a growing domestic industry with complex social and ecological impacts. We interviewed New England newspaper journalists using Q methodology, a qualitative dominant mixed-method approach to study shared subjectivity in small samples. Results revealed four distinct reporting perspectives—“state structuralist,” “neighborhood preservationist,” “industrial futurist,” and “local proceduralist”—stemming from the news value and objectivity routines journalists used in news selection. Findings suggest implications for public understanding of, and positionality toward, natural resource use and development.

The criteria on which journalists and news editors judge about newsworthiness of an event or news story are called “news values”. The most prominent and widely studied list of news values (also called news criteria or news factors) was proposed by Galtung and Ruge in 1965 in which twelve selection criteria such as frequency, threshold, unambiguity and meaningfulness were pinned down as the factors by which gatekeepers make decision about newsworthiness of a news item. This leading and seminal article rose many positive and negative reactions and for decades Galtung and Ruge’s list of news values has been reviewed, revisited and criticized by many linguists and media experts. In this article we review the application of this set of news values in Iranian media atmosphere to observe which news values play the major role in selection process of newspapers in this middle east country. The data of this research are composed of 100 news stories gathered from four international morning newspapers published in Iran in winter 2010 and we try to distinguish the news values of Iranian newspapers based on Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) list of news factors. The results of this study show that while reference to elite people (especially politicians) is the most important and frequent news value, some criteria which are not mentioned in Galtung and Rge’s list of news values have a considerable role in news selection process of newspapers in Iran. The most considerable factor for which there is no room in Galtung’s list is the impact of ideology and its role in overall news selection process. This study also shows that although the twelve factors of Galtung and Rug’s list are influential in Iran media, we should not limit selection process to them and the role of social metalingual elements such as ideology and competition with other media in the gatekeeping process should not be ignored.

This study of the production of British broadcast journalism, rather than its finished products, reveals the ways in which the organising and financing of journalism have traceable consequences on the ways in which news is selected and constructed, supporting the critical political economy perspective. Using a comparative ethnographic approach including interviews and observation of professional practice in three local television newsrooms, studios and other production spaces, this study represents a rare opportunity to gain insights into the ways in which events, issues and sources are selected by journalists, editors, producers and others engaged in the production of British broadcast news and how material is shaped into news bulletins and other programming. Drawing on news value theory (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Golding and Elliott 1979; Harcup and O’Neil 2001, 2016), the study offers a new model of news value analysis, the ‘News Value Matrix’, which takes account of the interplay between two key categories of news values, organisational pragmatics and perceptions of audience appeal. The study will be of interest to local broadcast journalists, editors and producers, to policymakers concerned with media and cultural policy, and to those wishing to develop a greater critical understanding of the professional practice of journalism.

The purpose of this study is to test the two-component theory of news selection. Its components are (a) news factors included in articles and (b) news values of news factors. It is assumed that news factors have different news values for various media outlets. The theory was tested comparing the empirical (measured) with the theoretical (calculated) newsworthiness of news stories. First, news values of five news factors for national quality papers, regional papers, and tabloids were identified. Then, based on theory, the theoretical newsworthiness of news stories was calculated. The independent variables were the news factors included in these articles and the news values of these news factors. In addition, in a laboratory setting, the empirical newsworthiness of the news stories was measured. Finally, measured newsworthiness was compared to the predicted one. Results confirmed the two-component theory and demonstrated that the chances of news stories to get published can be predicted by news factors and their news values.

This study analyzes journalistic discourse about journalism’s gatekeeping role in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The intent is to understand how the notions of newsworthiness, news selection, and news judgment came to be expressed in normative terms in the journalistic field. The study finds discursive strategies that explained news judgment in terms of a special skill that journalists possessed, that downplayed judgment while shifting focus to the external qualities of events, and that explained news judgment in terms of the social and economic values of the information provided. The findings demonstrate how journalistic capital is formed in the context of professionalization efforts.

This article aims to analyze the work of the 2016 Indonesian Press Photo Award Photo of the Year entitled "Tinjau Titik Api," using the "Three Visual Layers" theory. Photo of the Year 2016 was chosen because it has the advantage of good visual value and high news value, especially for people in the news. The three visual layers analysis includes optical, cultural, and photographic meaning. The optical aspect is for the non-blind eyes, the cultural aspect includes known visual appearances and unknown visual appearances, and the photographic aspect has a functional appearance, personal appearance, and subjective appearance. The research method is qualitative analysis because its implementation is based on visual analysis to find meaning from photos depicting three figures who are symbols of the strength of the Indonesian state, namely, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, TNI Commander General Gatot Nurmantyo, and Chief of the Indonesian National Police General Badarudin Haiti, who is inspecting the location of forest and land fires, in Geronggong Village, Ogan Komering Ilir Regency, South Sumatra. Data analysis involves: Scrutinizing relevant and irrelevant information, reducing data, compiling codes against findings data, and verifying codes as a reference for discussion and conclusion. The research results show that the 2016 Photo of the Year contains meaning that shows the Indonesian government's commitment to dealing with forest and land fires in Sumatra. The photo has advantages in terms of visual value which is reflected in the composition, depth of focus, and expression of the president, and in terms of news value, it is superior in terms of character value, as well as another advantage in the closeness of the photographer to the object of the event.

The present paper deals with the production of a multimodal news item from an ethnographic perspective, aiming at fully understanding the role played by news values, i.e. shared criteria for news selection, in newsroom argumentation. The news item we consider is the picture news from Corriere del Ticino, the main Italian-language newspaper in Switzerland. As the Italian name fototesto says, this news item combines a verbal and a photographical component, presenting the journalists with particular challenges in its selection. To shed light on this production process, we take as a case study a picture news on eco-friendly heat distribution and the editorial conference leading to its choice, which took place on January 24, 2013. We analyze the interaction from the viewpoint of argumentation theory, combining Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst) and the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2009, 2010, under review), and unravel the reasons behind choices in content and form taken collaboratively by the journalists.

This study is concerned with the news values and working practices that inform the creation of interactive infographics in UK online news. The author draws upon organisational theory in journalism studies, and considers how conventional journalistic news values compare with best practice as espoused in different literatures within this field. A series of open-ended, depth interviews with visual news journalists from the UK national media were undertaken, along with a short-term observation case study at a national online news publisher. Journalistic and organisational norms are found to shape the selection, production, and treatment of interactive graphics, and a degree of variation is found to exist amongst practitioners as to definitions of quality in this field. Some news stories are considered to be better suited to rendering in interactive form than others. The availability of “big data” does not drive decision-making in itself, but some numbers are considered more newsworthy than others. Budgetary constraint drives practice and limits potential in this field. Risk aversion, embodied in various forms; from the use of templates, to a perceived need to avoid audience complaint, is found to dampen experimentation. Detailed audience research was found to inform the choice of methods used in data visualisation at one national news producer. This warrants further investigation as to how audiences engage with news interactives, and what the framing of news in certain (preferred) data visualisation formats means in terms of how news is understood.

To counter mis/disinformation, fact-checking organisations are used as sources by journalists to challenge false or misleading statements, especially during election campaigns. But how different fact-checkers editorially construct their analysis and question dubious claims remains under-researched. Drawing on a case study of reporting during the UK’s 2019 General Election campaign, we interviewed senior editors and journalists, and conducted a systematic content analysis of 238 fact-checking stories produced by BBC’s Reality and Channel 4’s Full Fact, along with a fact-checking organisation, Full Fact, in order to critically assess their editorial judgements about the selection of news and use of sources. Our study revealed that fact-checking services at the BBC and Channel 4 were not closely integrated into their routine news production, and that the independent fact-checker, Full Fact, questioned claims differently to broadcasters. We also found that the broadcast agenda of fact-checkers centred on party political agendas and drew on a narrow range of institutional sources to question claims. Overall, we argue that if broadcasters relied more heavily on their fact-checking in routine coverage—beyond election campaigns—they would more effectively counter mis/disinformation, especially if a wider range of expert sources were drawn upon to scrutinize claims.

In the history of news production, the gap between editors' news judgment and audience interest has been widely noticeable. In scholarly research, while news consumption remains a central focus, the value of news content as a product has rarely been examined from the audience's perspective. News is almost always presumed by scholars and practitioners to be of value, which, however, is not necessarily the case in today's media environment. The recent decline in news consumption from the traditional media is often attributed to demographic factors, particularly age. However, such age-oriented narratives shift the responsibility away from news providers to users. From the media economics standpoint, when news organizations fail to address users' needs and wants, the product delivers limited utility and demand would dwindle as a result. This study conceptualizes and empirically examines the “noteworthiness” of news content as perceived by the general public. Results based on a national survey of US internet users show that only about one-third of the content produced by the mainstream news media is perceived as noteworthy. While previous studies identified demographics as significant predictors of news consumption, findings from this study suggest that perceived noteworthiness is a stronger factor influencing news consumption in terms of news enjoyment, newspaper and TV news use, and paying intent for print newspapers. Instead of using technology to pursue a particular demographic group, news organizations should rethink their content strategy and prioritize audience-oriented value creation to serve news consumers at large.

The growing interest in whether the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) will establish itself as a foundational law, constitution, or international standard for online platforms, driven by the so-called ‘Brussels Effect,’ underscores the significance of this study. Against this backdrop, the research compares the philosophies and regulatory methods of the EU Digital Services Act, the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, Korea's Network Act, and Broadcasting Act from a comparative legal perspective. The study aims to analyze not only the detailed provisions of the DSA but also its broader philosophical characteristics to better understand its potential impact on Korea’s online and media platform regulations. The research highlights that the DSA imposes significant obligations on very large online platforms (VLOPs), such as submitting transparency reports every six months and facing economic penalties for violations. However, categorizing platforms solely based on user numbers and applying uniform obligations may lack nuance, underscoring the need for carefully designed legislative frameworks aligned with regulatory philosophy. The study also emphasizes the importance of avoiding overlapping regulations when adopting similar laws domestically. While the EU applies multiple laws, such as the DSA, Audiovisual Media Services Directive, and Digital Markets Act, to regulate platforms like YouTube, Korea must ensure that domestic regulations do not stifle the growth of its online platform industry through redundant or excessive regulatory burdens. The DSA also imposes an obligation on VLOPs and search engine operators to assess the risks posed by algorithmic systems to public discourse and electoral processes. South Korea currently lacks legislation regarding the manipulation or unfair use of platform algorithms. Within the scope of preventing threats to democracy, it would be desirable to impose obligations for transparency in technical matters and data, as proposed in the DSA, and positively consider adopting similar provisions domestically. Regarding media regulations, the study suggests revising certain provisions in Korea’s Broadcasting Act that may excessively undermine content competitiveness. Additionally, when defining illegal information in online and media platforms, Korea should avoid the DSA’s broad approach of equating offline and online illegality. Instead, it should maintain clear and specific regulatory standards, as demonstrated by Korea’s existing laws, to safeguard freedom of expression while effectively addressing harmful content. The study further highlights the importance of media literacy in the context of expanded media platforms. It views the EU’s emphasis on public interest content and the distribution of political news as essential to fostering informed public discourse and democratic values in new media environments. Such regulatory approaches could serve as valuable references for shaping Korea’s own media literacy frameworks. Lastly, the research underscores the potential benefits of adopting legislative techniques that blend self-regulation with enforceability. The DSA’s regulated self-regulation, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive’s co-regulation, and Korea’s legal institutionalization of self-regulation in the Network Act are cited as effective models for improving regulatory effectiveness. The study concludes that while the EU leads in establishing legislation for a democratic digital environment, its approach may not fully align with Korea’s existing legal framework and regulatory environment. Therefore, it is crucial for Korea to adapt such legislative innovations thoughtfully, ensuring compatibility with domestic conditions while aligning with global standards. This research provides a foundational resource for developing balanced and effective online and media platform regulations in Korea.