News Values
According to media scholars Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill, most published news stories tend to include at least one of the following 15 elements:
- Exclusivity: The development is available first (or only) to a particular news organization (e.g., an exclusive interview with Mark Zuckerberg).
- Power elite: The development involves powerful individuals and organizations (e.g., the president of the United States).
- Magnitude: The development potentially impacts a large number of people, or impacts a few people significantly (e.g., a court ruling affecting thousands of immigrants' citizenship rights).
- Relevance: The development involves issues or groups that are perceived to be relevant to the organization’s audience (e.g., a major local employer relocating to another state).
- Surprise: The development deviates from the norm or shows stark contrasts (e.g., a man who bites dogs).
- Conflict: The development involves controversies, arguments, fights, or insurrections (e.g., a politician breaking away from their party).
- Drama: The development concerns an unfolding drama, such as battles or court cases (e.g., a major criminal trial).
- Bad news: The development has especially negative overtones, such as a death or tragedy (e.g., a plane crash).
- Good news: The development has especially positive overtones, including rescues or cures (e.g., development of a new vaccine).
- Entertainment: The development highlights human interest, unfolding drama, opportunities for humor (e.g., how to spend 36 hours in Bucharest).
- Celebrity: The development concerns people who are already famous (e.g., Ryan Gosling).
- Audio-visuals: The development has compelling photographs, video, audio, or can be illustrated with data visualizations (e.g., large protests).
- Shareability: The development is likely to generate sharing and comments on social media, e-mail, and messaging apps (e.g., content that is likely to 'go viral').
- Follow-up: The development advances a story already being covered by that journalistic outlet or other news organization (e.g., the result of a vote on legislation previously covered).
- Journalistic outlet’s agenda: The development fits the organization’s agenda and/or journalistic identity (e.g., it focuses on a particular issue, like foreign policy).
In addition to these values, timeliness is a crucial factor. After all, news is typically presumed to be new, and journalists are thus sensitive to how recent the information is. However, news may also be evergreen, or not connected to breaking developments but part of an ongoing issue or event. For example, a timely story about homelessness may be produced when the city council approves additional funding for homeless shelters. However, a general story about homelessness can also be evergreen because homelessness is a persistent issue in many places. In practice, evergreen stories are also useful because they provide content for slower news days.
The more news values a potential story contains, the more likely it is to be seen as newsworthy and therefore receive coverage. News can therefore be understood as a highly selective version of events (and, arguably, nonevents) that have been chosen and packaged to match a news organization’s objectives, its output requirements, and the information needs or entertainment wants that its target audiences are believed to have. This, in turn, highlights that the material attributes of a development or event — that is, what actually happened — only has some bearing on whether it is covered, how it gets covered, what information is emphasized, and who receives a voice in that coverage. For example, an online rant about immigrants may be seen as newsworthy solely because it was tweeted by a sitting U.S. president, and the coverage may focus on the controversy around that rant (rather than the substance of its claims) because opposing party leaders subsequently traded barbs over it.
These news values also help us to appreciate why certain developments do not receive coverage. For example, an evening TV news broadcast may decide not to cover an event simply because it is unlikely to produce good visuals (e.g., a corruption investigation) or if the organization does not have access to those visuals (e.g., a governmental detention camp in a remote area of a foreign country). Instead, it may allot the limited time in its broadcast to an arguably less-important event that can produce more visually captivating images (e.g., an accidental house fire).