University of Zagreb

Faculty of Political Science

MA in Journalism, 2nd year

Essay for the class

Television News in Multimedia Environment

“News values and today’s media environment”

Student: Andrea Lach

Mentor: Doc. dr. sc. Tena Perišin

Zagreb, January 2013

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Contents1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................2

2. The classical Galtung and Ruge criteria..........................................................................................2

3. The change in the media landscape...............................................................................................3

4. Validity of Galtung/Ruge criteria nowadays...................................................................................5

a) Unexpectedness.........................................................................................................................5

b) Predictability...............................................................................................................................6

c) Clarity.........................................................................................................................................6

d) Negativity...................................................................................................................................7

e) Meaningfulness..........................................................................................................................8

f) Continuum..................................................................................................................................9

g) Elite people and/or nations......................................................................................................10

5. A new set of values.......................................................................................................................11

6. Conclusion....................................................................................................................................11

References............................................................................................................................................12

Appendix..............................................................................................................................................12

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1. IntroductionThis essay primary focuses on the book News values written by Paul Brighton and Dennis

Foy from 2007. More concrete, it tries to summarize their view of today’s consistency of

news values criteria by the first and most influential theorists of the area, Johan Galtung and

Marie Ruge, who set those standards in 1965. They decided that the most important criteria

for creating the news are relevance, timeliness, simplification, predictability, unexpectedness,

continuity, composition, elite peoples and nations and negativity.

The importance of the topic in today’s world of media is indisputable because of the change

in media environment which brings out the necessity more than ever of applying news values

criteria to practical journalistic work. The problem which remains between theories of

necessary criteria and between real journalistic practices is that they are not coherent at every

criterion. This situation exists because of the speed of today’s journalistic work and market

demands which dictate, I dare to say, almost spontaneous or routinized choice of what’s news.

Still, if we look at the type of news that are generally in the media, we could conclude that

they do answer to most of the theoretical criteria, but journalists do it mostly regardless of the

criteria. That is why it is very important to rely on journalistic practice and not just on the

theoretical set of criteria by social scientists.

Thus in order to understand today’s world of media and the process of news creating, one

must look into the classical Galtung and Ruge standards, evaluate them according with the

present situation and try to revitalize and fulfill them. That is exactly what Brighton and Foy

tried to achieve. Therefore they came to conclusions about what criteria are necessary today

based on demands of the public and of journalistic practice. They made a list of new news

criteria for which they assume could have the validity in today’s multiplicity of media. They

line up relevance, topicality, composition, expectation, unusualness, worth and external

influences. This essay explains affirmed with examples how the media landscape has changed

and how the Galtung and Ruge criteria can be viewed today. The insight into that is what

brought Brighton and Foy to the new ‘ideal’ criteria I had mentioned.

2. The classical Galtung and Ruge criteriaTalking about news values can’t possibly happen without explaining classical criteria

from the authors Galtung and Ruge “who’s work remains an ideal starting point for any

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serious discussion of news values” (Brighton, Foy 2007:7). But what do news values

represent by the definition? Journalist Owen Spencer-Thomas says “they are fundamental to

understanding news production and the choices that editors and other journalists face when

deciding that one piece of information is news while another is not” (Spencer-Thomas, 2012).

Brighton and Foy stated a similar explanation by saying that the set of values are what creates

the news out of the new (2007:1). Therefore it is simply clear that the values are of crucial

importance to the news creating process. Galtung and Ruge listed the criteria that were

essential for news creating: relevance, timeliness, simplification, predictability,

unexpectedness, continuity, composition, elite peoples and nations, negativity. They also

applied further qualifiers that explain their theory. They believed that every event had its

necessary time to acquire meaning (frequency); that the boundaries of what’s normal are

expanding and that the unexpected becomes news (amplitude); that the clearer the matter,

bigger the chance for the event to be noticed (clarity); that there is cultural and social

harmony of understanding events (meaningfulness); that the expectation of events itself can

bring such events as news (predictability); that once an event becomes news it keeps being the

news (continuum) and that there is internal relevance of items within media program that

works as a system of running order (composition). Let’s now try to explain what has changed

in media environment since their time, so we could explore the validity of their criteria in

today’s journalistic practice.

3. The change in the media landscapeWhat changed since 1965 in the world of media is that the role of each media platform has

changed, some platforms are maybe even disappearing, and new platforms have come. The

public has now the choice to hear, see and read the news immediately online, and by live

broadcasting on TV. Newspapers have changed their role of news reporting to talking about

the news, giving editorials and opinions, and deeper explorations of the subjects already

covered by other, faster media. TV has the role of giving fresh information at least two or

three times a day (morning, afternoon, evening news) and breaking news at any time if such

an event happens. Radio has now become the entertaining media, giving only short

information and basing on commercial musical program. The biggest change is the new

internet media that combined all of the forms of expression into one platform. Convergence of

the media, multitasking journalism, live reportage and the speed of media coverage brought

the world in the situation where the news and information are all around us. This is quite

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different from the situation almost a half century ago. That is what Brighton and Foy stressed

out while talking about the 9/11 example. When the attack on World Trade Center happened,

TV reportage about the event was live and it gave pure, unfiltered news. There was no time

for external mediation, and people were watching the event as it unfolded. Such a thing could

have never happened at the time Galtung and Ruge were writing their criteria. At the time, TV

as media was just at the beginning of its bright days, while the newspapers were still the most

important news platform. Newspapers journalists had the time to reflect on the event and

structure them in the way that is proper both for the public and for the reputation of the papers

(Brighton, Foy 2007:15-16).

Picture 1. News about the liberating verdict for Croatia’s war generals in November 2012.

Maybe the newest example from Croatian news could be the liberation of war generals

Gotovina and Markač from war crime convictions in November 2012. This example gives the

picture of how breaking news are covered. That indeed was breaking news in Croatia, and the

Croatian public television HRT devoted most of the program that day only to this event, and

private televisions followed similarly. HRT also gave 30 minutes in the evening news to this

matter (out of 40 minutes of complete news program)1. There were much live reportage from

the main square, from the congress and the government offices, and the emphasis was on

emotional reportage. It was probably unnecessary to address that much time to the

information that has already unfolded, but it confirms the necessity of TV live reporting when 1 The evening news of HRT on 16th September 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytHO0UuLkiI>

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such events occur. Editors and news creators concluded that the public demanded such a

whole-day dedication to that specific matter, and they did so regardless of the criteria that call

out for simplification, composition or meaningfulness, for example. What cast a shadow to

those criteria is probably relevance, predictability, unexpectedness and elite people among all.

Those are the criteria from Galtung and Ruge that were obviously present in the given

example. Generals were so important at the moment that Croatian television based their whole

program on that story. The simple conclusion is that live reportage, along with other

mentioned changes in the media environment call out for revision of the classical criteria.

4. Validity of Galtung/Ruge criteria nowadaysAs I concluded above with the news of war generals’ liberation example, there definitely

still exists a connection between the criteria of news values from 1965 with today’s news

creation. Unexpectedness, relevance and elite people are factors that influenced that event to

become news. Now I will try to show with some every-day news examples how some of the

Galtung and Ruge criteria could be seen as valid or invalid today.

a) UnexpectednessUnexpectedness is something that inevitably affects people’s attention. It refers to every event

that is out of the ordinary, and something that could not have been predicted. Without doubt

this characteristic of an event is the winning one, and is truly valid today as it was in the

1960’es. Recent happening that went all around the globe was Felix Baumgartner’s record

breaking parachute jump from space. The Austrian Baumgartner jumped from more than 24

miles above the Earth and broke both the

speed of sound and the record of highest

parachute jump2.

Also, the news about war generals

liberating verdict was unexpected given the

fact that the first instance verdict was

conviction (Gotovina was sentenced for 24

and Markač for 18 years). People knew the

date of the verdict, but they couldn’t have known what its content will say. Because it was

2 Example of that news. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/oct/14/felix-baumgartner-skydive-space-video>

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Picture 2. Felix Baumgartner jumps out of the capsule on his way to breaking the world record for the highest free fall in history.

expected event with mostly unexpected turnout, it is no wonder it took the newspapers

headlines and became the breaking news throughout Croatia, but also in Serbia and other

neighboring countries.

b) PredictabilityPredictability is the criteria opposite to prior one. It assumes that the public is expecting a

certain event to happen; it is something that could have been planned. Also, Galtung and Ruge

believed that if a receiver expects or desires an event to happen, the event will simply become

news or, the more a person is interested in a subject, the more likely is their selective attention

for that subject (in Brighton, Foy 2007:22-23). Such a hypothesis maybe sounds fine if we

look at the nature of human behavior. But, common sense tells us that it is impossible to

satisfy every wish from every reader, listener or viewer. Therefore such a theory remains

simply a theory. Brighton and Foy thus stress out the skill of the editor to try to please the

most of public as possible (2007:23-24). Different case than that which makes this criterion

valid today is the understanding of predictability as some event that could be planned for.

Again, the example is the war generals’ liberation verdict. This event was scheduled for that

day, people knew it was going to happen and they wanted news about it. Similar example is

with sports events. When there is a football match, the fans know about it and the media give

information about the results. It is a win-win situation both for the media and the public.

There is no doubt that expected events are what influence them to become news.

c) Clarity Clarity or simplification means that the clearer the event is, and the less ambiguity it has, the

more it will be noticed as potential news. Brighton and Foy argue that “such a theory relies

heavily on the ability of a journalist or reporter to take the complex and find its essence, then

present that essential fact in a clear and unambiguous manner” (2007:18). Also, they point out

that most media today are dominated by conflicts and that “clarity becomes almost

impossibility” (2007:18). Indeed, the information in the media today are the result of many

interests. Politicians try to get the most for their image out of the media, the competitive

media are fighting for freshest and sappiest news and therefore are giving unconfirmed

information or maybe even untruths, the market has its own demands, the stakeholders

influence the news, and unfortunately tabloidization becomes omnipresent and blurs the news

with unnecessary so-called sensations. General conclusion is that in today’s news coverage

confusion is more often than is clarity. Simplest examples are news about the countries and 6

areas in conflict, such as ongoing Syrian uprising (or civil war) and the Indo-Pakistan war.

News about events in conflicting areas is filled with chaos, confusion and ambiguity.

Conflicting sides read them differently, the international community gives a third explanation,

and each individual understands it according to their political beliefs, personal values, amount

of prior knowledge on the matter and so forth. Therefore it is obvious that this criterion can’t

be taken seriously today; there are many unclear events or ambiguous presentation of events

in the media.

d) Negativity Negativity means that the negative stories are in journalistic practice seen as positive because

they draw publics’ attention. Spencer-Thomas explains their frequency in the media because

“they are more likely to score high on other news values, such as threshold, unexpectedness,

unambiguity and meaningfulness” (Spencer-Thomas, 2012). Really, there are much news

about accidents, tragedies, violence, poverty, unemployment, natural disasters and other bad

happenings. We could simply say that the media are giving us true information; these things

do happen on daily basis. But we are aware of that, is it really necessary to see, hear and read

about so much negativity every day? Martyn Lewis tried to stop this ‘negativity trend’ in 1988

by stating that true journalistic challenge is to create the balance between positive and

negative. He added that concentrating on the negative is lazy journalism and therefore

attracted much attention and further discussion (in Brighton, Foy 2007:17). Negative news

examples are all around. Maybe the latest negative news that caused much fear and stress in

Zagreb is the bomb explosions that happened on Wednesday and Friday on the same week.

There was no explanation why it happened, who is responsible, whether it was a possible

terrorist attack or not, whether the two explosions were connected or not, could there be more

explosions and so forth. This is a great example how a negative event fulfils more criteria:

unexpectedness, relevance, timeliness, continuity (the media keep on reporting about the

event until every information is clear), elite nation/area (it happened in Zagreb so it is of big

importance to the area). Negativity is criterion we can find today even more than in the

1960’es because it seems that the trend had boosted since.

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Picture 3. Negative news covers in (tabloid) newspapers in Croatia. Translations: “How the monster kidnapped Antonia”, “All secrets of bloody Dolores”, “The dead baby’s sister brought beaten up in the hospital”, “Fear in Zagreb” – about latest bomb explosions in Zagreb mentioned above.

The boost is especially visible if we look at the tabloid newspapers covers, and covers of

‘serious’ newspapers influenced by tabloidization. The number of such disturbing headlines is

unfortunately growing. As the authors put it, “hard fact is that bad news sells newspapers, and

draws viewers and listeners to broadcast news programs” (Brighton, Foy 2007:18).

e) MeaningfulnessMeaningfulness refers to cultural relevance of an event in order to become news. Galtung and

Ruge believed that social coherence of meaning is indisputable and, given the fact that they

explored the media at that time only in Norway, it is probably hard to fight that argument.

Since their time the environment of the media has changed, the capacity of media coverage

has risen, there are more TV channels than ever, and printed publications, countless web news

portals, web-logs, radio stations and they had spread all around the world. We can no longer

talk about the cultural coherence, a general consensus in thought that would result as a unique

understanding of the news. Brighton and Foy argue that the “likelihood of all items in a news

program or in a newspaper appealing to all members of society in an equally meaningful way

is highly unlikely” (2007:20). They also give the easiest example of when such mutual

understanding is still possible – when reporting about natural phenomenon or disasters

because they are of equal interest to all members of a society. Such a striking event that

needed no further comments and held no confusion was earthquake and tsunami in Japan in

20113. This event was equally understood in Japan as it was anywhere else in the world

(except, of course, emotional responses were higher among Japanese people).

3 Video of Reuters short coverage of the event: <http://www.stuff.co.nz/lightbox/world/videos/4760688/Tsunami-waves-close-in-on-Japan?KeepThis=true>

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Picture 4. Live reportage of tsunami in Japan in 2011.

f) Continuum Continuum means that once an event has become news it gathers its own momentum.

Spencer-Thomas calls it ‘the running story’ and explains that “This is partly because news

teams are already in place to report the story and partly because previous reportage may have

made the story more accessible to the public” (Spencer-Thomas 2012). Of course, many

events after first publication turn out to be followed and investigated by journalists further on.

From already mentioned examples, the latest bomb explosions in Zagreb are the news that the

media is covering every day from the day of first explosion, simply because there is no

general conclusion about it yet. Also, there was much continuity of the Japan disaster because

it was crucially important for the people in Japan to find out new information, and the

mundane public was also interested. Any news about general Gotovina for example was

continuous for years; from the moment of accusation in 2001, to the start of the trial in 2008,

to the first instance verdict in 2011, and the last verdict in 2012. When biggest turnouts of the

event happened, the general was in the news again. We could say that continuity of certain

news depends on the national or mundane relevance of the event, or the person. The news

about bomb explosions in Zagreb will probably last for few more days until all questions are

answered and later it will disappear. Only if some other similar event happens in the ongoing

years, journalists will dig out that story and mention it because the situation will have

changed. Therefore, we could say that this criterion is valid in today’s journalistic practice,

but it doesn’t (equally) affect every event. There are definitely stories that are important or

interesting in the way that they cause further publication of the event, but some news are

published only once and that is where the story ends. Authors argue Galtung and Ruges’

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belief by saying “what happens in the real world is that events become overtaken by more

events” (Brighton, Foy 2007:24).

g) Elite people and/or nationsElite people or nations are criteria that are probably infinite in evaluating what’s news.

Galtung and Ruge defined in 1965 that the higher the public profile of a country or person, the

more importance it enjoys in terms of newsworthiness. That is true today as it was then.

Maybe the only thing that has changed is the trend of growing importance of so-called

celebrities, which are not elite people, but are

seen as such because of rising sensationalism

and tabloidization. The result of that is the

situation where newspapers and TV news

channels4 report about film stars getting

divorced, expecting babies, showing up at

parties and similar. New events concerning

famous and influential politicians, musicians,

sportsmen, movie stars, and other public

people have always caused much curiosity

from the public, and therefore from journalists

and editors. Apart from the general’s example,

I could mention the conviction of Croatia’s former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to 10 years of

prison for taking bribes and corruption. Importance of who he is could not have been bigger;

once he led the country and then he is the worst criminal. Some random person’s criminal trial

would never be of such importance. This and many other examples show the consistency of

this 1965 criterion.

5. A new set of valuesWhile evaluating the consistency of Galtung and Ruge criteria today, Brighton and Foy

concluded that the approach to the delivery and packaging of news has altered, that Galtung

and Ruge made a crucial mistake because they focused solely on Norway, and that the whole

of the developed world and multiplicity of media calls out for a fresh set of values (2007:29).

4 Tabloid daily publication in Croatia 24sata started this trend which affected more serious newspaper Jutarnji list and other daily publications. In TV news the trend is most obvious in the program of Croatia's private television RTL.

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Picture 5. Croatian’s former PM accused for 10 years of prison for corruption in November 2011.

They mention relevance of the event to the public, topicality or immediacy of the event,

composition or order of contents, expectation of the event, unusualness of the event, worth of

the event or justification for its appearance in the news and external influences. Their set of

criteria is simply a revision of the classical ones in order to closely present today’s news

selection.

6. ConclusionEven though I focused on Brighton and Foy’s guidelines while trying to understand the

change in the media landscape, and the change of the news values positioning today, I tried to

give room for latest (mostly Croatian) news examples that would help me create further

opinion on the matter. After doing that, I must say that I am pretty confused when trying to

divide one criterion from another. Seems that one event that becomes news consists of many

criteria at the same time. What seems to be the biggest problem when trying to apply Galtung

and Ruges criteria to nowadays is the problem of terminology and changed practices of news

selection in today’s media. For example, the liberating verdict of war generals, as I mentioned

prior in the text, could be understood as unexpected and predictable at the same time. At first

it seems confusing because these two criteria have the opposite meanings, but that’s why it

seems that Brighton and Foy’s new values give a better distinction. They mention unusualness

instead of unexpectedness, because an event, as we can see, can be both expected and unusual

(but not expected and unexpected at the same time).

General conclusion about the news selection process today is that it is chaotic. Journalists and

editors make their decisions based mostly on external influences – the demands of the public,

the market, the media policy and above all – according to competition. Pure example to that is

the rise of so-called sensational news that have no true value apart from immediacy and

connectivity to so-called celebrities. Such news are more common even in the prior serious

media because competitive media started that trend which turned out as payable.

Simply stated, much has changed, but the existence of valuable news should always stay a

professional necessity. The importance of Galtung and Ruge criteria is still visible today, and

its importance rises when their criteria are more applicable to today’s situation. The truth is

that they couldn’t have predicted such changes in the media environment, therefore the recent

set of values become more useful. Despite that, journalists and editors will surely continue to

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rely on their instinctive practice in news selection, which will probably lead to the new media

situation in the years ahead that will again search for the new applicable set of values.

References

Brighton, P. and Foy, D. (2007) News Values, Sage publications.

Spencer-Thomas, O. (2012, April) Owen Specer-Thomas Home Page,

<http://www.owenspencer-thomas.com/personal/owen-spencer-thomas>,

Accessed in January 2013.

AppendixPicture 1.

Source <http://www.hrt.hr/index.php?id=vijesti-clanak&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=189783&cHash=2623681d7e>

Picture 2.

Source <http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/nov/03/felix-baumgartner-space-jump-interview>

Picture 3.

Sources <http://www.jutarnji.hr/multimedia/archive/00527/naslovnica_527988S0.jpg> <http://www.24sata.hr/naslovnice/dnevne-novine>

Picture 4.

Source <http://file2.stuff.co.nz/1299854421/690/4760690.jpg>

Picture 5.

Source <http://www.advance.hr/ad/im/aktnews/slike_an/ivo-sanader-optuzen-na-10-godina-zatvora-drzavi-mora-vratiti-3-5-

milijuna-eura_2013_3625.jpg>

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