If it bleeds, it leads!
What's the value of the news that you are reporting and who will be concerned?
There are few definition of news value
1. IMPACT on readers
2. AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION what's happening in the area of culture - feels ownership of the story
3. PRAGMATIC ethics, facticity, practice/practical current affairs, and the 24/7 news
4. SOURCE INFLUENCE
There are few ways to decide the newsworthiness.
Firstly, the 12+ factors by Galtung and Ruge - Negativity, Closeness to home, Recency, Currency, Uniqueness, Simplicity, Personality, Expectedness (predictability), Elite Nations, Exclusivity and Size.
From O'Neil and Harcup, the Power Elite, Celebrity, Entertainment, Surprise, Bad news, Good news, Magnitude, Follow-up, Relevance, Newspaper agenda.
Also the Murray Masterson "Big 6" Significance, Proximity, Conflict, Human interest, Novelty and Prominence.
Coincidentally, two news that happened in my home country, Malaysia on late April proved that. Both issues 'bleed' but the news value wasn't different to Malaysian.
The first one is the abduction of a Dutch national boy Nayati in a supposed-to-be-safe residential area at 27th of April. Normally news like this will grab the headline for days even though there are more interesting news in politics. But, a national event happened on 28th of April beat the kidnapping news and this issue was so important that it was topic on every local media for weeks. Any follow-up about that event is reported in details and I could feel the impact on the nations based on all the activities on social network. That is the BERSIH3.0 rally. This event is organized by 3 main opposition parties and the purpose of this rally is to demand clean and fair election. All the Malaysians united regardless races and all came out to show their unsatisfactory to the Election Commission of Malaysia. The rally was held in Kuala Lumpur and other major cities in the country. Besides that, Malaysian around the world also organized rallies in the city they stay such as USA, Australia, Canada, UK, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China, India, Russia, South Africa and many more. They all came out to show their support ant their heart for Malaysia.
The news value of BERSIH3.0 is the biggest of all and most concerned among all the news.
People felt related and close to the news as it matters the destiny of future Malaysia.
Although Nayati's news is suppose to be a big social news, but it didn't stays on the first page one day after that because the value is not big enough. However, his news were mentioned everyday until the day he returned to his family safe and sound.
What I want to say is, even though both news are societal and important, but journalist will delivers what their readers want to know. After all, news value is socially constructed.
One more issue I'd like to point out is I personally thinks that nowadays news value are abit messed up and bias towards gossips. Don't you think so? People do not really care what charities or the positive effect of a politician but if he is involved in a sex scandal, I'm pretty sure the people will follow the news on daily basis.
As I said, what news and how it is reported is very important on shaping a society with good morality. Let's hope that one day it will find it's way back.
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