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Newspapers

News values, selection and the construction of reality

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 1

Overview

News values, agenda setting and combination in media language.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Numbers

Explain what news values are, who set them out systematically, and give three of them.

Key term

What are news values?

Numbers

Who first set out a systematic list of news values?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What are news values?

    Model answer

    News values are the criteria journalists use to judge whether an event is worth reporting. News values explain why some events dominate and others never appear.

  2. 2

    Who first set out a systematic list of news values?

    Model answer

    Galtung and Ruge set out a systematic list of news values in 1965. The 1965 study examined how foreign events reached the Norwegian press.

  3. 3

    Name three news values that make an event more likely to be reported.

    Model answer

    Threshold, negativity and elite reference all raise the chance of coverage. A story scoring on several values at once is likely to lead the paper.

  4. 4

    What is meant by gatekeeping?

    Model answer

    Gatekeeping is the filtering process by which editors decide which stories pass through to publication. Every gate closed is a version of events the reader never sees.

  5. 5

    Define agenda setting.

    Model answer

    Agenda setting is the media's power to shape what audiences think about rather than what they think. Prominence and repetition tell readers which issues matter.

  6. 6

    How does selection construct a version of reality?

    Model answer

    Journalists select a small number of events from an unlimited supply and discard the rest. The published paper is therefore a construction, not a window on the world.

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