Sunday 6 December 2009

News Values

1. Unexpectedness: 'Man bites dog' is news. If an event is highly unpredictable, then it is likely it will make it into the news.

2. Unambiguity: Events whose implications and meanings are clear make for a better story than those that are open for interpretation or need more explanation.

3. Personalisation: Events that can be portrayed as the actions of individuals will be more attractive than one in which there is no such "human interest".

4. Continuity: Once an event has been covered, it is convenient to cover it some more - the running story. -This will very much depend on the nature of the event. E.g. The war in Afghanistan.

5. Reference to elite nations: Those nations which are closest to our own will receive most of the coverage.

6. Reference to elite persons: The media may pay attention to important people; "The Labour Party leader falls in sea" - That is news.

7. Composition: Stories must compete with eachother for space within the media. For example, if a newspaper already has several foreign news item, the elast important news item might have to make way for a domestic news item.

8. Visual imperatives: The 9/11 terror attacks, in which the death toll was almost 3000, provided a series of powerful images. Terro attacks in the Congo have claimed 3million people, but because the cameras weren't there, the violence isn't as well-known.

9. Negativity: Bad news is good news.

10. Logistics: Although eased by the availability of global communications even from remote regions, the ability to deploy and control production of reporting staff, and functionality of technical resources can determine whether a story is covered.

Thursday 3 December 2009

Rupert Murdoch, the facts


The Dirty-Digger
He's famous for building one of the largest media empires in the world with interests in television, film, internet, newspapers and publishing.

He is the founder, a major share-holder, chairman and managing director of News Corp.

The most popular newspapers he owns are The Times, the Daily Mirror and The Sunday Times.
He has been accused of undermining the quality of the Press.

"The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow" - Rupert Murdoch
He doesn't want search engines to be free anymore; he said that he will block everything from his newspaper that comes from the popular search engine Google. "I think we will remove our websites from Google's search index, but that's when we start changing" - Rupert Murdoch
The Google boys responded with "He can block us if he wants to"