New Values - is it obvious?

Personally, ‘news values’ was the easiest concept out of all that was learnt in the lecture. Well, that was what I thought at the beginning. This was probably because it seems like a common knowledge and something you can generally learn outside of the course. Of course, this was not completely true and there were some elements that were completely new to me however, it was still a bit easier to understand (compared to any other lectures until now) and to apply.

One fact that struck me was that the news values vary across the different news services, country and culture. I thought that news values would be similar all across the news industries due to the fact that I thought that ‘new values’ was a generalised concept. It wasn’t. Some news services focus on the importance of the presented information and some focuses on how much the story appeals to the audience. This was not only distinguished between the services but also between the countries and culture. Thus, news values or newsworthiness each news services, country and culture priorities are different.  

There were also threats to these newsworthiness or new values. The fact that Public Relations effected journalism was an interesting fact. I am currently enrolled in COMU1052. Yes, you guessed right, it is ‘Introduction to Public Relations.’ In public relations, you have to work with the media, news, and advertisement in order to achieve what you ought to achieve and these involve journalism. Journalism helps PR but PR threatens journalism. It was hard to understand at first, however, as the concept of ‘Chrunalism’ arose throughout the lecture it explained the basic meaning.

Churnalism was when information like PR releases is repurposed in to an article. The major problem with this was that the person who repurposes such information does not check and clarify before they produce it. This idea of ‘churnalism’ is shown a lot in PR releases however, done in television as well. This is a dangerous act as there is a high risk of releasing a false new out to the public.

Through such concepts that are used in journalism it has come to me to think that what exactly a news value is. Is it something that attracts the audience? Or is it the importance of the information? I personally believe that both of the aspects are a great news values as both audience and information are important within news. Thus, as a general public and a student learning journalism, ‘churnalsim’ is something that is quite pleasant to know. In some sense it could be lying as churnalism has a high chance or producing false information. Therefore, I believe the most important news value all across the news services, country and culture is truth, or the trust between the news and the audience.