Monday, 20 November 2017

News Values Essay

Media News Values:
Which news values apply in the story?








The thought that news reports should be true dawned on journalists only recently. Until well into the twentieth century, most American and British newspapers propagandized on nearly every page. Instead of developing ethical views, most newspapers only consider their biased opinion, which can get certain newspapers into some trouble such as the one I have chosen. However certain “laws” have been put into place in the theme of media such as “News values” in order to prevent untrue articles. News values are general guidelines or criteria used by media outlets, such as newspapers or broadcast media, to determine how much prominence to give to a story. 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.
The Sun is a tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland with one of the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom with an average circulation of 1,686,840 according to March 2014. Meaning it has a large effect on the news spread around the country, whether it be good or bad. In the example I have chosen The Sun have published an Article about Muslim Jihad’s however they misrepresented poll results, saying 1 in 5 supported British Muslims supported people who have gone to Syria to fight for jihadi groups such as Islamic State when in fact the coverage presented as a fact that the poll showed that one in five British Muslims had sympathy for those who left to join Isis and for Isis itself. The Sun did not accept that the meaning of the question was ambiguous. The paper argued that previous questions in the survey had referred to Isis explicitly which created a lot of controversy and had many complaints towards the newspaper, arguing with Galtung and Ruges theory that believed that our perception of what constitutes an event is culturally determined and not a natural occurrence. However the Sun is a very common newspaper that reports false and incorrect accusations especially towards the Muslim community, they have been found guilty of perpetuating a biased and negative opinion of British Muslims, and are shown to want to spread this opinion.

The article goes against news values as they have attempted to spread a negative view on British Muslims as they explain 20% of Muslims support the Isis crisis, not only is this damaging the reputation of these individuals but creates a social tension between audiences as they feel obligated to feel negatively towards the Muslim Community. This is a common theme in Britain as it has been reported British newspapers have been accused of publishing a “consistent stream” of inaccurate stories about Muslims, reporting that 20 different findings have been reported that spread false and negative allegation towards the Islamic religion which causes a rising hostility.

In my example of the sun, many complains were made towards IPSO and fortunately the article was removed however in many cases the articles are investigated and seen to be innocent. IPSO is the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK. That holds newspapers and magazines to account for their actions, in order to protect individual rights and In my example Ipso said the paper had been accused of conflating “important distinctions between those travelling to Syria and those already fighting in Syria; between ‘sympathy’ for these individuals and ‘support’ for their actions; and between individuals attracted by the ideology of Isis, and the ideology of Isis itself”. Which In conclusion is positive as the article was later removed.

In conclusion the rising controversy of news values is very important as without it false news and accusation can be spread indefinitely, the power of media can not only create hostility towards certain groups, but their biased opinion can have effect on their audiences. Therefor theories such as the Galtung and Ruges, have been put in place correctly in order to reduce the amount of this happenin

1 comment:

  1. You write a convincing and intelligent critique of this news article. However you state that news values are not applied, when they are. You need to clarify that news values are *not* a way of reducing bias. They are a way of making the news appealing to the audience! So there is still work to do on this essay. D (Vaness)

    ReplyDelete

Layout: traditional Binary opposites: bad vs evil