What's Your Value?

Values are funny things. When you ask someone what their values are, there tends to be a lot of umming and ahhing while they try to put it into words. Everyone has values, but we rarely stop and think about what they actually are. Values tend to be those intrinsic things that seem to be buried deep down inside of us, things that we just have. But values are relative, cultural things, and we weren’t born with them. Everyone has different values, and this rule doesn’t stop at news outlets. They have values too.

News values, however, vary slightly from the values held by people. Whereas a person’s values tend to be based upon what we see as important in life, news values are all about what makes news newsworthy. Exactly what factors make stories newsworthy is a topic of debate, with people of all different ages and from all different places trying to come up with ‘the list’ of news values. A perfect list, however, is impossible, because news values vary across countries, states, and even news outlets. The news values of ABC and Channel 9 are likely to be different, just as the news values in Australia are likely to be different to the news values in China. So how do we know what makes good news?

Despite all these differences, some news values are pretty universal. The idea of ‘if it bleeds it leads’ and ‘if it’s local it leads’ is seen across the world, with news of disasters, death and tragedy taking priority in the news. Proximity is also a big one. People want to hear about things that are close to home and that affect them, and so stories that are close geographically tend to get more news space too. There are lots of other factors, including currency, uniqueness, simplicity, exclusivity and size, plus a whole host of others that all change depending on where you are and what outlet you work for.

News values, however, aren’t hard and fast rules. Just like the values held by people, journalists often just have a sense for what makes news worthy, and for what their news values are. They don’t often think about it, and I dare say that if you asked a journalist exactly what their news values are there’d be a bit of umming and ahhing as well. But news values are important to understand, even if they are a bit illusive, and nobody can make ‘the list’. Everyone has news values, just like everyone has values.  And maybe it’d be worth doing some umming and ahhing and figuring out exactly what they are.