It is naïve to believe that television and/or radio news is a ‘window on
the world. It is as much a result of selection and construction as a work
of fiction.
The news is looked upon as a view of the world by many of us. We take what it
tells us as the gospel and see no reason to challenge it. But how much of the
news is a view of the world, and how much is simply the editor’s view of the
world?
The editor is the one who selects the stories that we watch or hear, but how does
he or she decide what to pick? Galtung and Ruge proposed a series of News
Values, by which the news is constructed. According to them, the selection of
stories depends on frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness,
consonance, surprise, continuity and composition.
They also stated that reference to elite people or countries (e.g. Royals), the
more negative (e.g. disasters or tragedies), and the more events can be
personalised (e.g. Politics) then the more they are likely to be selected as news
items. This would explain why most of our news bulletins contain headlines about
Royals, disasters and politics.
For example, the 30 minute Radio 4 broadcast on September 13 th 2001 covered
just three main topics: the September 11 tragedy (elite nations) Iain Duncan
Smith being the new Conservative leader (politics) and an arrest in connection
with the murder of Stephen Lawrence (negative/tragedy).
Following on the same lines, Denis MacShane posed five tenets about news
selection in 1979. They are:
Scandal
Individualism
The Unusual
Conflict
Hardship and Danger
In order to gain selection, MacShane argued that it had to engulf one or more of
the tenets. To apply an example to that, the September 11th tragedy can be
linked with each one. Scandal for the way that it happened, it was a very
individualistic attack; it was definitely unusual due to the style of the attack
(using the planes). Conflict came as a result of, and the hardship and danger
caused to the inhabitants of New York City made it a clean sweep of all five
tenets, which probably explains why we are still reading stories about it so many
months later.
To apply September 11th to Galtung and Ruge and you will also see the reference
to the elite nation, a lot of negativity, genuine surprise and the attack was also
very meaningful for the effect that it had and the people who died.
There are other models of thought about news section. One is the idea of
Selective control via a gatekeeper, as shown in Whites model below.
N1
N21
N N2
N3
N31
M
N4
N1 N4
N is the news and N1 to N4 are different news items that may appear on a news
day. Using the gates, the gatekeeper (in this case, the editor) shuts out the
stories that he does not believe are worthy, letting through the items of interest
to M, the consumer. This fits in with the idea of news values that were detailed by
Galtung and Ruge.
There is also a news agenda that identifies what we see and hear in the news.
This states that because there are a particular number of bulletins in a day,
something has to be found to fill the broadcast up. This is why on a slow news
day, focus is switched to Westminster and it becomes a political news day. The
broadcasts are then filled with political stories.
In conclusion, what we watch is not so much a view on the world as an editors
perceptions of the days happening. For every story there is another viewpoint,
and it is the news values that help decide which viewpoint we have access to.