News Values Essay

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/13/george-hw-bush-allegedly-touched-16-year-old-woman-inappropriately

The Guardian have published a news story that focuses a former president of the United States, George W. Bush sexually harassing a sixteen year old woman. This news story has a link to the news values summarised by Galtung and Ruge

A news value that the news story is linked to is frequency: the amount of coverage on that news story. Since the news story is fairly new the story isn't recurring on websites, newspapers or on television. There is however still a likelihood that The Guardian will revisit this news story or something linked to it, perhaps as an update. Another news value connected to The Guardian's news story is Threshold: the amount of coverage the story is receiving. The news story was not only covered by The Guardian but also The New York Post, Daily Mail and USA Today, exemplifying how much the western world prioritises western news even if it may not seem very important when compared to situations and events happening in the 'East'. Since the news story covers events happening to a former president the proximity is in the United States, a western country which is also the primary target audience for this news story. The news story is very pessimistic, viewing George W. Bush in a negative fashion which can be damaging to his reputation but is what can intrigue the audience. The technique of negativity is used to try and draw in the target audience. With the news consistently reporting on politicians and government related news, a news story on the former president can seem quite predictable, even though the news story may lack importance compared to other potential stories. There has not been much continuity on the news story for a few reasons being its relevance, importance or the audience's lack of interest. Although the heading of the news story makes it seem like the incident is quite recent, the article later reveals that this is information on events that had happened over a decade ago. Perhaps this misleading has led to the audience disapproving of continuity  due to their irritation of the original article. Since this news article was found online its composition differs from a physical newspaper composition. The article has its own page which consists of a heading at the top, followed by an image beneath it, after which comes the article itself with advertisement and links to social media on both sides. The personalisation of the article is simple and professional as most articles on The Guardian tend to be. Theme colours that identify the newspaper institution are also included on the online page which is a dark blue colour.

The article itself seems to hold little importance in current day society however The Guardian's odd choice to publish it nevertheless supports the ideology which the media industry is influenced by being otherness. Otherness in the news industry subjugates the importance of events happening in 'eastern countries' in favour of a story that 'hits close to home'; a story that the audience can relate to or empathise with as it is within a society or culture that they feel familiar with. To exemplify this, many terror attacks occur in third world or war-torn countries however it is very unlikely that the incident would make it to the front page of the news or be first news story online or on television however if that same terror attack were to happen in a first world country, a country where the society mirrors our own, (a western country) the incident would inevitably be broadcasted and published globally with constant updates and support from much of the audience with a great sense of sympathy and remorse. This form of otherness shows how ignorant society can be and how the media is able benefit from it by exposing their fears making them more ignorant by prioritising these first world countries, placing them in a loop with the media industry.

The news industry are what the audience rely on as a source of information however when the news cherry pick their potential news stories in favour of ones that they can potentially profit from rather than share news stories may actually be of use it defeats the concept of newspapers. Although that summary is an overgeneralization of newspapers as not all institutions may follow the same ideology.