Media Essay (News Value) - vanessa

Media Essay

Which news values apply in the article?

Article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-41887982

News value, known as a kind of scoring system in the media world. The higher a story scores on a specific value the more likely it is to appear as a front page news or at the beginning of a news bulletin . Media researchers Galtung and Ruge (1980) identified these factors as a way in which news professionals decide on what is considered ‘News worthy’. The article I will discuss, is the story of a delivery boy who became an acid victim on 2 November 2017 publishes by the BBC. My essay will have 4 main bodies looking at the specific news values, followed by a conclusion which summarises all the news values discussed in the essay.

“The 32-year-old food delivery driver was assaulted in east London on 2 November by two men who tried to steal his moped.” This is a sentence showing the BBC’s summary on the incident that occurred in East London. Here, we have our first news value applied, which is proximity. Proximity means that an event that is close to our home , where we come from or where we live gets much more coverage on certain  news platforms than ‘any other’ event. Paul Gilroy argues how when an incident occurs with a person from a non-white middle class background, his ethnicity is always mentioned e.g. Asian terrorist he named this ‘the other’. However, in this article no such thing is mentioned, although the victim is from a Pakistani middle class background.  The fact that this article focuses on an incident that happened in east London Walthamstow suggests how the story will be hugely written and talked about in areas of East London such as Leyton than any other place in the UK. This may be the reason why newspapers such as The Sun, The Guardian decided not to write about this news. This is proximity. Readers who live in East London or closer will feel much more connected to this article about an acid attack compared to reader in areas in West or South London.

The second news value that applies to this article is Frequency. This is seen in the date this article was published (9 November 2017), which is only a couple of days ago, therefore highly recent.  The first article written about this acid attack was also launched by the BBC on the Thursday 2 November, when the event actually occurred. So, the story is much more likely to get coverage in the news because it discusses an event that happened only a week ago. Audiences will also be focused because acid attacks have been common in the UK over the last few months for example the acid attack in Westfield, Stratford happening only two months ago. Therefore, this news story will receive a lot of coverage as it talks about an event that has happened very recently.

Frequency here could also be linked with another news value which is continuity. This means how journalists covering this news on the acid attack, have not only decided to write about the event once or twice but quite a few times, to keep the readers updated on the incident. This is clearly seen in the heading of the article which is “Walthamstow acid attack: Over £10,000 raised for victim”. This shows how after the incident occurred journalists have written about other events that have happened as a result of the acid attack.  A local woman from Walthamstow , Najma , 43 , set up an online fundraising page for the victim with a target to raise £5,000 initially for the victim, Muhammed Nawshad Kamal, 32.

The last news value I will discuss is predictability. This means how audiences will be able to forecast events that might happen in the news. We have been hearing a lot about acid attacks in the news , they have made headlines in newspapers and news channels e.g. The independent , BBC News .There has been an alarming rise in acid attacks in the UK. It has become a sort of horrible trend. Therefore , it is not hard for audiences to predict that there will be more acid attacks will follow. After the acid attack occurred in Westfields , we could predict how soon a similar situation will arise in Walthamstow , because the two places are quite close. Personally , I was highly predicting that an acid will definitely happen in either Walthamstow or Leyton , and it did! This is predictability , our power to be able to foreshadow news events and when  these events occur , they become headlines on the front page just like in this article , “Walthamstow acid attack:”.

In conclusion ,I believe that almost all of the news values of Galtung and Ruge apply to this article about the Walthamstow acid attack . However, I have picked proximity, frequency , continuity and predictability as I think they are the most important for this article . To an extent these news values are what have made this article a headline.

But, predictability does seem to be the most key news value for this article. This is because readers in Walthamstow and other areas around were just expecting this devastating incident to happen ,they were waiting for an acid attack to take place. And it did happen, in a very short time space. Therefore, predictability may be the key reason why the incident with Mr Kamal created such a roar in the news world.