Media companies that publish news reports and articles shown on news websites all have their own ideas and beliefs that they want their audience/viewers to believe. Choosing these agendas are called agenda setting. The people that decide what/how things are shown in news reports and called media gatekeepers and include writers, editors, governments, companies, etc.
Some of these news value can be adapted to specific sectors such as entertainment magazines, celebrity magazines, fashion and trend-based websites. Their ideology may be very different to a mainstream news provider. News providers of all kinds select the news that they believe to be most relevant to their audiences in order to maintain them. This is sometimes offset against the demands of ownership and control as well as advertisers.
News stories are selected based on;
1. Negativity | ‘Hard’ News - bad news will almost always be prioritised. |
2. Proximity | Things that happen close to home (domestic news) or that involve people from a local area. |
3. Recency | “Breaking News’ |
4. Currency | The ‘value’ of a story. If it is useful for people. |
5. Continuity | Stories that are likely to continue for a long time. |
6. Simplicity | The easier the story is to understand, the better. |
7. Personality | Often ‘soft’ news surrounds personalities in whom the public has an interest eg. Royal family, celebrities, athletes |
8. Uniqueness | If a story is unusual or surprising |
9. Expectedness | Includes diary events - things that happen at a particular time of the year. |
10. Elite nations/people | Western societies such as European countries and the USA will tend to dominate the news. |
11. Exclusivity | When a news channel has footage or information that is not yet in possession of others. |
12. Threshold | How many people are impacted on by an event. |
Real Life Example: Detik.com
This is a screenshot from Indonesian News Website Detik.com. owned by PT Trans Corporation that focusses on current affairs in and out of Indonesia. From this screenshot, articles presented mainly talk about ongoing political parties bids for the 2024 national election and their candidates. There are also articles talking about Chinese tech companies and Soccer. I believe these articles were chosen to be shown due to their recency, as the election bids are happening right now, continuity, as the election and the news that surround it is going to continue until 2024, proximity, as these are events that are currently going on in Indonesia, and currency, as people's lives might very well be affected depending on which parties/candidates win the most seats in the Indonesian House of Representatives.
This is a screenshot from American media/news corporation CNN (Cable News Network), a part of Warner Bros. Discovery LTD. Articles shown present a wide array of topics such as the war with Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jing Ping's rise in power, and the UK's new prime minister Rishi Sunak. Specifically, taking a look at the primary article of US Joint chief of Staff Mark Milley having a meeting with Chief of Russian General staff Valery Gerasimov on the US's support on the war with Ukraine. This article was most likely chosen due to its proximity, as it talks about an important member of the US government having a meeting with a Russian government official, even though they're discussing affairs involving different countries. Other factors may include continuity, as the war in Ukraine is most likely to last for a long time, negativity, as wars generally connote negative emotions like fear and panic, and currency as the war in Ukraine is a hot international affair that is currently effecting the lives of billions across the globe.
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