During lecture this week we discussed the role of journalism and news values. Journalists need to know their role in society to fulfil their duties. To be an established journalist one needs to understand and complete their roles. According to Stephen Lamble there are five roles of journalism: journalists must report on all events and reflect all that is occurring in society, scrutinise individuals and institutions to find the truth, journalists must give a voice to people who aren’t often heard, journalists and the news media should protect and promote democracy, and journalists have a duty to keep people informed on events occurring in every part of the world (Lamble 35).
The roles Lamble has outlined will keep journalists focused on their main tasks. To maintain the integrity of journalism it is important to follow the five roles in journalism. I have heard many people speak about a decline in journalistic ability in the United States and one possibility might be that journalists lost sight of their main roles. It is important for a journalist to keep their roles in mind while finding and reporting on a story.
Journalists need to understand which stories to report on which can be based on news values. There can be more than one news value for each story. News values help to distinguish which stories are important and is a way to categorise which news stories are the most newsworthy. Journalists can use news values as a guide for finding an interesting story.
News values change through time and space. In tutorial we learnt that a news story in a different country will structure stories differently based on their news values. For instance, we looked at a story from a country with a high amount of corruption, therefore the story began telling the readers the assailant had not been charged or arrested. In a different country with less corruption, the news values would be different and people would be more interested in the attack of the journalist. I never realised that news values would be very different based on location and culture.
During tutorial I enjoyed finding the news values in different stories. I was interested in hearing the news values fellow classmates chose for each story. There were some differences in the news values for the story regarding Kate Middleton’s pregnancy. For instance, I said a news value was drama while another classmate said the news value was good news. People will see different news values based on their personal opinions. After this week’s lecture and tutorial I will read news stories and try to find which news values are associated with the story.
1. Lamble, Stephen. News As It Happens: An Introduction to Journalism. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.
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