Thursday, 1 October 2015

News Values in Sky News. R7


In this research task, I will be analyzing the news values found in a newscast. The newscast that I will be analyzing is a clip of Sky News Radio at 1:00, broadcasted on 30th September 2015. This is a radio station that is broadcasted by the institution SKY. News presented in this radio station is targeted towards adults; this meant that formal, professional language and minimal intonation was used by the newsreader to present news. Moreover, the newscast was only for 2 minutes, this meant that the newsreader was presenting news with an increased pace and did not use words that required time to pronounce. This would be because, the newsreader is attempting to fit in all stories within the two minutes of broadcast, and therefore the newsreader must increase their pace of talking so that it is possible to cover all news with enough detail.

To begin with, all news presented in this newscast was hard news, because they all contained a sense of urgency or dealt with matters regarding life and death. The very first news that was presented was about how the German car company Volkswagen was caught rigging the emission tests. This news story may have been presented first due to it having the greatest news values. For example, this particular international news covered news values of negativity and conflict in terms of the economy. All of these news values seem to emphasize the idea of a clean reputation being tarnished, thus it would have a great threshold on the audience, as they may consider twice before purchasing a Volkswagen car. Therefore, due to this impact, this news story was possibly covered first.

The second news that was presented was about Russian forces being called out to fight the Syrian president, President Assad. This international story was covered after the Volkswagen scandal and shares similar news values as the Volkswagen news scandal. For example, this news covers news values of negativity, conflict (especially), timelessness and further currency. As a result of this news story covering all of these news values, this news story was considered the second most valued news and thus was covered second during the news cast. Moreover, the currency of news surround Syria and Syrian refugees, has provided emphasis on the currency of this news story.  Therefore, it would have more public interest which is possibly why this news story was covered second. However, this news story possibly did not have as much proximity to the audience as the story on the Volkswagen, because people will worry more about sudden negative news their cars, rather than war in a country where conflict is always on the surface. Thus for this reason, this news story has been placed second after the Volkswagen scandal.

Lastly, the last news that was covered by the news reader of Sky news was national news on 10 women in the UK getting womb transplants, which is a first for the UK. This news story was covered last but still had news values to allow this news story to hit the headlines in sky news. For example, this news story covered news values of human interest, oddity and proximity. All of these news values seem to create a great threshold on the audience specifically women, as now it is possible for women who wish to have a child, but did not have a womb do so, for their wish to come true. Therefore, this news story plays with emotions and seems to emphasize a biological breakthrough that will benefit mankind, which is perhaps why this story has made it to the headlines. To conclude, Sky news has followed one of the conventions of radio news and that is to cover news stories in order of significance, according to their news values.

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