Essay: What are the news values in a newspaper article?

What are the News Values in a newspaper article?

News Values is how news professionals decide on what is newsworthy and how to attract the audience. I will be focusing on the newspaper article titled “May faces defeat by MPs demanding a meaningful vote on final Brexit deal” published by the Guardian. This article is dedicated to the Prime Minister Theresa May.

First of all, the article is portraying Theresa May is a bad person, therefore, the first News Value is Negativity. This is when bad stories that contain conflict gets overshadowed by the good stories. The conflict in this story is that she is denying the parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal with the EU so she is getting defeated by the Members of Parliament. Most members of the public like being scared or they like to see conflict as it will make the news interesting therefore more people will tune in.

Furthermore, this article shows Predictability. Companies publish the news to be surprising but in fact, the public has predicted the outcome of them. The fact that Theresa May will not fulfil her promises that she has made with the EU has been predicted by the audience. The residents that live in the UK will be concerned by the story as it will affect them in the future. This goes on to the next News Value…

… Which is Proximity. As Theresa May is the Prime Minister, she arguably has the most power, in terms of politics, in the United Kingdom, she can make decisions that can benefit or obstruct the people that are living in the UK. This story like this and stories from the west (for example stories about President Trump) will be favoured from a story like homeless people in the UK, a story that is closer to home. This is because they portray the people from the working class differently to people that have a higher status (middle class but mainly upper class).  For example, how the news portray Islamic people made residents in the UK terrified about them and to make them develop Islamophobia.

Finally, Continuity and Narrative will be the final news value that is present in this newspaper article. Since this is about Brexit and the fact that the United Kingdom hasn’t left the EU yet, this phenomenon will be continuous to the point that the UK finally leaves the European Union. The narrative aspect is that Brexit could be written like a fiction story with Protagonists and Antagonists like Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May.

The News Values that were present in this newspaper article are Negativity, Predictability, Proximity and Continuity and Narrative. These news values are common to the theme of politics so this article will be found on broadsheets instead of tabloids because it fits the criteria of them and it is a formal story.