The Global News project seeks to encourage teachers and students to develop a critical understanding of the role the press and media play in shaping attitudes and social values and the ways in which they represent events, people and places, particularly in countries in the South.

What and how the media selects to report about key global issues and the people and places of the South tend to be based on conventional news values. There are, however, alternative news values which seek to challenge the conventional approach to news selection.

Conventional News values
The following are considered to be key news values used to decide whether an international story makes it into the news:
1. Timely – taking place at a time when the issue is at the forefront such as coinciding with an international summit, e.g. report on the impact of AIDS in Africa when a conference on AIDS is being held in Africa; reports on the environment at the time of the Earth summit etc.
2. Important – the story should be seen as ‘significant’ and involve a lot of people. This is why news of the developing world is so often dominated by large scale disasters such as famine or floods etc.
3. Near – the closer to home or the greater the connection to home the more likely the story is to be reported, e.g. if British tourists are suddenly caught up in a civil war or disaster it is likely to be reported whereas it might otherwise not have been.
4. Controversial – an element of controversy or conflict of any kind helps sell stories.
5. Bizarre – unusual, quirky or amusing stories often make the news.

Alternative News values
The following recommendations are based on a code of conduct drawn up by a group of European Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs)* to help guide and challenge the messages and images that news media produce on the countries and peoples of the South. The recommendations can also be viewed as alternative criteria for guiding news from and of the South.

1. Avoid catastrophic images in favour of considering root problems and the internal and external issues and difficulties which give rise to problems – political, structural and natural.
2. Preserve human dignity by providing sufficient background information on people’s social, cultural, economic and environmental contexts; highlight what people are doing to take responsibility for themselves.
3. Provide accounts by the people concerned rather than interpretations by a third party.
4. Provide more frequent and more positive images of women – not just as helpless, dependent victims.
5. Avoid all forms of generalisation, stereotyping and discrimination – racial, sexual, cultural, religious etc.

*NGO-EC Liaison Committee: Code of Conduct: Images and Messages Relating to the Third World 1989

 

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