News Values - Essay Example

When a person first begins to write a news story several questions usually begin to form in their mind. First are often the basic questions of any event, the who, what, where, why when, and how. And of course, all of these are important to cover in any news story. However, news values are other important factors that contribute to a story's importance and reacceptance into the general community. The UNCP Journalism departments list these news values as follows: “impact, timeliness, prominence, proximity, bizarreness, conflict, and currency” and they all are important to any journalistic effort or news story (UNCP 2008).

The Egyptian piece I picked to help demonstrate the seven news values is a piece about an important Egyptian Imah issuing fatawa forbidding Muslims from participating in a strike against rising food prices that were set to take place on Sunday.

The first news value, the value of impact, is very strong in this piece. This is sure to be a hot topic over in Egypt, as the religious leaders have now made it so people cannot participate in the strike that was to take place on Sunday. It has the right amount of impact on the reader and is sure to stir up interesting reader responses.

The article also displays appropriate timeliness. The article is coming out well before the strike, and it also gives people enough time for a warning if they had planned on taking part in the strike. It would completely lose its timeliness if it came out after the strike, so I would have to say that the timing is perfect.

I do not think that the article could carry any more prominence than it already does. It involves a high-ranking religious leader and a touch-sensitive subject about the strike. It is an important story and would be a very important story for the people reading it over in Egypt.

Proximity is also right on the dot. The news story is about events and actions taking place eight in Egypt and is a country-wide story that would be important to people across the entire Egyptian state.

The only thing that I feel the article is lacking a little bit is bizarreness. It just does not seem to have that over-the-top or out-there edge to it; however that by no means makes it a bad news story. It is important; just I do not feel it has that quality that some other more bizarre stories may have.

And last but not least, the story also contains a strong amount of controversy. The strike is sure to cause controversy in the Middle East, as is the rebel Muslim group putting it together. Within this is also the currency in the article, as it is an important story that people are sure to be talking about already, and it will most definitely hold their interest.

Boyd (1994) states that: “News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as ‘newsworthiness” and this article has almost all of those values and is an important article for all people who read it in Egypt. As Hetherington (1985) stated “anything which threatens people’s peace, prosperity and well-being is news and likely to make headlines”, I feel certain that this will be a headline story not only in Egypt but across the world.