Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions News is selected on a set of assumptions by the news editor about what he or she thinks the audience wants to see, hear or read – and what might draw an audience from a media rival. Newsrooms are inundated with information from a huge array of sources every minute of the day; emails, Twitter feeds, phone calls, news agency reports. Of course, not all of this can be reported. News editors have to quickly scan and filter this information and then select those stories that they consider will be of greatest interest to the audience. The decision about what goes in the newspaper or the next bulletin – and what gets left out – is based on a broadly agreed set of characteristics called “news values”.8 Ten key news values 1. Impact: The more people involved in or affected by an event or an issue, the greater its newsworthiness. 2. Timeliness: The more recently an event happened, the more newsworthy it will be. 3. Negativity: Bad news will generally receive more coverage than good news. 4. Unexpectedness: The unusual, unexpected and quirky capture the news media’s attention. 5. Unambiguous: Events that are easy to explain will receive greater prominence than complex stories. 6. Conflict: Controversy and clashes between different groups or individuals has dramatic impact. 7. Emotion: Human interest stories grounded in strong emotions – such as grief, fear or triumph – have broad appeal. 8. Relevance: News stories need to resonate with the values, interests and expectations of the audience. 9. Prominence: Stories that involve culturally important people or places dominate the news agenda. 10. Visualness: Strong images – photos or video – that capture an event or help explain an issue increase the newsworthiness of a story. Many studies of news production show that most of these factors are consistently applied across a range of print, broadcast and online news organizations worldwide. News values guide what is selected as news and the prominence given to a particular story. In general, stories that are based on “events” are more newsworthy than those based on “issues”. This poses an immediate challenge to NHRIs in their goal to generate media interest in human rightsrelated stories. 8 The most well-known list of news values was proposed by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge in 1965. In their publication, The Structure of Foreign News, Galtung and Ruge set out 12 selection criteria used by news editors and journalists to determine the relative newsworthiness of a particular news item. 4 | Chapter 1: Working effectively with the media