Modern news reports will often follow a set of frameworks to best convey the seriousness/severity of global news stories, particularly in the mainstream media such as global 24/7 news channels BBC World and CNN. But there are increasingly noticeable flaws and strategies to these news reports that may hinder the audience’s perspective on such issues.
To recognize these issues we first need to look what journalists perceive news to be and what values are attached to these views. It is important for us to ask questions such as what is news and what makes it. In order for a story to be newsworthy, it must have both cultural significane and relevance to a certain demographic, particularly that of their predominant audience. As well as this it must have features that have rare qualities and in order for it to be breaking new it must not have been released anywhere else. Most news related sources in the mediated public sphere will have reports and news stories about the rich and famous, giving insight into the average household how the other half lives, simply because its interesting and entertaining. They can also refer to elite nations.
There has become alternate news sites to the often biased mainstream sources, which focus on the people being affected by whatever unrest is going on. These sites such as Al Jazeera are shifting the common ideas of Western news values to focus on middle eastern issues and the emerging idea of peace journalism, effectively changing the concept of the “War on terror” frame that many western news stories overdramatize.
Aiyana Levin 