1 Journalism and News Values Free Online FlashCards

What is the central role of journalism?

Journalism gathers, checks, explains, and shares information people need to understand events and make decisions.

What does public interest mean in journalism?

Public interest concerns information people need, especially when facts affect their rights, safety, resources, or civic participation. It is not simply whatever attracts the most attention.

Which news value concerns how new or developing an event is?

Timeliness: the event is new, developing, or connected to an upcoming decision.

What does impact measure as a news value?

Impact or consequence considers how many people are affected and how seriously they are affected.

What is proximity as a news value?

Proximity: how close a story is to its audience geographically or in lived experience.

What makes a story prominent?

Prominence: the involvement of people or institutions with significant public influence.

What does conflict mean as a news value?

Conflict: a meaningful dispute, competing interests, or opposing positions within a story.

What does novelty capture in a news story?

Novelty: an unusual or surprising event, or a significant change from what came before.

When does a story have human-interest value?

Human interest: an individual’s experience helps readers understand a broader issue.

What makes information useful as news?

Usefulness: information helps people act, prepare, or make a decision.

Are news values a fixed scoring system?

News values guide editorial judgment; they are not a fixed scoring system. A story can have several values at once.

What does editorial prominence determine?

Editors decide a story’s prominence: whether it leads a newscast or homepage, appears as a short item, or is not published.