The most interesting thing about wednesday's lecture was the obvious competition between PR and journalism. Public relations, to me, seems far less valuable than journalism. Sure, reading up about the latest gossip regarding Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's marriage is all well and good whilst waiting for the dentist, but nobody really believes in half of the story anyway. The seven o'clock news, on the other hand, is watched and mostly believed by the majority of viewers.
News values are quite self explanatory. The values themselves are basically factors that journalists and editors look for in stories to see if they are good enough to make the news. These factors include significance, interest, impact (local/national/international), size, drama, proximity and the list goes on.
These factors could mean the difference between front page news and not in the news at all.
Recently, a few threats have been made against newsworthiness. Public relations being one. Also the commercialisation of media and social life and the overall reality of journalism - do we really understand that this is happening in the world?
What this means is that journalism could soon turn to mush and become the very thing it swore to protect us from - PR (*dum dum DUUM!*) - resulting in less facts and more opinions from people like you and I... a horrible world.
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