Looking at ‘The Guardian’ dated Friday 15th October’ I have found two articles. I have found that according to news values, and the values used by journalists to prioritise one news story over another.
Firstly I looked at page 3 of ‘The Guardian’ on which I saw a big photographic image of Prince Harry. This article was titled ‘Teacher taped Harry to prove he cheated at art AS Level’. The article informs the readers that ‘His parents were both notoriously embarrassed by secretly recorded tapes which exposed elements of their private lives they would have much rather kept a secret.’ This statement proves to be in agreement with the quote by ‘Lord Northcliffe.’ ‘News is what some one somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising, which ironically on the very same page is a advert almost the same size as Harry’s picture.
I think in this case the frequency of the story is irrelevant. Had it have been near to the time when a lot of exam papers had been illegally obtained before examinations recently it would have made front page. The threshold of this story is also not very great cheating happens everyday of the week and although it was a member of the royal family it does not really effect the public drastically. This article was ambiguous in the sense it was clear to say his teacher believe she had helped him to cheat but the evidence and result of the claims were not clear at all. It was just hype about an allegation. The article goes on to saying in the tapes Harry confessed, “I was like a sentence in it” referring to his course work that his teacher did most of the written work for. She claimed she was told by the head of the art department that she had to ‘prepare explanatory text which accompanied a series of digital photographs Harry had put together for an AS project.’ An article like this is quite meaningful to the public because majority believe no matter who commits the deviance they should be put through investigation and if found guilty should be punished accordingly like any normal citizen. His teacher claimed she had been unfairly dismissed from her job due to the raised concerns she put forward to the headmaster. Although he insists it had nothing to do with the alleged allegations but in fact due to her not having any formal teaching qualifications although she did have a MA in art. This believed unfair dismissal reaches out to other teachers who may have been faced with similar dilemmas.
You would expect the press to have a continuation to this story to inform the public of the result of an investigation, but no continuation was made. This story is obviously in Reference to élite person in this case ‘Prince Harry’. Negativity is an important factor to this article if they had reported ‘ Prince Harry has Never cheated in an exam,’ it wouldn’t really catch the audiences attention, they would find it to be a boring article.
I then looked at an article on page 17 titled ‘Scientists herald malaria breakthrough.’ The article talks about vaccine that is believed to be feasible to develop to protect scientists to people deserve a worldwide scientific, political and financial commitment, such commitment is a question of equity of human rights and of disease exposure for vaccines have been tried and have failed to protect people from the life threatening disease. When editors went through the news values to evaluate where the article should fit in I assume they looked at the ambiguity of the story this means they looked at how clear the meaning of the event was. Although the meaning was quite clear the clarity of information itself was not as great. They could not specify how long it would take to create the immunisation, when it could be used and if it. This article also has a large threshold because such a breakthrough could cure millions of people of the world. Although the threshold of this story is pretty high its not very ambiguous thus making it not as important yet, because of the lack of evidence. This is probably why it was further back in the newspaper. This is an example of a low frequency article because they don’t have all the facts Personalisation would be a strong news value for this article because it does and would affect many people all over the world. In that way it also ties in with meaningfulness.
I expect this story will eventually gain continuity when more information is acquired.
This sort of article brings composition to the newspaper, this is because it is a source of good news in balance to the bad news.
In my opinion knowledge of a cure for malaria that could help hundreds of thousands of people from a life threatening disease is a much more important current affair that readers should be prioritised over Harry’s cheating, although true he should be punished the way any other pupil else where without the title ‘Prince’ should be it is hardly as important as the malaria article yet still gatekeepers decided to place Harry’s story on page 3 and not a word of the malaria article pop’s up until page 17, even though both are not very ambiguous the Prince Harry story was chosen over the malaria one.
