1. Ethics and News Values
I am going to analyse two news stories and discuss the ethics involved:
Serious and Sensational Stories
A mystery four year old girl was found near Farsala in Greece with Roma couple
after supposedly being snatched from her biological parents, when she was found
there was a crackdown on illegal activities from the Roma Gypsies. The girl is
blonde-haired; fair-skinned that stood out, and doesn’t look like the couple, it has
since been proved that they are unrelated after a DNA analysis. The Roma couple
are accused of falsifying identity and family certificates. The woman has claimed
to have given birth to six children within a space of less than 10 months. They are
trying to figure out how the girl came into the couple’s care, ranging from being
found in a blanket, that she was handed to them by strangers or that she had a
foreign father. This story is very high in story priority because it is hard news, this
story will be on the front page of the newspaper. This story wouldn’t be available
in the newspapers until the following day due to printing timings, however the
BBC have twitter and Facebook accounts and would post news online which is
high priority. If this story is on the TV news it will come out on the day when is
happening at the regular news bulletin such as the evening news. On radio news
they will have different news every half an hour and when they hear the news on
the day, they will broadcast it on the next bulletin they do. This story would be at
the beginning of any bulleting because it is hard news and lots of people would
want to know about it. The immediacy will be that it is shown on the regular
bulletin and does not interrupt the normal routine of TV/Radio. The follow-up
angles will be if the Roma couple have done this before? Or is there any more
children missing? How did they get the girl in the first place? This story doesn’t
have an availability of audio because it is a print media but it could be on the
radio / TV news. The newsroom policy depends on newspaper publishing it
because the Telegraph and Guardian newspaper are more formal and politics. The
Sun and Mirror are more entertaining newspapers they will take less serious
approach. The human interest of this story would be that the viewers want the
girl to find her parents and want to know what will happen to her. Another
human interest will be what would happen to Roma couple and what happened
whilst she was there and how did she end up getting there. The public interest is
more for celebrity news and the public would want to know about mystery 4 year
old girl but they would be more engaged in what happening with celebrities.

2. Celebrity Privacy
The celebrity news story is about privacy and the public’s interest. For years,
the tabloid press have made its reputation exclusive involving celebrity’s
private lives. The phone hacking story is about the News of the World hacking
into celebrity’s phones to find out information and secrets, then celebrities
trying to take out injunctions against newspaper. There are many celebrities
involved in the phone hacking scandal, some of the celebrities have won cases
such as Sienna Miller who is an actress and won £100,000 in damages from the
News of the World in May, after the paper admitted hacking her phone. The
story priority is quite high because if the newspaper can hack the celebrity’s
phones this makes us think that they can also hack our phones. They are
breaking the ‘Human Rights Act 1998’ because they are invading the celebrity’s
privacy by going through their phone. This story was not only in the
newspaper, it was everywhere such as on the radio news, TV news and social
network sites. The immediacy is important but it is not majorly important that
it will interrupt ‘normal scheduling’ channels because doesn’t have effect on
everyone and can be shown in ‘normal news time’. The follow-up angles are
that as soon as they heard this news, they would wonder if they could hack
their phone and maybe their social network sites, emails, etc… The public
might like to read this news but they may also be concerned that the
newspaper could go through their phones, social network sites and emails,
etc… This news has availability of audio such as that there are some clips from
the BBC when they were interviewing others about the phone hacking scandal.
Also it is print media because it is in all the magazines and newspapers.
Sometimes the media make things up to make it quite interesting and most of
the time these stories are not always true about the celebrities. The newsroom
policy is that they say the truth is best however the truth doesn’t always make
good stories and therefore the stories are made up because they care more
about the ratings than the truth. The human interest of this story will be that
the audiences want to know if they hack the celebrity’s phones then can they
do this to their phones so they would be mostly concerned about their phone
getting hacked. The public interest is that the public are always interested with
celebrity news therefore lots of people would want to know about this story.