News values are general guidelines or criteria used by media outlets, such as newspapers or broadcast media, to determine how much prominence to give to a story. 

They are fundamental to understanding news production and the choices that editors and other journalists face when deciding that one piece of information is news while another is not.

News values are general guidelines or criteria used by media outlets, such as newspapers or broadcast media, to determine how much prominence to give to a story.

They are fundamental to understanding news production and the choices that editors and other journalists face when deciding that one piece of information is news while another is not.

In 1965, media researchers Galtung & Ruge analysed international news stories to find out what factors they had in common, and what factors placed them at the top of the news agenda worldwide. They came up with the following list of news values. - a kind of scoring system - a story which scores highly on each value is certain to come at the start of a TV news bulletin, or make the front page of a newspaper. Journalists and editors also draw heavily on their experience - of what an audience expects, of what stories have had a major impact on public consciousness in the past, of what is important - and each news organisation will have their own system of setting a news agenda.

Threshold

The bigger impact the story has, the more people it affects, the more extreme the effect or the more money or resources it involves, the better its chances of hitting the news stands.

Frequency

Events, such as motorway pile-ups, murders and plane crashes, which occur suddenly and fit well with the newspaper or news broadcast’s schedule are more readily reported than those which occur gradually or at inconvenient times of day or night. Long-term trends are unlikely to receive much coverage.

Negativity

Bad news is more exciting than good news. Stories about death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or simply extreme weather conditions are always rated above positive stories such as royal weddings or celebrations. Bad news stories are more likely to be reported than good news because they are more likely to score high on other news values, such as threshold, unexpectedness, unambiguity and meaningfulness,

Unexpectedness

If an event is out of the ordinary it will be more likely to make it into the news than an everyday occurrence would. As Charles A. Dana famously put it, “If a dog bites a man, that’s not news. But if a man bites a dog, that is news!”

Unambiguity

Events which are easy to grasp make for better copy than those which are open to more than one interpretation, or where understanding of the implications depends on first understanding the complex background to the event.