Oliver Toone

Ethics and News Values

In this assignment I am going to be discussing the ethics and news values about two stories that are currently in the media. The two stories are the phone hacking and a little girl that was abducted and living with another family.

The phone hacking is a celebrity privacy story and it involves whether or not celebrities should have more privacy even though it has been alleged that some celebrities get their agents to inform the paparazzi telling were they are going to be. They do this because they make a living through appearances so they earn money. But then complain about not having enough privacy. In the phone hacking scam over 3000 celebrities had their phone hacked by The News of the World.

Although the phone hacking story is a celeb story this is considered to be in the public interest because of the link to the Millie Dowler story, but it won’t get news priority over the other story where a little girl was abducted and was found living with another family In Greece. Current affairs are normally top of the news and are told first and in this case that is what the story about the little girl is. This is considered as newsroom policy. The fact the girl had blond hair and blue eyes was misleading and made everyone think she could be Madeline, but also because nobody knew where she had come from meant that it was a global news story. Whereas the celeb story was still newsworthy but it was an on-going court case and didn’t have the urgency that the Greece story had.

Both stories are considered to be human interest stories, the phone hacking story gives the impression that this could happen to you, whereas the story of the four year old girl was linked to the Madeline McCann story and had everyone thinking she could be Madeline because she had blond hair but there was also immediacy as the British public and people around the world wanted to know who she was.

The speed in which stories are reported has rapidly increased over the past couple of years due to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. So there is a sense of immediacy within the news room as every news channel wants to be the one that breaks the news. With the emergence of social media news outlets such as print media can now break the news as quick as TV and radio.

After every news outlet reported the story of the four year old girl who was found in Greece, to continue with the story as it was news worthy, they all had different follow up angles. For example The Daily Mail followed the angle about the lifestyle of Gypsies in Greece in a negative light whereas The Guardian followed the angle of how common unofficial adoption is.