Abstract
This paper proposes a corpus-based examination of the discourse of eliteness and personalisation news values in the information source. To that end, the study compares digital news in British and Spanish corpora. The results reveal a tendency to quote elites, which are frequently constructed by means of recognised names from politics, inanimate references with broad scope and role labels in apposition. To a lesser extent, prestige is construed through status-indicating modifiers and allusion to place of work. Ordinary sources, however, are usually construed via indication of provenance, reference to family relationship and anaphoric allusions, mostly in British sources. It remains to be clarified whether the construal of these values is in consonance with the editorial stance of the newspaper.
Highlights
IntroductionThe selection of news content that may satisfy the audience corresponds to the instincts of news editors, who are said to need a ‘nose’ for predicting the newsworthy value of a piece of news (BOYD, 2001; SERGEANT, 2001)
Newsgathering has traditionally been claimed to be more of an art than a science
The present paper presents an investigation of the discourse of news values in the British and Spanish digital media focused on the information source construal
Summary
The selection of news content that may satisfy the audience corresponds to the instincts of news editors, who are said to need a ‘nose’ for predicting the newsworthy value of a piece of news (BOYD, 2001; SERGEANT, 2001). Having the individual ability to predict newsworthiness is not sufficient to produce news items, the selection is rather exercised within the constraints of the media outlets within which journalists operate News reporters do not just act as gatekeepers, i.e. decision-makers accountable for the selection of events from the array of information available, they have to cope with the market. The media institutions are expected to meet the needs of society, editorial priorities usually comply with commercial purposes (ALLERN, 2011; CAPLE, 2018). Journalists in the newsroom do not just consider “the fresh, unpublished, unusual and generally interesting” (RANDALL, 2000, p. 23) when selecting information for publication, they aim to conform to the prevailing economic norms
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