Reders' ombudsman: Distance no problem when it comes to judging a news story

Published on Sunday 29 March 2009 23:30

NEWS values are always worth a good argument. We have plenty of those arguments on a daily basis. Even in the industry, there is a kind of odd mystery which attaches to deciding news values, like it is akin to reading chicken bones or tarot cards. So when a reader complains about the positioning of certain stories I think it is always worth just talking through our thinking.

The letter begins on a suitably antagonistic note. "I always thought that it was a tradition in the newspaper industry to put the important news of the day on the front page," begins Nigel Willis. "Yet today we have 'Mandy's Green Monster', taking up half this valued space: a non-story about a self-publicist throwing custard over Lord Mandelson. A slow news day perhaps? We turn to the inside pages, to the 'International' section, and we find that Zimbabwe's prime minister was involved in a traffic accident in which his wife was killed. Surely with the likelihood of foul play involved, and the historical links we have with this country, this story should have been given greater prominence.

"News is news wherever it is found in the world. This habit of relegating a story because it is not on our doorstep is a sad reflection of an editorial style looking inwards, and failing to be objective."

Actually, I think news is about relevance to your readership, primarily about what directly affects them. Stories are not relegated because they are not on our doorstep; you don't have to look far to see stories that occurred abroad positioned in the main news section. It is a judgment as to when stories do move up the paper.

On the death of Susan Tsvangirai, wife of Morgan, in a car crash, the decision was taken to put the story in the foreign section because although there was the possibility that foul play was involved, all the hard information we had at the time said it was an accident. Even informed speculation that it was foul play may have brought it up the paper, but one of the first lessons in news values is not to judge the story on what you think it could be, but on the story you can publish with accuracy. As it turns out, the story did not have the wider political element that would have made it of far greater interest. That is why it appeared on the foreign news pages.

As to the placing of the Lord Mandelson story, the deciding element for that judgment was the pictures. It was not that great a story, but the pictures of Lord Mandelson dripping with green goo were undoubtedly the news pictures of the day. The front page needs a picture. They were dramatic images, it was an event, there are undoubtedly security issues when a senior politician is attacked, and possibly just a little bit of schadenfreude at seeing the haughty humbled. The slight difficulty for us was that the pictures had been around all day and therefore would have been familiar to some readers, but the picture of the attacker came a bit more towards our publication deadline and had not been around, so we went with that. Were we right? Let's have a look at what the chicken bones tell us.

Iam grateful to Jim Raeburn, the secretary and treasurer of The Press Standards Board of Finance Ltd, for allowing me to correct a misleading impression. Last week in my column about the Press Complaints Commission I may have given the impression that the PCC is completely funded by National Publishers Association members. While it is true that they are the largest contributors, it is also fair to say regional and local newspaper and magazine publishers contribute close to half the amount Pressbof raises to fund the PCC.