News Values and the Ethic of Journalism — a View of the Western Tradition

Abstract

The American musician of the Jazz Era, Fats Waller, was once asked by a woman admirer to explain what a sense of rhythm consisted in; ‘Lady’, he replied, ‘if you don’t know, you ain’t got it.’ If you ask the average British or American journalist what his sense of news consists in you are likely to get a similar answer: for the journalist his sense of what makes news today is the result of long conditioning and subtle training in the knowledge of his audience and medium. He is likely to rub his thumb against his first and second fingers holding his palm upwards and explain, as if having chosen the spices for some subtly flavoured sauce, that his instinct for arranging facts into news is partly professional folklore, partly the house-style of his own newsroom and mainly personal genius.

Originally delivered as a paper at the University of Cracow, Poland, in July 1976 at a symposium of journalists and broadcasters drawn from Eastern and Western Europe who gathered to discuss progress in communications since the signing of the Helsinki agreement.