Journalistic News Values in Infotainment Programmes

Abstract

News values are a key element within the journalistic profession to carry out the news selection. This paper analyses how specific infotainment programmes use this news values. Thus, a quantitative content analysis has been applied into a sample of 684 pieces of news broadcasted by the following Spanish programmes: Madrid directo (Telemadrid), Andalucía directo (Canal Sur), España directo (TVE) and En connexió (Canal 9). Main results show that news criteria like proximity and accessibility prevail over those related to timeliness or relevance. This indicates a clear trend towards including timeless soft issues.