Study On The Value Orientation Of The Time’s Annual News Picture

It has been a long time since the academic circle of western press started itsresearch on news value, when Walter Lippmann, a famous reporter and journalismscholar from America, discussed on “news value” from the theoretical perspective forthe first time in his book Public Opinion,1922. Later, the “Five Elements of NewsValue”, that is, news value is constituted by its timeliness, proximity, importance,prominence and interestingness was proposed in the1920s. And then in1965,American scholars Johan Galtung and Mary H. Ruge put forward the notion of“Selection Gate-keeping Model” in their work The Structure of Foreign News.Among the various studies on news value in the West, the “Selection Gate-keepingModel” which holds that there are nine news factors to determine the choosing ofnews communicator is especially welcomed. Research of this model in news contentis of certain significance in further study on the operation rules of news value inwestern photographic and written reporting.Now the West has formed a set of relatively systematic value system on writtenreporting, after western journalists’ constant trial and error in news practice. Incontrast, despite the fact that photographic reporting has become a predominant wayof information dissemination with the development of information andcommunication technology, study on photographic reporting is rare in quantity, not tomention the existing research on its value orientation within the domain ofphotographic reporting. In this context, this paper takes “selection gate-keepingmodel” of the western news value theory as theoretical perspective, adopts thequantitative and qualitative analysis methods, selects annual news picture of Time inrecent nine years (2005-2013) as a sample, analyzed the value orientation of annualnews picture of Time from the news value and image value orientation respectivelyand on the basis of which, this paper further conducts a contrastive analysis on thesimilarities and differences of annual news picture of Time and the Pulitzer prize(written) in value orientation. Based on the analysis of the above, besides deepens the understanding of annualnews picture of Time from the value orientation level, this paper even reaches theconclusion that the annual news picture of Time and the Pulitzer prize (written) bearsimilarities such as “pursuing the principle of objectivity”,“preferring for negative’muckraking’ coverage”,"focusing on humanistic care" etc., as well as differencesincluding “highlighting the depth of coverage and pursuing a typical instance” and“highlighting geographical proximity with emphasis on psychological approach” bythe way of contrastive analysis. Furthermore, based on the above findings, this paperfinally pointed out that photographic and written news reporting are enabled tofacilitate each other’s better development by learning from each other.