Analysis of News Stories using Treatment Values

This story is from the Evening Gazette website, issued on Monday 9th December 2013. The story itself would come under the category of Hard News because it provides tragedy and death as the headline of the story states ''Trio deny attempted murder after violent machete attack in street''. It doesn't show familiarity because people reading the article/story will not understand it immediately if they are not in the local area, therefore they will need to read the full article to aquire full understanding of the story. Next, it is a breaking news story so it would come under immediacy as the event could of took place that same day which also links to the familarity because people in the local area may of seen or heard from others about the event. The story is fairly large and is still taking place as a ''trio'' are still being interviewed so the story is still going on as three men are on trial accused of attempted murder after a man's skull was split open in a violent machaete attack on a Middlesbrough highstreet. The attack was so violent that fragments of Nawzadi Haidari’s skull were left embedded in his brain following the alleged attack. As this is a local newspaper, the majority of people who noticed the article will of already heard about the story.

News and Treatment Values

The concepts of Treatment values

There are six types of Key Treatment Values which have been found by Burton 1990, these include; Visuals, Drame, Saga, Conflict, Human Interest and Actuality. Treatment values refer to what us valued about the 'treatment' of the message, or in other words show how stories are handled.



News values;

Immediacy - is the even possibly the same day? Is it a breaking news story?
Familiarity - Will people understand it immediatly? Is it culture, calender, custom or habits?
Amplitude - is the story large? Does it affect a sufficient amount of people to be included in the national news?