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How Does A Story Make The News? Who Defines The News We See?

Estimated Read Time:  6 Minutes 24 Seconds

The news is defined by Mitchell (2007) as any “new information or information on current events that can be presented by print media (Newspapers, magazines), broadcast media (Television, radio), Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience”.

who controls the news?

The news that consumers receive has gone through a process of news selection, essentially deeming what constitutes news and what does not.

How Does A Story Become Newsworthy?

Galtung and Ruge (1973) have provided ten key qualities that a story should have to become newsworthy. 

These ten criteria are: 
  • Timeliness (frequency) of the story, for example, a story must be within the news cycle and the information is new or recently released
  • Clarity or unambiguousness
  • Proximity, or familiarity, of a story with regards to geographic and cultural proximity
  • Significance or amplitude of the story, 
  • Consonance (meets expectations or predictions)
  • Novelty 
  • Balance, which includes supplying contrasting elements of a story, 
  • The prominence of the people involved in the story (elite nations or people)
  • Human interest (personalizing the news) 
  • Conflict which many news stories are framed around
(Galtung and Ruge 1973: 68)

Galtung and Ruge have claimed that these criteria are “culture-free” (1973: 65) meaning that they should not change dramatically, even within different cultural parameters. These ten criteria have also come to define newsworthiness and Galtung and Ruge suggest that the more a news story adheres to these ten criteria, the more likely it will be selected to be developed into news and presented as such. 

who decides what news is?How Likely Is It That A Story Will Make The News?

Gans (1979) has also studied key news values in national network news and weekly news magazines and has found clusters of values that define the ability of a story to become news. 

These clusters are: 

  • Ethnocentrism, claiming that the news values its own country above all else
  • Altruistic democracy (following a discourse based on public interest)
  • Responsible capitalism (good stories about achievement, negative stories about exploitation) 
  • Small-town pastoralism (a nostalgic view of small towns, reinforcing stereotypes)
  • Individualism (preservation of individual liberties against infringement from a nation or society)
  • Moderatism which discourages extremism or fanaticism, leadership (which expects competent leadership) 
  • Disorder News, which means that the media can define deviance by choosing to cover a certain aspect of a story, therefore defining deviance 

(Gans: 1979: 42 – 53). 

Although these values are not timeless and are subject to change, it is essential that they are used within the framework of evaluating news selection and newsroom structures.

What Is Gatekeeping?

Gatekeeping is a term first used by Dr. Kurt Lewin in 1947, to describe the way a “mother, wife or someone who decides what food a family will eat at their dinner table” (Lewin, 1947), and the first application of the theory with regards to mass communications and journalism practice came from White (1950). 

The gatekeeping theory essentially shows that the “travelling of a news story through communication channels was dependant on the fact that certain areas within the channel functioned as ‘gates’” (White, 1950: 66). White then carries the analogy further by claiming that these ‘gate’ sections are “governed by impartial rules or by gatekeepers, and in the latter case, an individual or group is ‘in power’ for making the decision between ‘in’ or ‘out’” (White: 67). 

See: Are Memories of Past Wars Used To Create New Conflicts?

This concept has become highly important within the field of studying the news and communication in general because it essentially shows that there are practices engrained within newsroom structures that require news to go through an intermediary (gatekeeper) before being presented. 

how are news stories selected?How Is News Selected Within A News Organization?

Breed (1955: 326) claims, every news organization “has a policy, admitted or not” regarding news selection and what should be portrayed as news within the public sphere. Within these news outlets, Breed claims journalists will conform to “the policies” ingrained within the organization because of six key reasons.

The six reasons he mentions are: 

  • Institutional authority and sanctions within the company, 
  • Feelings of obligation and esteem for superiors, 
  • Mobility aspirations (wanting to move up through the company), 
  • Absence of conflicting group allegiance, 
  • 'Pleasant’ nature of the activity 
  • News becoming a value
(Breed 1955: 327-329). 

These six aspects of office politics show a heavy reliance on hierarchical structures within newsrooms and the inability of journalists to change the structures in which news is selected and presented.

How Do Journalists Find News Every Day?

Bennett (2001) claims that news organizations, in order to function, need to fill a “news hole” on a daily basis (Bennett 2001: 161). This would undoubtedly put pressures on journalists, editors and the owners of the news organization to fill this ‘hole’. To do this, a journalist must choose news that is cheap to produce as well as predictable to meet the day’s deadline.

Bennett then subsequently claims that “reporters are given assignments based largely on the routine news requirements of their organization” (2001: 162) establishing the link between a gatekeeper, news values and the journalist. Bennett also claims that there is a redefinition of news to fill the “news hole” that is created daily. He claims that news organizations create “beats” in places where everyday occurrences “become news” (2001: 162). 


For example, there are many news “beats” around a city including government buildings, courtrooms, police stations and city councils. What this means for news organizations is that there will always be news and within these beats, are “each day’s familiar run of murders, robberies, public hearings, accidents and press conferences” (2001:162). essentially guaranteeing a news supply and profit/status for the news organization. 

A Summary of How Stories Become News

Bennett is claiming that newsroom structures and practices must ensure the flow of constant news otherwise there would be no news to report. Media companies would find themselves in a problematic situation with no stories to produce. Bennett has illustrated this through his study on the “news hole” and “beats” within news organizations. 

After exploring news selection within media organizations through the theories of Galtung and Ruge’s (1973) and Gans (1979) news values to explain what constitutes ‘newsworthiness’.

It has been found that adherence to these values makes it more likely that the story would become news.

The gatekeeping theory was also used to demonstrate that there are intermediaries within news organizations that choose and define what constitutes news possibly based on the organizations' values. Therefore, newsroom values and practices decide what gets overlooked and what gets tossed aside and not shown.

Breed claims that there are policies which are deeply engrained within news organizations and these policies control how a journalist works and what he or she can or cannot cover with regards to newsworthy items.

Bennett also claims that news can be predicted to some degree and news can be worked into a daily deadline by using “beats”. 

who decides the news?

Further Reading

Bennett, W.L. (2001). How Journalists Report the News. News, The Politics of Illusion (pp. 149-179).

Breed, W. (1955). Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis. Social Forces, 33.

Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. (1973). Structuring and selecting news. In S. Cohen, & J. Young (Eds), The Manufacture of News (pp. 62-72).

Gans, H.J. (1979). Values in the News. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time.

Lewin, Kurt, (1947)"Frontiers in Group Dynamics," Human Relations, v. 1, no. 2.

Mitchell, S. (2007). The History of News - 3rd Ed.

White, D, M. (1950). "The 'Gatekeeper': A Case Study In the Selection of News. People, Society and Mass Communications.





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