Journalists as gatekeepers
Journalists can’t write articles or create news items around everything. That wouldn’t be desirable for news consumers either: there is only so much information the human brain can process on a daily basis. That’s why journalists also have to fulfil the crucial role of gatekeepers.
As gatekeepers, journalists and news media decide which events are relevant and newsworthy: they decide what they let through the gate, which news items make the cut. These events survive the ‘gates’ of news selection and manage to make it to the reader or viewer.
How does news selection work?
Whether an event will make the news depends on multiple factors. Sometimes journalists use their gut feeling, in other cases they are pressured from above. But there are also factors that help journalists with their choice. These factors are referred to as ‘news value’. Through the years there has been a lot of research into news value, resulting in a list of about 12 factors that seem to determine whether something is newsworthy:
- Size of the event
- Cultural proximity and relevance
- Unpredictability
- Continuity
- Involvement of elite countries or persons
- Bad news
- …
The process of news selection doesn’t end with simply selecting which news items make the cut. Journalists also pick a certain angle for the article or item, which often emphasises one specific aspect of news value. This comes with a risk of creating a one-sided image of the event.
The rise of gatewatchers
For a while now, traditional news media have experienced competition from social media and independent news websites. The news published in these places has usually been published by other media before. These media don’t engage in gatekeeping, but rather in gatewatching: they look at which news has survived the gates and then reproduce it.
Gatewatchers are therefore more like news gatherers than like news producers. In other words: journalists have an increasingly important role as gatekeepers to decide which news will be disseminated, but also to add enough context to that news.
