In the world of Journalism, Gatekeeping and News Values hold a very important role. Gatekeeping is the process where information is filtered for publication, when a media institution or journalist will decide what is important enough to be broadcasted. The fact that news outlets become gatekeepers, gives them the opportunity to select specific stories. This …show more content…
It is a theory designed to distinguish what stories are worth the front page, and what pages aren’t worth publishing. The owner/s of the corporation naturally have extensive control over the gatekeeping operation. The newspaper ‘The Daily Mail’ is run by DMAGT (Daily Mail and General Trust), the paper aims to produce news for middle class family’s with a style of ‘traditional values’. The media outlet is a ‘British daily conservative, middle-market tabloid newspaper’. This means that journalists will have to focus on stories to suit middle class people, which a political view of conservative. News should be ‘judged to be newsworthy by journalists, who exercise their news sense within the constraints of the news organisation within which they operate’. This means that gatekeeping has impacted the practice of journalism so that despite what the journalist is interested in, they must conform to the guidelines of the institution they work for, and be able to decide if its suitable and where it should go. Each journalist will have to become a suitable gatekeeper for the media outlet they work for, as each newspaper has different topics they would consider newsworthy. The Daily Mail journalists have to be a gatekeeper in the sense that everything must be conservative …show more content…
Herbert J Gans, who was one of the most ‘prolific and influential sociologists of his generation’ argues that journalists, sources and audiences are in constant strife, eventually settled by who has the most power. Through his studies, ‘Gans provided many remarkable insights into the workings of the major national media’ corporations. Gans discovered how those economically and politically powerful have access to journalists, but those without power cannot access journalists unless their behaviour is newsworthy. Journalists always have more news than they need, so they decide which stories they will use. Gans challenged conventional media and shone a light on how the majority of news perspective was from people in a position of power. After all of his research, Gans wrote a book ‘Deciding What’s News’, this book is a remarkable account of how journalists do their work. Gans had a massive impact on the practice of journalism. The powerful account of Journalism caused waves in the media world and reflected ‘how journalists could better serve as representatives for the people whom they cover’ . Alike to this, another person who has a huge impact on the practice of Journalism through gatekeeping is Denis McQuail. The communication theorist talks about how powerful the press is, as it can control the ‘gates of communication’. Adding to this, McQuail speaks of how