Unpacking Political News The first portion of the chapter reviews the impact of journalistic routines on political news-gathering. The second part looks at the role played by organizational forces, a topic that brings us eyeball to eyeball with controversies involving Fox News. The third section explores the ways that an array of economic factors shape news. The final portion describes the complex ways that the larger political system influences news, particularly coverage of recent wars. MEDIA ROUTINES What are media routines? They are defined as “those patterned, routinized, repeated practices and forms that media workers use to do their jobs”. From a professional perspective, routines enable reporters to gain information efficiently, providing tried-and-true methods to determine which information should pass through the informational gates and which should be discarded. There are three key routines: (1) Ethically based and journalistic news values; (2) Reliance on sources; (3) Dependence on informational channels. […]
Unpacking Political News
