Inside a News Item: A Dispute Over Framing

Author: Liebes T.

Source: Political Communication, Volume 17, Number 3, 1 July 2000 , pp. 295-305(11)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

Trust in serious journalism is based on our belief in the professionalism of journalistic practice. We expect television’s evening news to select the most significant events of the day and tell them in a fair and accurate manner. Whereas academic research agrees that “news value” or “newsworthiness” should be the guiding principle for selectivity, the principle is rarely spelled out in detail. Occasional attempts to infer these values empirically from what gets published or from what’s left “on the floor” conceal the process of negotiation and disagreement that goes on in the newsroom and between professional journalists and the interests of the channel’s private or public owners. The case study presented here uses inside information that emerged during the course of a public debate following the broadcasting of a news item on Israel’s Public Television featuring football fans at a victory celebration welcoming Prime Minister Netanyahu with racist shouts. The analysis demonstrates that the same event may evoke several competing frames and thus may be included or dropped, or appear at various spots in the lineup for different reasons. The paper raises the question of whether the authority of the news might not be enhanced on occasion by sharing competing frames with viewers.

Keywords: NEWS; FRAMING; NEWS; VALUE; NEWSWORTHINESS; TELEVISION; NEWS; TRUST; WATCHDOG; JOURNALISM

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 2000-07-01

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