Abstract
TV news has great potential to influence our day-to-day decisions and to cultivate our perceptions of what issues and events are important in society. Consequently, this holistic field study analyzes the sources, topics, and selection criteria that frame the perceptions viewers glean from one local station. Traditional news selection criteria were good predictors of which news story ideas would make it to the small screen, and a new criterion (affiliation) was particularly critical during the initial filtering. Crime, disaster/accident, and government/politics proved to be enduring news story topics, topping the list with business/ economy, education, and environment/ecology news stories.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.