This article attempts to contribute to a better theoretical understanding of news. Based on an examination of the vast body of literature known as the study of journalism, three points of consensus are identified and tested through a comparative case study analysis of the news coverage of an issue, VIH/AIDS, in four different countries (the United States, Portugal, Spain and Brazil) during a period of three months (October–December, 1993). The data show that news is ‘event-oriented’, that official sources dominate news, and that proximity is a basic news value of the members of this ‘interpretive community’ who are today called journalists.
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