ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand how schemas work and how they can affect journalists, describes the perseverance effect and the self-fulfilling prophecy, and explains techniques to counter the potentially negative impacts of schemas on news stories. Journalists from throughout the nation were descending upon the town of Durham, North Carolina, and scrambling for information about the Duke case. A schema is a category of knowledge that helps people interpret and understand the world. It is a mental structure used to simplify and organize knowledge. Schemas help individuals know what to expect from other people, oneself, social roles and social events so they can focus energy on the most relevant features of a situation. The good thing about schemas is that they allow a person to take mental shortcuts in interpreting lots of information at once. Schemas help one subconsciously process lots of information throughout the day.
