ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand what people tend to notice, and argues that a journalist’s attention influences and reinforces news values and frames. For ages, humans have had an innate drive to gather and disseminate news as a survival tool. Surveying for nearby threats is biologically influenced; people are programmed that way. Human thinking can be seen as the interaction of both biology and culture. People are innately interested in news about deviant or threatening events or ideas because the brain is hardwired to scan the environment this way. The human instinct to watch for the threatening and deviant can help journalists pay attention to things that genuinely matter to the public. Journalists need to be aware of the power of framing on accuracy and fairness. In journalism, frames define problems, diagnose causes, make judgments and offer remedies. The focus of journalists’ attention affects news frames and in turn news frames direct the news audiences’ attention.
