ABSTRACT
David Manning White’s seminal ‘gatekeeper’ study examined how a certain Mr Gates, the wire editor of a morning newspaper in the USA’s Midwest, set about rejecting or selecting news stories over the course of a week. White sought to understand why and how this individual wire editor made the ‘complicated’ set of decisions in selecting certain news stories sent by the news agencies whilst having to reject most of those received. The aim was to better understand how such individual editors or ‘gatekeepers’ play a crucial role in the news production process (White, 1950/1999: 66). Clearly, White’s study focused on the individual ‘experiences, attitudes and
expectations’ of individuals in ‘power’ positions in the newsroom (White, 1950/1999: 66, 72). It starts from the view that there is a series of gatekeepers involved in selecting whether news items are ‘in’ or ‘out’. News stories are transmitted from one gatekeeper to another in a chain of communications, ‘till finally we come to our last gatekeeper, the one to whom we turn for the purpose of our case study’ (ibid.: 67). Mr Gates, a man in his middle 40s with approximately 25 years’ experience as a journalist, is responsible for the selection of national and international news which will appear on the front and ‘jump’ pages of his newspaper (ibid.: 67). Usually he also makes up these pages and copy-edits and writes the headlines for the selected stories. White monitored and analysed the various stories in the form of wire copy
that came across Mr Gates’ desk over a week-long period in February 1949, largely relying on the editor’s stated reasons for selection and rejection. White found that this key gatekeeper’s weekly agenda of ‘extremely complicated’ decisions involved selecting one-tenth of the copy (or about one-ninth of the stories) sent by the news agencies whilst rejecting nine-tenths of the copy received (White, 1950/1999: 67). In drawing conclusions from his study’s data and analysis, White emphasised the role of subjective and individual factors in shaping the news selection process:
Through studying his overt reasons for rejecting news stories from the press associations we see how highly subjective, how based on the gatekeeper’s own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is.
