ABSTRACT

As Lewin described the gatekeeping process, movement through a channel from gate to gate is controlled either by a gatekeeper or by a set of “impartial rules” (1951, p. 186), which we refer to as “communication routines.” Routines are “patterned, routinized, repeated practices and forms that media workers use to do their jobs” (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996, p. 105). Such routines exist not only for the news gathering, processing, and transmission process within the mass media (e.g., deadlines, inverted pyramid, news beats) but also for interpersonal communication (e.g., some subjects and words are commonly judged as inappropriate for a mixed gender group). Thus, frameworks such as White’s (1950), which emphasize the agency of the individual gatekeeper, can obscure the constraints placed on individual journalists. Epstein (1973) argues that organizational values consistently take precedence over the individual values of journalists. He concludes that “network news is not simply determined by the personal opinions of newsmen. The picture of events that correspondents and commentators present is constantly questioned, modifi ed and shaped by technicians, news editors, producers and executives with quite disparate values and objectives” (Epstein, 1973, p. 231).