Agenda Setting

Power and The Media 

News providers of all kinds select the news that they believe to be most relevant to their audiences in order to maintain them. This is sometimes offset against the demands of ownership and control as well as advertisers. 

News stories are selected based on;

1. Negativity	‘Hard’ News - bad news will almost always be prioritised.
2. Proximity	Things that happen close to home (domestic news) or that involve people from a local area.
3. Recency	“Breaking News’
4. Currency	The ‘value’ of a story. If it is useful for people.
5. Continuity	Stories that are likely to continue for a long time.
6. Simplicity	The easier the story is to understand, the better.
7. Personality	Often ‘soft’ news surrounds personalities in whom the public has an interest eg. Royal family, celebrities, athletes
8. Uniqueness	If a story is unusual or surprising
9. Expectedness	Includes diary events - things that happen at a particular time of the year.
10. Elite nations/people	Western societies such as European countries and the USA will tend to dominate the news.
11. Exclusivity	When a news channel has footage or information that is not yet in possession of others.
12. Threshold	How many people are impacted on by an event.