The Gate Keeper Critique - Essay Example

Critique

The article "The “Gate Keeper”: a case study in the selection of news" by D.M White is essentially the report of an experiment conducted with the help of a single editor to of a wire newspaper to determine what factors go into the reporting of a news. Since only one editor's point of view was used to conduct this experiment, a "case study" better defines the process. The aim of the case study was not to do an intensive study of the various factors that go into deciding which event is newsworthy and which is not. Instead, it was to get a preliminary idea of why one particular editor made the choices that he did.

The case study was inspired by the idea by Kurt Lewin that as news travels through communication channels a variety of "gatekeepers" decide which news is newsworthy and formulate its structure before it ultimately becomes available to the audience. White looked at the last "gatekeeper" in the process, the editor who decides which news goes on the newspaper and which gets rejected, and carried out the study to get an idea of the basis on which news are classified as newsworthy. The editor under study was a middle aged man with 25 years of experience as reporter and copy editor who was at the time working a wire editor for a morning newspaper in an industrial town. The editor was asked to write a note on all the rejected content about the reason for rejection. The rejected content was than compared against the published content to get a percentage of material used in the newspaper. The resons given were rejection were also studied and divided into two categories as (i) not worth reporting and (ii) selecting from several news of same event. The editor was also asked four follow-up questions to determine his reasons for usually selecting or rejecting a news story. A careful study of the results showed that the editor's choices were mostly subjective and his personal biases played an important role in the selection. The case study established that through his role as a "gatekeeper" of news, he ensured that his community only heard news that he consciously or subconsciously believed to be true. The study established the highly subjective nature of deciding the newsworthiness of any story.

The case study follows all well known basics of a good qualitative case study. Baxter and Jack (2008) list four conditions which must be met for the use of the case study approach. According to them, the case study method should be used when the focus of the study is to answer the "how" and "why" questions. In this case, the aim of the of the researcher was to find out "why" the editor chose certain stories while rejecting others. The second criteria for using the case study approach is that the researcher should not be able to manipulate the behaviour of the person involved. In this case, the editor was asked to continue doing what he would normally do and only after he was done with the day's work was he required to put remarks on the rejected stories. Hence, his decisions on selecting or rejecting the story were based on his usual work and not affected by requirements of the case study. Also, the researcher was not present at the site when the editor was doing his work and so there was no undue pressure on the editor which could have in anyway changed his normal behaviour. The other two conditions for using the case study approach are regarding the context and in this case the context of his job as a newspaper editor is inseparable from his job of selecting newsworthy stories. Hence, the case study was the right approach to use in this particular case, given the complexity of the situation. Another method, such as a survey, would not have been appropriate because it would have recorded the editor's thoughts after the fact rather than actually recording his actions.

The presentation of the article could have been better if the author had used clear headings such as "methodology", "results" and "discussion". However, this is a minor issue and article itself is well researched and properly illustrates the various issues under study and how the case study hopes to resolve these issues. All the aspects of the case study are very well documented and clearly explain the various steps taken both by the editor being studied as well as by the researcher.

Since the article is based on a single case study, there is not enough data to determine if this subjectivity is true to all editors across all newspapers, or if it is typical of only this particular editor. The author is of the view that the one editor studied is representative all editors working at similar positions across the country. This is a very gross generalization based on just one example and may or may not be true. It is possible that while this particular editor's personal biases are reflected in his newspaper, other newspapers or editors may have a more objective way of deciding what is newsworthy. Or even if the test of newsworthiness remains subjective, other editors may be able to keep their personal biases aside while selecting stories for publication. In absence of a wider range, the conclusion that the particular editor is a representative of his class seems to be uncalled for and may actually reflect the author's own biases.

In conclusion, the article under critique is a well researched case study from the early twentieth century that looks at what goes into deciding the newsworthiness of a story for a local newspaper. The paper meets the criteria for using the case study approach and White takes adequate steps to ensure that the research results are not tainted. However, the conclusion arrived at by White is based on the assumption that the editor is a representative of all editors and this generalization may not be true.