Broadcast News and Current Affairs: Gatekeeping

MCNELLY'S MODEL OF NEWS FLOW
An early point of criticism of the White model was that it showed only one gatekeeper rather than several, as one would normally expect to find in complex news operation. McNelly's model is addressed to this particular problem, since it seeks to represent the various intermediary communicators standing between the event and the ultimate receiver (newspaper, reader etc.)
The process which the model represents can be described in the following way, taking a hypothetical foreign news event. a foreign news agency correspondent learns of a news worthy event and writes a report which goes first to a regional bureau, from where it may be sent in shortened form to the agency central bureau. There it may be combined with a related story from elsewhere and sent to a national or regional bureau of the country, where it may be again cut for transmission to the telegraph editor of a newspaper or radio\television.
Through out the process, various forms of feedback response occur which may guide further acts of transmission.
The important points emphasized by the model are:
1. the fact that the gate keeping may well have been completed before the news reaches the telegraph editor of a newspaper, especially in the case of foreign news where foreign news decisions are made in a major bureau of big telegraph services;
2. gate keeping is much more than just selecting or rejecting, since the intermediaries often alter the form and substance of those stories that survive the journey;

3. gate keeping does not end with the news medium, since the initial receiver often acts as gate keeper for others;
4. Feedback is often infrequent and delayed.
The model is still in some respects incomplete in its own terms, since it could be extended as its initial stages. it tends to take 'newsworthiness' for granted and treats the agency correspondent as the primary source. There may well be two or three additional stages: there will be a witness to an event or one of the participants, thence often a local report, taken up by a stringer, and passed the agency correspondent.