Wolfsfeld on framing by journalists in the media

Gadi Wolfsfeld considers Gitlin’s to be a ‘cogent summary’ of framing, and sums up the process of media framing as one in which the news media construct frames for conflicts by attempting to fit the information they are receiving into a package that is professionally useful and culturally familiar; journalists attempt to find a narrative fit between incoming information and existing media frames. Wolfsfeld therefore thinks that news is not information driven or frame driven, but is a combination of the two, and there are always alternative frames that can be used.[1] Wolfsfeld suggested that ‘those who hope to understand variations in the role of the news media must look at the competition among antagonists along two dimensions: one structural and the other cultural.’[2] Wolfsfeld explained that many political conflicts centre on disputes over frames as each antagonist attempts to market its own package of ideas to the mass media and the public. It is therefore important to examine the level of correspondence between the frames adopted by the media and those offered by each of the political antagonists in order to understand better this competition. Wolfsfeld considers that transactions between antagonists and the news media are more than a business deal; they are a set of cultural interactions in which antagonists promote their own frames of the conflict while the news media attempt to construct a story that can be understood by their audience. Therefore, Wolfsfeld considered that the most useful way for researchers to deal with this aspect of the relationship is to focus on the interpretive frames constructed by the news media about political conflicts,[3] and imagine editors and reporters asking three questions when they first get news of a conflict: How did we cover this conflict in the past? What is the most newsworthy part of the conflict? Who are the good guys?[4]
[1] G. Wolfsfeld., Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 33-34.
[2] Ibid., p. 4-5.
[3] Ibid., p. 31.
[4] Ibid., p. 49.