News

===Relationship with institutions===
For various reasons, news media usually have a close relationship with the state, and often church as well, even when they cast themselves in critical roles.<ref name=Fang14 /><ref name=Stephens27 /><ref name=Salmon90>Salmon, ''The Newspaper and the Historian'' (1923), pp. 90–91.</ref> This relationship seems to emerge because the press can develop symbiotic relationships with other powerful social institutions.<ref name=Salmon90 /> In the United States, the [[Associated Press]] wire service developed a "bilateral monopoly" with the [[Western Union]] telegraph company.<ref name=Starr177>Starr, ''Creation of the Media'' (2004), pp. 175–177.</ref><ref>Annteresa Lubrano, ''The Telegraph: How Technology Innovation Caused Social Change''; New York: Garland, 1997; pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=IVWAAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA72 72]–74.</ref>

The news agencies which rose to power in the mid-1800s all had support from their respective governments, and in turn served their political interests to some degree.<ref name=OBB23 /> News for consumption has operated under [[Statism|statist]] assumptions, even when it takes a stance adversarial to some aspect of a government.<ref>Stephens, ''History of News'' (1988), p. 5. "Free of an extended view of the history of press-government relations, it is easy to maintain a romantic image of the journalist, when unchained by repressive regulation, as a staunch adversary of government; it is easy to overlook the basic pro-authoritarian role that has been played by those who spread news: their success in occupying the minds of the governed with a belief in the importance, if not the inevitability, of a system of government."</ref> In practice, a large proportion of routine news production involves interactions between reporters and government officials.<ref>Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production", from ''Media, Culture & Society'' (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), p. 14. "One study after another comes up with essentially the same observation, and it matters not whether the study is at the national, state, or local level—the story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials."</ref> Relatedly, journalists tend to adopt a hierarchical view of society, according to which a few people at the top of organizational pyramids are best situated to comment on the reality which serves as the basisi of news.<ref>Allan, ''News Culture'' (2004), pp. 62–63. "To clarify, H.S. Becker (1967) employs the notion of a 'hierarchy of credibility' to specify how, in a system of ranked groups, participants will take it as given that the members of the highest group are best placed to define 'the way things really are' due to their 'knowledge of truth'. Implicit in this assumption is the view that 'those at the top' will have access to a more complete picture of the bureaucratic organization's workings than members of lower groups whose definition of reality, because of this subordinate status, can only be partial and distorted."</ref> Broadly speaking, therefore, news tends to normalize and reflect the interests of the power structure dominant in its social context.<ref>James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in ''Handbook of Communications Science'' (1987), ed. C.H. Berger & S.H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, ''Social Meanings of News'' (1997), pp. 34–37. "In sum, a considerable body of research supports the argument that inter-organizational- and institutional-level forces, realized in a journalistic culture of 'objectivity,' fostered by, and in the service of, progressive liberal capitalism, constrain what journalists report. News thus exhibits an identifiable and widely shared form and a content broadly consonant with the social structures and values of its political-economic context."</ref>

Today, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rival and may surpass governments in their influence on the content of news.<ref name=VanLeuvenJoye>{{cite journal | last1 = Van Leuven | first1 = Sarah | last2 = Joye | first2 = Stijn | title = "Civil Society Organizations at the Gates? A Gatekeeping Study of News Making Efforts by NGOs and Government Institutions"; | journal = International Journal of Press/Politics | volume = 19 | issue = 2| year= 2013 }}</ref>