NEWS ANALYSIS

News Analysis

Text Analysis

Bus robbers target teen

A teenager was robbed of £250 after two men forced him off a bus and marched him to a cash point .

The 16-year-old was travelling from Shirley to Kings Norton on the top deck of the number 49 bus when the men threatened him.

He was made to withdraw the cash at Lloyds TSB in Pershore Road South on Thursday October 7 between 7.40pm and 8.10pm, before being forced to buy the men cigarettes and a mobile phone 'top up' card at a nearby BP petrol station.

Detective Sergeant Neil Wood, said: “This was a traumatic ordeal for the teenage boy. He was threatened and intimidated by two older men before being forcibly escorted to a cash point where the men demanded cash.”

The first man was white, aged 17 to 20-years-old, 5ft 9ins tall with a stocky build. He had a pale complexion, short ginger hair, and spoke with a Birmingham accent.

He was also wearing red Nike tracksuit bottoms, a black hooded jacket, black trainers, black baseball cap, and was carrying a black satchel bag.

The robber is also said to have a 50p-sized red mark on the right side of his neck and wore a gold sovereign ring on his right hand.

The other suspect is Asian, about the same age and height as his accomplice, but of slim build, with black spiked hair and a short 'goatee' style beard.

He was wearing dark coloured jeans, a black hooded jacket, a black cap, and a silver black stone ring on his left hand.

DS Wood added: “Following the robbery, the boy was forced into a taxi with the offenders; they got out at Bordesley Green Road in Alum Rock outside McDonald's at around 9pm.”

Analysis

The paradigm for news research often states that news in one way or the other does not reflect reality. Only a small fraction of events that take place are noticed by the news media. Of this fraction, only a small proportion actually gets published. Newsmaking, therefore, can be seen as a highly selective process. The selection of events or topics can be explained by gatekeeping or through newsworthiness theory.

The term gatekeeping was introduced during World War II by the psychologist Kurt Lewin, who identified the housewife as the gatekeeper for the food that ends up on the family table. David Manning White applied the term to the selection of news in the late 1940s. He assumed was that the selection of news is highly dependent on the individual likes and dislikes of the journalist. In his original case study he observed the selective decisions of a so-called wire editor (whom he named Mr. Gates) in a small newspaper in a small American town. Mr. Gates had certain prejudices that he claimed to influence his selective decision. He selected articles for his newspapers from incoming wire copy from several news agencies. This study raised a lot of criticisms, for instance that White looked at only one gatekeeper who was at the end of the news ...