Who are the gatekeepers of news? How effective is investigative reporting in informing the public?

The gatekeepers of news are typically considered to be “media people influencing messages en route” (Vivian, 230). A gatekeeper’s job is to exercise news judgements and decide what news is most deserving to be told. Also they decide how the news will be told. Gatekeeping can be considered a creative force because they are the ones who decide how a story is told to the audience, essentially having free reign. Most gatekeepers are invisible to the news audience because they work behind the scenes and make crucial decisions in almost absolute anonymity. The job of gatekeeping is unavoidable in the process of reporting news because if someone was not there to decide what is newsworthy and how it should be told, there would be mass confusion on what to report and how to report it. Investigative reporting is defined as “enterprise reporting that reveals new information, often startling; most often these are stories that official sources would rather not have told” (Vivian, 234). Investigative reporting has its roots in the muckraking period in the United States. Most investigative reporting uncovers stories about corruption in the government or by officials in high positions. Investigative reporting is effective in reporting scandals to the public, but because it costs a great deal of money to uncover these stories most papers have done away with it. Investigative reporting is important to preserving democracy and newspapers should consider spending the extra money because it is necessary for a fully functioning society.