ABSTRACT
The basic idea that journalists act as gatekeepers of news has not been fashionable during most of the 21st century. In the popular discourse, gatekeeping is declining, dying, or dead. The sentiment is expressed as: “There’s no gatekeeper. There’s no gate. There’s not even a fence” (Whyte, 2008). With the arrival of the networked, internet age, the argument goes, everyone can publish; therefore, information cannot be controlled, and hence, gatekeeping is futile. The scholarly discourse contains similar sentiments. Williams and Delli Carpini (2004, p. 1208) argued that the new media environment “undermines the idea that there are discrete gates through which political information passes: If there are no gates, there can be no gatekeepers.” Largely absent in these discussions about the state of gatekeeping is an actual definition of gatekeeping. At best, the lack of definition muddles the claims made about gatekeeping. Muddling the discourse further, gatekeeping is often an adjective, referring to a function, a role, a model, or a theory.
