Gaye Tuchman's 1978 book Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality is concerned with journalism as an activity that transforms events. Tuchman refers to news as ôa window on the worldö making it a social and cultural resource. The book is filled with a number of themes and ideas, the main notion being that news stories shape the publicÆs knowledge of what is happening by selectively focusing on certain events, or parts of certain events. Tuchman contends that what gets published, or aired on television, depends on what the editor or publisher wants covered, and how they want to cover it. Of course not every event or incident can be covered by the news media, but TuchmanÆs implication is that the media have their own agendas and viewpoints that influence what issues are covered and how they are covered. A central theme is that of news as knowledge. The public does not receive information and images directly, but witness them through the various media presentations. According to Tuchman, the ways in which the news is constructed forms a basis for the defining and constructing of social reality. ôNews imparts to occurrences their public character as it transforms mere happenings into publicly discussable eventsö (3). Tuchman calls the media processes of representation ôframing,ö which is the ways that news editors and professionals present a certain viewpoint. As an example, she discusses the presentation of anchorpersons on television shown in standard torso shots that emphasize their heads and shoulders. This type of framing is an attempt to project neutrality. As Tuchman writes:
the camera operators attempt to project friendliness to the audience through this framing, and to maintain neutrality by keeping the torso framing standard through a sequence of stories. The consistency of the camera work serves as the visual correlative of the newspaperÆs news-speak, symbolically proclaiming neutrality by announcing, 'W...