Foreign Television News: Conceptual Issues.

While research has shown that several seemingly universal structural and cultural factors (e.g., economic resources and journalists' norms) predefine how TV news organizations operate, their local or national effects may vary. This paper discusses three conceptual tensions regarding contemporary developments, challenges, and problems of television news in general and foreign news production in particular. First, we partially question the implied assumption of gatekeeping theory that considers the nation state as the dominant referent for selecting news by suggesting new patterns for mapping the world. Second, while framing theory has lent support to claims that different frames are deployed for domestic and foreign news events, we argue that foreign news tends to be more conflict-ridden and sensational than domestic news. Finally, in the process of journalism as sense-making in society, foreign news needs to be rendered familiar to home audiences, thus the domestication of news may be understood as popular enlightenment, but it may also result in ethnocentrism, reifications of nationalism, or secularization of public affairs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]