Building the agenda and news frames about countries facing humanitarian crises: news values and selection of information sources

Abstract

The media are important actors in humanitarian crisis management and resolution, not only in the countries where crises occur, but also in the rest of the world, as media are frequently the only source of information for the population of Northern countries. Through semi-structured interviews with the International section editors of four Spanish newspapers, we study the influence of news values and news routines on the information about countries facing crisis. The editors privilege what they consider to be human-impact stories, but also those involving Spanish economic or strategic interests or having closer emotional ties to their readers.