What is Newsworthiness

This chapter presents an interdisciplinary model involving journalism studies and political economy of communication to understand why news published in mass media reproduces hegemonic values. From this interdisciplinarity approach, the author raises what he calls the critical theory of journalism that has, as its core, the Marxist category of labor. The chapter presents a brief exposition of the epistemological ground of the critical theory of journalism and then demonstrates the specificities of journalistic work under monopoly capitalism. The author then criticizes phenomenological sociology and its use in journalism studies, and concludes his argument by criticizing the ideology of professionalism among newsworkers and its influence on the hegemonic character of news values.