Those holding information often face a choice of which information to include in their telling of a story to best get their point across, but our human tendency to want to control the narrative to suit our needs causes us to leave out information that doesn't suite our personal needs. The problem with and danger of gatekeeping lies more with which information we choose not to include than with the information that does make the final cut in our stories. This becomes a larger and more damaging problem when the practice is used in media coverage of large scale issues and events that huge amounts of people rely on for their information on current events.
Looking at the image above, gatekeeping occurs in between the first and second steps. Between the time that a reporter or writer observes the even and then enters editing and production they must choose which information they feel should be included and where in the story it should be, typically the most important information is in the beginning of a story and smaller, more insignificant details come later in the story when many people have tuned out. As we all know every media outlet has a political leaning, however slight or obvious. This can influence the information they choose in include and leave out of coverage of events, causing their viewers, typically with similar political leanings to the media outlets they choose to consume news from, to only have the parts of the story that align with and support their existing opinions on a subject matter.
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