A consensus among media and communication scholars and professionals that the media is responsible for informing, educating and entertaining the public highlights the duty and power it has in a given society. By selecting, presenting and emphasizing certain news topics from the available thousands of topics and given news values, the media has the ability to influence the attitudes and beliefs of the people in one way or another. Therefore, I found it imperative to explore the front page of The New Vision, which has the highest readership in Uganda so as to establish the characteristics of the news received by the majority of newspaper readers who also constitute elites who make the laws that govern the population. The major aim of this study which is grounded in gatekeeping and news values literature is to ascertain the most common news values, topics, focus and type of the most prominently presented news items on the front page.

I used two research methods: (1) a content analysis of the news items published between January 1 2009 and March 31 2009 and (2) a survey of news writers and top editors who make major decisions on what finally gets into the newspaper.  The content analysis showed that on average, three hard news items are published on the front page. Each news article has an average of five news values but the lead news story, which is the most newsworthy, has about six. News about crime, law and order was the most frequent, followed by internal politics. However, the most prominently presented stories were about internal politics. Additionally, positive news was frequent but the lead news had a negative focus. Additionally, it appears that attractive headlines suggesting conflict and drama were also used to woo readers. The other noticable findings were that The New Vision editors are older, experienced and more educated than news gatherers (reporters, bureau chiefs and photographers). Both news gatherers and news processors largely use news values as a yard stick to determine which news stories get into the newspaper. I conclude that the news stories published in the newspaper go through a rigorous process which is influenced by several factors. This process, which includes news gathering, writing, shaping, sorting and presentation, is guided by news values which do not entirely guarantee a given news item a place in the newspaper.