Difficult Deaths and Awkward Agendas: How Mainstream News Media Negotiate Coverage of Politically Dissonant Victims

Theories of News Values (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Harcup and O’Neill, J Stud 18(12):1470–1488, 2017) identify criteria by which news stories are selected and prioritised according to newsworthiness. Among these criteria is the concept of agenda, suggesting that stories may be selected or de-selected by certain publications on the basis of whether they fit the political agenda of the publication. However, when other news values come into play, tensions may arise as high-profile stories that centre on figures whose histories and political identities conflict with those of the publication are pushed into the public sphere. This chapter looks at two such incidences, the killings of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016 and Conservative MP David Amess in 2021, in an attempt to identify how journalists frame and negotiate aspects of these figures whose views and careers present either alignment with or a departure from the bipartisan politics of the case study publications, the Daily Mail and The Guardian. A number of negotiation techniques are observed, including minimisation and assimilation.