Therefore, even if we adhere to the belief that news reporters are impartial and objective truth-tellers, we must still accept that there will always be parts of the story that are left out and some stories that are never told. The question here is: Who decides on which stories to tell and how to tell them? The theoretical perspectives discussed in this section offer different views of the filtering process that leads to the creation of crime news content.

It is not possible for the media to tell us about everything that happens in the world, the details of every crime committed, the harm done to every victim, the behaviour of every law enforcement officer, the decisions of every court, or the rehabilitation of every offender. There is necessarily a selection process, a filtering of the range of stories available to determine which ones are “news.” Theorists from different perspectives argue that the stories that become news normally carry one or more features called news values or newsworthiness criteria