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Why do some events fill the columns and air time of news media, while others are ignored? Why do some stories make banner headlines whereas others merit no more than a few lines? What factors decide what news professionals consider newsworthy? Such questions are often answered-by journalists and media researchers alike-with references to journalistic news values or 'news criteria'. Some answers are normatively founded; others are pragmatic and descriptive. In the present article, I submit that editorial priorities should not be analyzed in purely journalistic terms. Instead, they should be seen as efforts to combine journalistic norms and editorial ambitions, on the one hand, with commercial norms and market objectives, on the other. Commercial Enterprise and Patron of an Institution News media have a dual nature. On the one hand they represent a societal institution that is ascribed a vital role in relation to such core political values as freedom of expression and democracy. On the other hand, they are businesses that produce commodities-information and entertainment-for a market. At the same time, because their products are descriptions of reality that influence our perceptions of the world around us, news media wield influence that extends far beyond the marketplace. Who controls the media is of significance to every member of society. As figures like Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi and the new Russian media barons remind us, control of the media is a key to political power. And while many venerable industries wither and die (or undergo profound metamorphoses) the consciousness industry-as writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1974) dubbed the media and other actors in the communication sector-is rapidly expanding. Newspapers, radio programs and television transmissions differ with respect to how consumption of them affects our perception and understanding of reality. As Graham Murdoch observes: By providing accounts of the contemporary world and images of the 'good life', they play a pivotal role in shaping social consciousness, and it is this 'special relationship' between economic and cultural power that has made the issue of

The democratic importance of journalism is related to public good aspects of media products, as well as news media’s positive externalities. Journalism of high quality helps ensure we are all better informed and thus benefits democracy. Lack of investigative journalism may incur large social costs. However, journalism as a public good is difficult to fund on a commercial basis. Historically, an economic solution for media companies has been advertising subsidies, plus different types of public and private support. Today, the long-time marriage between news organisations and advertisers is severely weakened, and nothing so far suggests that digital revenues alone can finance a varied, broad and original news production. In the eyes of capitalist investors, news organisations represent the past, not the future. This article discusses, on the basis of Scandinavian media experiences and recent policy reforms, the necessity of a media policy and a funding system that acknowledges quality journalism as societal knowledge production and a public good.

Transparency International's yearly Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Scandinavia as one of the least corrupt regions in the world. However, during the past decades, large Scandinavian corporations in the telecommunications, oil and defence industries have-in their struggle for business contracts in other countries-been involved in several large-scale bribery scandals. There has also been a growing range of corruption cases in the Swedish and Norwegian public sectors. In many of these cases, investigative journalists have played a crucial role in the disclosure of corruption, sometimes cooperating across media organisations and countries, demonstrating the importance of journalism as a public good for democracy. In this article, we explore, discuss and analyse the work of and methods used by investigative journalists in revealing large-scale corruption related to the expansion of Nordic telecom companies in Uzbekistan.

The focus of this article is the changing roles of the pundits of the press during national election campaigns and the consequences for the political role of television news and newspapers. Three election campaigns 1965, 1989 and 2009 are compared, mainly through content analyses. In 1965 most political commentators in the national and regional newspapers were leading party members, the members of the press lobby even meeting regularly in the party's groups in Stortinget (the Norwegian parliament). Their role as interpreters and agitators was on behalf of their party and its ideology. In 1989 the party press was nearly abolished and the National Broadcasting Company had for long exercised full control over their election debates. The questioning programmes had been developed into tough interrogations, nicknamed as grilling of the politicians. Most of the political commentators of the press were now formally independent, however often with strong political and ideological roots in the old party system. During the national election campaign in 2009 the political commentators had a new and far more visible role than in the public debate, compared with 1965 and 1989. The leading commentators are published more prominently than before, and are used as trademark for their own newspapers. The pundit elite has also been elevated to the role of chief experts on the political horse race in television news and debates.