Summary

The agenda-setting theory remains at the forefront of media studies. The investigations with which McCombs and Shaw proved –for the first time in the late 1960s in the US– that the media are capable of setting the public's agenda have been replicated in much of the world. Not only has the power of journalism in telling us what to think about has become clear. On a second level, the media also tells us how to think about these issues. Hence the importance of the question that McCombs raises in this article: "Is the media agenda a valid effort to provide the public with what they really need to know?" The low levels of audience and readership of newscasts and newspapers seem to say that it is not. To avoid this –and make informational capital more profitable for the public– the author defends a journalism that prioritizes civic utility in its agenda.