An important dimension ofagenda setting is the way in which the media frame the issues and events they present to the public. This article focuses on one of the most important dimensions offraming: choice of information source-the selections journalists make from among the many possible and potential holders of information of those sources whose information and viewpoints will actually be included in the news. In particular, this content analysis of ten years of three southern newspapers focuses on the inclusion offemale sources in newspaper stories and analyzes whether the gender of the reporter aflects that inclusion.The media of mass communication are among our most powerful social institutions, with the capacity to set the public agenda by attaching salience to particular issues and events they cover. An important dimension of agenda setting is the way in which the media frame the issues and events they present to the public.' This article focuses on one of the most important dimensions of framing: choice of information source, that is, the selections journalists make from among the many possible and potential holders of information of those sources whose information and viewpoints will actually be included in the news. In particular, this article focuses on the inclusion of female sources in newspaper stories.A recent study by the Freedom Forum indicates that women are seldom used as sources for stories of national or international importance, but rather are quoted as victims or because of their relationship with a male who is central to the story. The study also found that female reporters were no more likely than their male colleagues to quote other women.* Thus, this research focuses on gender as a primary variable not only of source but of reporter. Finally, the article explores the connection between the holder of information and power: the absence of women as sources would reflect their powerlessness, their symbolic annihilation by the media? Agendu Setting. The media clearly are more than a mirror of or conduit for the concerns and issues of others. There is significant research support for an agenda-setting model: that the public learns both facts and the salience of those facts from the media. The literature supports the belief that public perceptions and opinions toward issues/topics and the individuals who espouse those issues are shaped by the media, leading the public to view certain issues/topics as more important than others4

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The study examines how much influence one group of sources—public information officers for six state government agencies—had on daily newspaper content through the information they provided journalists. About half the information provided by PIOs was used in subsequently published news stories, and the topics the PIOs identified as salient to their agencies were the same topics given salience in media coverage. But the study also indicates public relations information, though it was used, was not the major source of information on which journalists relied. Fewer than half of all published stories that dealt with one of the six state agencies actually included PIO-provided information.

In two of four instances, media seem to have influenced president 3 agenda.,In the two decades since the original study of agenda-setting,' most research has focused on the influence of the press on the public agenda. Recently, however, researchers have moved farther back in the communication process to focus directly on the nature and origins of the press agenda. Studies exploring the nature of the press agenda have examined the values, traditions and beliefs of journalism, an effort collectively called the sociology of news. Other research efforts have centered on the origins of the press agenda in terms of the interactions of journalists with news sources and external institutions. C Wayne Wanta is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University. Mary Ann Stephenson, formerly a master's student at the University of Oklahoma, is a senior communications specialist with Memom 'Rla Corporation. Judy Vanslykc lbrk, formerly an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, is director of the School of Journalism at Kent State University. Maxwell E. McCombs is chairman of the Department of Journalism aI the University of 'Ikas at Austin. ' Muwell E. McComk d Donald L. Shw, "The &coda-