THE EDITORIAL PRODUCTION PROCESS AND EDITORIAL VALUES AS INFLUENCES ON THE OPINIONS OF THE BRITISH PRESS TOWARDS EUROPE

British newspapers have been criticised for their coverage of the European Union and accused of contributing to the strength of anti-European opinion in the United Kingdom. Despite these claims, research by media sociologists and political communications scholars has commonly focused on news reporting, overlooking editorial opinions on European issues. This article addresses this gap by presenting a sociological analysis of editorial journalism in relation to European integration at 10 British national newspapers. The findings show that newspapers vary widely in the resources and roles they have assigned for editorialising on Europe, and provide an original insight into the common routines employed for producing editorial opinion. A model, entitled the editorial production process, is developed to illustrate the key stages of this routine. The specialist practices of editorial journalism are discussed through the identification of a set of editorial values used to select issues for comment.