This article explores the hypothesis that the meta-category “conflict”centralizes and structures newscasts based on a bipolar framing.Characters from the political scene are placed successively againsteach other, interweaving the narrative texture. Conflict is taken asa pre-category preceding that which will become news, from whichother subcategories (protagonist, antagonist, enemy) derive. Thus,news coverage not only represents political reality, but delimitsand institutes it as well. The empirical analysis presented in thearticle focuses on the coverage of a recent political scandal by theJornal Nacional, the main television newscast in Brazil.