This paper deals with anaphoric expressions in news reports. It is argued that many aspects of discourse anaphora cannot be accounted for within the dominant cognitive paradigm, where anaphoric NPs are conceived of as representations of invariant and universal psychological phenomena. As demonstrated in the paper, anaphoric NPs are intertwined with different social and ideological processes. Anaphoric NPs can for example be used to individuate the main character to a lesser or greater degree, a use that in turn can be seen as a manifestation of basic news values, such as personalization and objectivity.