Few would doubt that mass-media journalism has the potential to exert a powerful influence on contemporary society, shaping, as it does, the way we talk about our past, present and future, the way we debate ethical, political, economic and cultural issues and the way we view our relationship with the wider world. It is perhaps not so surprising, then, that journalistic discourse is so often the target of criticism and the focus of vigorous, sometimes heated debate. The debate is complicated even further, I believe, because as a society, we seem to operate with diverse, sometimes contradictory understandings of what news journalism is and should be. On the one hand, the news media are held up as one of the pillars of democratic society, the so-called "Fourth Estate" acting to inform, to educate, to provide a forum for debate and to expose corruption, injustice and incompetence in government and big business. On the other hand, the actual texts produced by the media are seen to be biased, inaccurate, commercially motivated, voyeuristic and sensationalist. While journalists declare that their texts are `objective', that they offer reliable, impartial and neutral records of events suitable for `first drafts of history'1, media theoreticians and academic analysts2 contend that no text can be `objective' and that all news reporting necessarily interprets and evaluates the events it depicts according to particular socially and culturally determined points of view.
The concern of this set of notes is with the linguistic make-up (both verbal and visual) of journalistic texts from the domain of `news' and `current affairs'. It includes in its scope both news reporting and news commentary. Its primary focus is upon print journalism (newspapers and online publications) and upon English-language texts drawn from the journalisms of north America, the UK, Australia and the Indian sub-continent. Where possible, attention will be paid to how journalistic discourse may vary across these different English language journalisms. A few sections will also address the question of how journalistic textual conventions may vary across different languages (some comparisons will be made with French, Japanese and Chinese journalism).
The purpose of the course is to provide analytical tools for characterizing the distinctive stylistic properties of journalistic news reporting, analysis and commentary and for developing arguments about the communicative and ultimately rhetorical functionality of these texts. Here I use the term `rhetorical' in its broadest sense to refer to the way in which particular uses of language can operate to influence, reinforce or change readers/listeners' understandings, beliefs and expectations.3
In setting out this framework, the course will concern itself with the following types of issues:
Much of course is organised around analyses of texts drawn from the world's print and online media. These analyses will explore the key stylistic and communicative properties of some typical news reports and commentaries and will thereby provide participants with a framework for conducting their own analyses. (Text analyses exercises will also be provided so that you can put the framework to the test and develop your own analytical skills.) Accordingly, I introduce below a sample of the texts which will be taken up in later units in order to illustrate more specifically the types of issues to be addressed. You will be invited to answer some questions or make some comments about certain issues raised by these examples.
In October 1999, the Chinese head of state, Jian Zemin arrived in Britain for an official state visit. One British newspaper, represented the event in the following terms,
text 1.
RIFLES RAISED BY GUARDSMEN TO STOP RIOT OVER HATED PRESIDENT
Queen's China crisis as coach is charged
Bayonet fixed and rifle raised, a solider comes to the rescue of his Queen yesterday. The trooper went into action when human rights protesters charged at her carriage as she travelled towards Buckingham Palace with the Chinese president
Another in these terms,
text 2.
Anti-China protests brushed aside
The first Chinese state visit in British history began yesterday with a lone, Tianmen Square-style attempt to disrupt the royal procession in the Mall and muted protests elsewhere.
As the Queen and President Jiang Zemin travelled to Buckingham Palace, a 34 year-old-man jumped over the barriers and attempted to unfurl the Tibetan flag in front of their coach
A third newspaper offered the following depiction.
text 3.
Leader of the unfree world is feted by the Queen as protesters arrested
Ceremonially speaking, President Jiang Zemin, the first Chinese head of state to visit Britain, was yesterday given the full monty.
A public greeting from the Queen was followed by an inspection of the guard and a carriage trip down the Mall, with Union Jacks and red flags fluttering harmoniously in the breeze.
There are a few questions to answer/comments to make with respect to these three treatments. Please do so below by typing into the text boxes or choosing from drop down lists etc where these occur in the following pages. Your answers, comments, complaints, questions etc will be collected and transmitted electronically to a central database. This material will then be used to provide the starting point for discussion at next week's seminar. It will mean we can go straight into debate and discussion and hence, hopefully, cover more material and perhaps engage in some livelier debates. In the week after the seminar, some selection of this material will be posted back to the Mass Media rhetoric web pages so that you'll be able to read what those in other groups have had to say on the issues raised/questions asked.
In order to facilitate this process, you will need to supply some form of identification in the text boxes provided for this purpose below. Also indicate which seminar group you usually attend. Then we'll be able to move forward into this exciting world of online interaction. Think of it as part of exploring NEW MEDIA experiences.
A.
Is it possible to rate or rank the three treatments in terms of their `factuality', `accuracy' or `objectivity'? Would you say one or other of the extracts is more factual/objective than the others, or obviously less factual and more subjective.
If you feel this IS possible, indicate how you would rate/rank the three items. Provide a paragraph or so explaining and justifying your conclusion.
If you don't think it's possible to rank or rate the items in terms of factuality or objectivity, provide a paragraph or so explaining/justifying why not.
B.
Are there any indicators as to what type of newspaper each extract might have been published in (i.e. tabloid or broadsheet), or even which particular newspaper they appeared in (all extracts were from national dailies.) At least have a stab at guessing the newspaper type. Then, in just a sentence or two, indicate what, for you, were the primary indicators were, or why you couldn't tell what newspapers they were from.
Text 1: ? (tabloid or broadsheet); newspaper?
Text 2: ? (tabloid or broadsheet); newspaper?
Text 3: ?(tabloid or broadsheet); newspaper?
Primary indicators....
C.
It is often claimed that news report openings (the headline plus the first few sentences) point the reader to the most `newsworthy' aspects of the event or issue under consideration - that is to say, the headline and lead sentences supposedly single out what is most `important', `striking' or `relevant'.4 But judgements about relative `importance' or `impact' are, of necessity, subjective. What is important for one will not be so important for another. Such judgements depend on point of view, on a system of beliefs, values and expectations by which assessments are made about different degrees of significance or noteworthiness.
In thinking about what motivates or determines such judgements of relative newsworthiness/importance, White's observations (see White 1997 may prove helpful. White proposes that assessments of `hard news' value turn on the following issues.
The subject matter of these `hard news' ... reports encompasses events or situations which are construed as threatening to damage, disrupt or rearrange the social order in either its material, political or normative guise. The sources of this social order disruption can be grouped under the following three headings: aberrant damage, adversative rearrangements of power relations and normative breach.5
Aberrant damage
Aberrant damage can result from the action of natural forces such as storms, earthquakes and bushfires, from accidents, incompetence or carelessness associated with human enterprise, from outbreaks of disease, from the harmful action of the global or local economy or from acts of intentional violence such as riots, terrorist attacks or warfare. The damage, therefore, can be either of a physical or an economic nature. The notion of `aberrant' damage is necessary to account for the fact that certain types of damage - for example, four local Thais dying in a bus crash in Bangkok, the fact that on average around 1,400 people die each day in the US of heart disease - are not construed as warranting news coverage by, for example, the US, British or Australian media. Such damage is seen by the mass-media's system of subject-matter assessment as a part of the natural order of things and hence `normal'. It is only that damage which threatens the status quo which is hence seen as socio-culturally `disruptive' or `damaging' and which is viewed as warranting coverage.
To be newsworthy, the damage doesn't necessarily need to have actually occurred. Reports about the possibility of damage or about new sources of damage are also newsworthy - the aberrant damage can be actual or potential.
Power relations
The domain of politics, both domestic and international, is the most obvious source of reports which turn on rearrangements of power relationships. `Hard news' reporting provides a fine-grained coverage of the minute shifts in power associated with rises and falls in political popularity, leadership challenges, changes in alliances, factional in-fighting and parliamentary performance as well as the more substantive shifts associated with elections, rebellions, military coups, trade agreements and wars. But there are other sources, including the worlds of business and the bureaucracy where, for example, take-overs, senior appointments and management power struggles are all classified as providing subject matter worthy of coverage. Also associated with shifts in power relations are those items dealing with perceived changes in social roles where those changes ultimately have an impact upon power relations. Perhaps the most obvious of these changes is that associated with the role of women in society. Even today the news that a woman has been appointed to a senior management position in a major company represents newsworthy subject matter. The notion of a rearrangement that is `adversative' accounts for the fact that, to be worthy of coverage, the shift in the power relationship must be seen as at odds with the interests or at least the expectations of some socially significant individual or grouping, and can accordingly be seen as socially `disruptive' or `damaging' in some way.
As was the case with `aberrant damage', potential shifts in power arrangements can be just as newsworthy as actual shifts.
Normative breach
The category of `normative breach' involves events or states-of-affairs construed as departing from either established morality or custom. News items which involve a sense of moral breach include the obvious crime and corruption reports, where clear-cut illegality is involved6, but also include coverage of those acts of incompetence, negligence, arrogance, indifference, etc which are seen to threaten society's sense of duty or propriety. Thus a sense of `moral breach' will underlie the newsworthiness of reports of poor performance by government agencies, of reports that the schools are failing to equip students for the work-force and of reports of the abandonment of new-born babies. Developments such as the growth of new religions, changes in a nation's dietary habits and shifts in the populace's sporting interests are examples of departures from established custom which are newsworthy in the English language media. Frequently such shifts in custom will acquire overtones of moral transgression as, for example, the burgeoning interest in American basketball among the young in Australia is construed as a betrayal of core national values and a threat to the Australian identity.
Under all three headings, therefore, the subject matter deemed newsworthy by the media always entails some perceived threat to the social order - natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, price rises and stockmarket plunges disrupt the material order; elections, leadership challenges and warfare disrupt the status-quo of power relations; crimes and bureaucratic bungles destabilise the moral order. In terms of informational content, therefore, `hard news' reporting texts are directed towards the identification of potential or actual sources of social-order disequilibrium.
Compare text extracts 1 (RIFLES RAISED BY GUARDSMEN..) and 3 (Leader of the unfree world is feted...) In a couple of paragraphs, discuss the following.
1. By what system of values would the angle adopted in 1 be seen as identifying the most `important' aspect of the event? What aspects of the social order does it represent as having been put at risk or having been disrupted by the reported events? Do any of White's three categories of newsworthiness apply (i.e. which, if any, of the following are involved - aberrant damage, shifts in power relations, normative breach).
2. Similarly, what system of values underlies the angle chosen for 3. Do any of White's categories of newsworthiness apply?
(These issues/questions will be discussed at greater length in seminar)
Obviously, the three newspapers have selected very different `angles' around which to organise their accounts. As a consequence, they seem to be interpreting and evaluating the event in very different terms. Such differences in approach raise obvious problems for any claim that the role of news reporting is to provide `factual' account or records of events which might act as the `first drafts' of history. There would seem to be three rather different histories being created here. In following units we will explore what can be made of such differences by means of a textual analysis. We will explore, for example, (a) the ways in which such descriptions positively and negative evaluate their subjective matter, whether they do this explicitly or implicitly, (b) the ways in which such interpretations can be related to particular points of view and belief systems and (c) whether it is possible to rate or rank such representations in terms of their supposed `factuality' or `objectivity'.
Throughout the 1990s, I worked as a journalism trainer for Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), a government-funded, multicultural, multilingual radio and television station which broadcasts in English and some 68 other languages. The trainee journalists I worked with were necessarily drawn from a great diversity of cultural and language backgrounds. As a result, the certainties about what constitutes `news value', `objectivity' and `cultural relevance' which might be found in a `mainstream' media organisation did not necessarily apply - the diverse backgrounds of the trainees meant they were often sensitive to, and critical of, the social, cultural and political assumptions which condition mainstream news reporting. Nevertheless, the parameters of the training program, as set by SBS management, were such that trainees needed to be able to produce standard news reports according to the mainstream model and to understand the distinctive rhetorical properties of this text type. Specifically, they needed to be able to make a considered response to the claim that this text type is impersonal, impartial and objective, not the least because this was the view of mainstream news reporting held by SBS management. Accordingly, I prepared a number of exercises in which I attempted to provide good examples of what would be considered `factual' and `objective' hard news reporting in mainstream news rooms. (My notion of what constituted the `mainstream' view resulted from the ten years I had previously spent working as a reporter, correspondent and features editor for two metropolitan morning dailies, the Adelaide Advertiser and the Sydney Morning Herald.) The following was one of the texts I selected for this purpose. It is a report from the Sydney Morning Herald of a violent attack upon a humanitarian aid convoy in the Iraq, a couple of years after the Gulf War. The attack took place in a Kurdish region in the north of the country which was at that time a United Nations `safe haven'.
Kurds blamed for aid worker's death
By RICHARD MACEY, TINA DIAZ and AAP (Sydney Morning Herald, 9/1/93 p3)
CARE Australia's aid program in Iraq has been suspended indefinitely after an attack in which an Australian worker was shot dead and another wounded.
Iraq's charge d'affaires in Canberra, Mr Karmal Issa, warned yesterday that such an attack--which is being blamed on local Kurds, not Iraq soldiers or police -- might happen again.
Mr Stuart Douglas Cameron, 45, a Brisbane father of two, was killed, and Mr Joe Martinico 43 from Melbourne, was shot three times on a road near the village of Chamchamal, in northern Iraq.
The territory, in Sulaymaniyah province, is under the command of United Nations forces.
Mr Cameron, who was a CARE area manager, Mr Martinico and two Kurdish aid workers are believed to have driven to Chamchamal to resolve an argument among local Kurds about the distribution of kerosene.
CARE Australia, which has 19 workers in Iraq, had been distributing cooking kerosene, food and clothing in the country's north.
Winter is coming, and with it temperatures plunge below zero.
The agency's national director Mr Ian Harris, said yesterday that the team left the village about 4.30 pm local time, on Thursday.
Their vehicle was clearly marked with UN and CARE identification.
"The vehicle ... was flagged down and when it stopped, it was riddled with bullets," he said.
Mr Cameron was killed, but Mr Martinico survived with wounds to his hand, arm and shoulder. One of the two Kurds -- a driver and a guard -- was also wounded
At least three gunmen were reportedly involved in the attack, near the village of Takiya.
A CARE spokesman in Jordan, Mr Robert Yallop, said last night that the attackers had been armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
"It is the standard equipment of the Kurds," he said.
Mr Issa visited senior Foreign Affairs officials yesterday and apologised for the shooting. A department spokesman said Mr Issa had promised Iraq would do everything possible to capture the gunmen and bring them to justice.
"But he said he could not give an assurance that this instance could not occur again," the spokesman said. "He said Iraq had no police or other officials in the north and that the area was run by Kurdish factions."
The spokesman said Mr Issa blamed the United States and the UN for the lack of law and order.
A representative of the Kurdish Democratic Party, Mr Safeen Dizayee said in Ankara that it was still too early to determine who carried out the attack, but that inquiries were being made.
He blamed "Iraqi agents", and said the incident fitted a pattern of recent attacks and intimidation on Western relief efforts.
Both Mr Cameron's wife and mother were too upset to talk to the media yesterday. A friend said: "The family has been shattered. Mr Cameron had two lovely daughters, aged 14 and 12."
CARE Australia's director of operations, Mr Ian Pennell, said Mr Cameron had known the risk involved in going to Iraq.
"[He] was a dinky-di Aussie who knew what dangers he faced but he would have given everything for his cause.
"He was a fantastic bloke and he knew life was always a risk He was prepared to put himself out."
Mr Martinico's mother and one of his brothers did not even know he had left Australia.
Mr Peter Martinico said that when he last saw his brother, two years ago, he had been working in Melbourne, importing smallgoods: "Today I find out he's been shot and he's doing relief work: from what he was doing to relief work was like chalk and cheese"
His mother, Betty, had not seen Joe for nine years: "I told her this afternoon - she took it very hard."
The Foreign Affairs spokesman said the department was waiting for a report, being prepared by UN officers, on the shootings.
A CARE official in Jordan said last night that Mr Cameron's body would be sent back to Australia. She did not know what Mr Martinico planned to do. </div>
I soon encountered strong challenges to my view of the report as `objective' - many of the trainees felt that the report could be seen as biased and that it wasn't impartial in that it positioned the reader to blame the Kurds for the attack. As it turned out, one training group included a journalist from the station's Kurdish-language program. He was deeply offended by the report. He believed it was ' racist' and that it reflected an anti-Kurdish bias so strong that it had overwhelmed the Western media's then customary anti-Iraqi stance.
A.
Can you discern any aspect of the report which could reasonably be seen as racist? If, so briefly explain.
B.
In the report, identify at least one word, phrase, sentence, description or mode of expression which could arguably be seen as `subjective'. Indicate what this is and explain in what way it's subjective.
Consider the following two traffic accident reports
AGED WOMAN'S BACK BROKEN.
Struck by an Auto While Returning from Father Mayer's Funeral.
Mrs. Amelia Greenblatt of 115 East Eight Street attended the funeral yesterday of her late paster, the Rev. John B. Mayer, in the St Nicholas Roman Catholic Church in Second Street. The service ended at noon and Mrs Greenblatt started form the church to go to here home.
She crossed the sidewalk and stepped into Second Avenue almost in front of an automobile driven by Rudolph Plain of 379 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn. Plain, who was driving from the Williamsburg Bridge toward Bond Street, sounded his horn loudly as he came down the avenue into which throngs were flocking from the church.
The loud blast of the horn startled Mrs. Greenblatt, who is 54 years old, and she stood still, apparently stupefied by her danger. Plain put on his brakes and tried to swing the machine to one side. Before he could stop the car, however, it had struck the woman and flung her to one side against the curbstone.
Women in the crowd screamed in horror. Policemen Burke of the Fifth Street Station lifted the woman in his arms and put her in the [back] of the auto which Plain had succeeded in stopping. Then he ordered the chauffeur to drive up Avenue A to Bellevue Hospital at top speed.
The trip to the hospital of more than a mile was made in less than thee minutes. Physicians who examined Mrs Greenblatt said that her spine was broken.
The Rev. Father Mayer, whose funeral Mrs. Greenblatt had attended died on Monday at the age of 56. He was born in Germany, came her 30 years ago and was ordained a priest and assigned to the St Nicholas Church seven years later, His long pastorate there endeared him to the German population of the parish over which he presided and hundreds visited the church yesterday.
SCHOOL JAUNT ENDS IN DEATH CRASH
By Shelley-Anne Couch
A 17-year-old boy was killed instantly when a car carrying eight school friends - two in the boot - skidded on a bend and slammed into a tree yesterday.
A 16-year-old girl passenger was in critical condition last night - police said she might need to have her leg amputated - and a 17-year-old boy was in a serious but stable condition after the tree embedded itself in the car.
Incredibly, the two girls in the boot of the V8 Holden Statesman and another girl escaped with only cuts and bruises.
The eight friends, two boys and six girls from years 11 and 12, had left Trinity Senior High School in Wagga yesterday at lunchtime, cramming into one car to go to an interschool sports carnival. But a few kilometers later the car ploughed into a tree in Captain Cook Drive.
Police believe the driver lost control on a bend, skidded on a gravel shoulder and slammed into a tree on a nearby reserve.
Emergency crews said that when they arrived, the uprooted tree was embedded in the car.
It had been raining heavily and police believe the car might have been going too fast.
The driver, 17-vear-old Nicholas Sampson, was killed instantly. Deanne McCaig, 16, from Ganmain, had massive leg injuries and was trapped for more than 90 minutes. She was in a critical condition last night at Wagga Base hospital, where police say she is in danger of having her leg amputated. Peter Morris, 17, from Coolamon, suffered multiple injuries and was in a serious but stable condition. Among the other students Paulette Scamell and Anita McRae were also in a stable condition, while Shannon Dunn, Catherine Galvin and Rochelle Little, all 16, suffered minor injuries.
Police believe the friends from the Catholic high school were on their way to one of the student's homes before heading to the carnival.
A.
What type of newspapers do you think the reports might have appeared in? Do you think the two reports came from different or similar publications. Briefly explain the basis for your conclusions.
B.
There are important differences between the two reports. In a few sentences briefly describe what these are.
In November 1999, a young boy was rescued by the US coast guard in the sea off Florida. He was found floating in a an inflated inner tube. He and his mother had been part of group which had been attempting sail from Cuba to the US in a small boat. Most of the group, including the boy's mother, had drowned when the boat sank in heavy seas. In Miami, where there is a large community of Cuban ex-patriots, the boy was taken into care by relatives. That community is, in general, very strongly hostile to the current Cuban government led by Fidel Castro. They have been instrumental in seeing that the US continues its policy of isolating Cuba from the rest of the world and of seeking Castro's removal from power. The boy's father, who had been separated from the boy's mother and was still living in Cuba, called for Elian to be returned to him in Havana. The US authorities eventually ruled that the boy should be reunited with his father, but the Miami relatives refused to hand him over, insisting that they were respecting the dead mother's wishes that they boy should find freedom and a better life in the US. Predictably the incident became a major media controversy with supporters of the rights of the family lined up against those who insisted that America must protect the boy from " the tyranny and oppression of life in Castro's Cuba". After several months of debate in the media, and more legal wrangling, the boy was eventually taken from his relative's home by US immigration officers and reunited with this father.
Given the presence of the large Cuban ex-patriot community in Miami, it is perhaps not surprising that columnists from the city's Miami Herald were extremely critical of the government's action in returning the boy to his father. For example, one commentator wrote,
(Miami Herald, Sunday, April 23, 2000, by Liz Balmaseda)
Feds declined to exhaust all options
"When all efforts failed."
That was the official disclaimer.
That was President Clinton's shrug for the violent pre-dawn raid and ransack of the house where Elian Gonzalez has lived with his Miami relatives since his November rescue at sea.
``The law has been upheld,'' Clinton said, adding he believed removing the child by force was the right thing to do.
If the president believes the thug display by armed federal agents against a horrified 6-year-old child constitutes the right thing to do, then we must ask him this:
What country do you govern, sir? Is it the United States or is it Cuba?
In pursuit of Elian, submachine gun-pointing border agents stormed the Gonzalez family house, smashing through a door, blasting pepper spray, even wrecking the child's bed frame.
The peaceful, orderly transfer Attorney General Janet Reno had promised the American people played like a home invasion, with death threats hurled and guns pointed to heads.
"Give me the f---ing boy or I'll shoot,'' an agent thundered at Elian's relatives, who pleaded with the armed officials not to harm the child ...
Interestingly, the newspapers' official position (the one espoused in its editorials/leader columns) was one of supporting the return, at least in principle, of the child to his father. Nevertheless, it spoke out very strongly against the manner of the child's removal from his relatives in a front page editorial. For example,
AN EDITORIAL
A shocking raid, a call for calm
The Herald rarely publishes editorials on the front page. We believe this event warrants an exception. -- The Publisher
In the aftermath of Saturday's shocking predawn raid by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, it is imperative that Miami remain calm. Only the Cuban government and its dictator benefit from violent behavior that brings shame to this community.
Miami needs a complete accounting of the events preceding the raid. The scenes of overwhelming force from yesterday at dawn shock the conscience. A separate question is whether the raid was even necessary, or if it was a betrayal of those who were on the verge of achieving a peaceful transfer.
Even as agents were battering down the door to enter the Lazaro Gonzalez house at 5:10 a.m., Attorney General Janet Reno was on the telephone with one of Miami's most respected civic leaders, Aaron Podhurst, discussing the shift of Elian's custody. Mr. Podhurst and others -- including University of Miami President Edward T. ''Tad'' Foote II and business executives Carlos de la Cruz and Carlos Saladrigas -- had worked round the clock over the preceding 48 hours as mediators between the government and the Miami family to arrange for the transfer.
They believed enormous progress had been made and that the deal was within grasp. Ms. Reno's claim that the Miami relatives ''kept moving the goalposts'' is vehemently contested by Mr. Podhurst, her friend for 30 years. ''The goalposts were moved by them,'' a disconsolate Mr. Podhurst said Saturday. ''I've never been more devastated in my entire life.''
The evidence clearly suggests that the Miami relatives were at last prepared to voluntarily deliver Elian to his father within a very short time. A full and independent investigation of this matter is warranted.
We have supported Juan Miguel Gonzalez's desire to be reunited with his son since he arrived in the United States. But achieving that goal yesterday does not justify the trauma that was inflicted on our community.
Such texts are of interest in their own rights. In later chapters we will explore various frameworks for exploring how such texts operate rhetorically, for exploring the modes of argumentation and persuasion they employ. But there are further issues raised here. Given then, that the position taken in the opinion pages is so clearly a negative one, it is interesting to consider just how the `facts' of the matter were reported in the news pages. Consider the following extract from the front page news coverage.
RAID RETURNS ELIAN TO FATHER
Street protests end; strike called for Tuesday
BY MANNY GARCIA, CAROLYN SALAZAR AND ANDRES VIGLUCCI
It took five months for the custody battle over Elian Gonzalez to build to a tense standoff. It took federal agents less than three minutes to end it.
In a cleanly executed predawn raid that caught Elian's Miami relatives off guard, armed and helmeted U.S. Border Patrol officers pushed aside a handful of demonstrators to batter in the door of their Little Havana home. At gunpoint, they took the boy from the grip of his Thanksgiving Day rescuer, fisherman Donato Dalrymple.
``We're taking you to see your papa,'' a Spanish-speaking female agent, Betty Mills, told the terrified boy as she carried him out of the house to a government van.
Before most of Miami awoke Saturday to what had occurred, Elian had been reunited with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C.
Gonzalez, who asked U.S. officials for five minutes alone with his son, boarded the airplane that brought Elian from Homestead Air Reserve Base. He emerged carrying the boy, who held his father in a bear hug, arms and legs wrapped tightly around him, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said.
The government said Elian, his father, stepmother and half-brother would spend ``a couple of days'' at base housing to allow them time together in private.
As stunning images from the raid were almost instantly and repeatedly broadcast on TV here and across the world, angry protesters began roaming Miami's Flagler Street corridor, upsetting trash bins in the street and setting tires and debris afire at scores of locations...
It is customary for media organisations to insist that `news' and ` view' are clearly segregated, that opinion is confined to the opinion and leader pages and that news reporting is impartial and neutral, kept free from any influence by the points of views expresses elsewhere in the newspaper.
A.
Is such a claim born out by the example of these texts? Would you classify the report as (a) neutral, (b) indicating a negative view of the government's actions in taking the boy, (c) indicating a positive view of the government's actions. Briefly explain and justify your answer by reference to the text - that is to say, if you answered either (b) or (c) ensure that you indicate those words, phrases or formulations by which the positive or negative assessment is indicated.
Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the News - Discourse and Ideology in the Press, London, Routledge.
Galtung, J. & Ruge, M. 1965. 'The Structure of Foreign News', Journal of Peace Research 1: 64-90.
Husson, D. & O. Robert 1991. Profession Journaliste, Paris, Eyrolles.
van Dijk, T.A. 1988. News As Discourse, Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
White, P.R.R. 1997. 'Death, Disruption and the Moral Order: the Narrative Impulse in Mass-Media Hard News Reporting.', in Genres and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School, Christie, F.Martin, J.R.), London, Cassell.
1 Consider, by way of example, the following depiction of English-language news reporting by the authors of a training text for French journalists. They claim that the model English-language news report is `precise and neutral', that it eliminates all subjectivity and that `the only things on show are the raw facts' (Husson &Robert 1991: 63, my translation). In a similar vein, the eminent British journalist, Harold Evans (a one-time editor of the Sunday Times) was reported as telling a gathering of UC Berkeley journalism students that `When you report you are providing not only the first draft of history but the raw material.' (source: www. journalism.berkeley.edu/ events/evans.html, June 2000)
2 See, for example, Fowler 1991: 2
3 The term `rhetoric', in its narrower and perhaps more usual sense, is concerned with the way in which language can be used to argue and, if the arguing goes well, to persuade. My use of the term includes this sense, but my definition is broader - I include uses of language which are not explicitly argumentative but which, nonetheless, have the potential to influence or change the way in which people view the world around them. Arguably, there are few instances of language which are not rhetorical to some degree, given this definition of the word. Most (possibly all) utterances, then, have a rhetorical aspect.
4 Van Dijk, for example, argues that the news report is organised according to `...the top down principle of relevance organisation.... This principle says that news discourse is organised so that the most important or relevant information is put in the most prominent position, both in the text as a whole and in the sentences. This means that for each topic, the most important information is presented first.'(van Dijk 1988: 43)
5 Numerous attempts have been made in the media studies to provide a systematic account of the informational themes involved in the media's assessments of newsworthiness. Perhaps the most influential of these is that by Galtung &Ruge 1965 which is widely cited in the literature.
6 For an extended analysis of news values and the social order in the context of crime reporting, see Ericson et al. (1991). For a discussion of journalists' understanding of the subject matter of `hard news', see Tiffen (1989).