Comparing news programmes

A framework for comparison and evidentiality in TV news

Analysis

• A descriptive framework to describe news programmes:

• Framing, focusing, realising, closing• Linguistic, discursive, semantic

framing

• the concept of frame is repeatedly invoked in media research

• the term is mainly used to represent some form of interpretative coding, or ‘schema’

• privileging one interpretation over another by a number of means

Verbal and visual

• ‘through repetition, placement, and reinforcing associations with each other, the words and images that comprise the [news] frame render one basic interpretation more readily discernible, comprehensible and memorable than others’ (Entman 1991: 7)

reveal ‘critical textual choices’

• choices that seem natural and unremarkable unless comparison with other sets of textual choices exposes their central role in helping to establish what he calls ‘the “common sense” (i.e., widespread) interpretation of events’ (Entman 1991: 6).

Three levels

• our analysis of framing involves attention to three levels of meaning:

• linguistic, • discursive,• and visual• each of which, combines to produce particular

perspectives on, and conceptualisations of the topic or issue through the representation of the news event.

Linguistic

• features of the verbal text which tend to be sites of explicit or implicit evaluation (Iedema, Feez and White 1994)

• These can be potentially instrumental in the treatment of related issues/themes by individual broadcasters.

Linguistic 2

• the use of personal pronouns, for example, the newsworkers’ use of I indicating personal involvement; the use of us and we, they and them to reference shared knowledge and to construct ‘the other’;

• and the use of you as evidence of the positioning of the viewer/audience with respect to the news being reported.

Linguistic 3

• the use of mental process verbs (e.g. think, know) and verbs of affect (e.g. care, hope) where the newsworker attributes ‘thoughts’ or ‘feelings’ to news subjects, thereby constructing an evaluation of a given situation.

• Other relevant features in the expression of evaluation may include choices in modality, metaphor, deictic reference, and the selection of specific semantic fields and collocations.

Different frames

• From a linguistic perspective in each broadcasting channel, different frames may emerge in the conceptualisation of the topic, and in how they position themselves in relation to the issues

voices

• in the realisation phases a difference between the realisations.

• Presentation through voices of political and expert elites,

• Or the voices of ordinary members of the public in vox sequences.

Discursive

• At the discursive level, we focus on the organisation of the individual news items, basing our analysis partially on Hartley’s (1982) categories of news structure: the framing, focusing, realising and closing elements of a news report.

Framing and focusing

• We treat the news presenters’ introduction as the opening frame,

• the discursive development of the central segment – ‘focusing’ by the news reporter – is significant in terms of the choices made regarding how specific aspects and themes of the news presenters’ introduction are elaborated on.

Realising

• the selection of visual material and voices• In addition to the news presenters and reporters,

two other categories of ‘voice’: legitimated persons (LPs) who are the named expert and elite participants speaking as public figures, usually on behalf of an organisation or institution,

• and vox – members of the general public who appear in news broadcasts speaking on their own behalf, and whose function is often to represent the views of the general public

Closing

• the way the report ends, its closing segment• ‘closing’ is the dominant meaning produced by item

as a whole, or what is ‘left behind in the viewer after the story is over [...] the closure of various possible interpretations of the event and the preferring of just one reading’ (Hartley1982:119).

• more specifically, the concluding sequence of a report, its coda, or ‘wrap-up’, which may contribute to a ‘preferred reading’ of the whole report (Haarman, 2009).

Verbal and visual

• the way verbal and visual texts are combined in the editing process, this synchrony is a prime meaning-bearing component of the television medium.

• A sense of immediacy and reality is conveyed by the combination of images and sound, which ‘enhances the credibility of news reports’ (Graber 1988).

Images

• images in television news clearly have a strong referential or descriptive function when in synchrony with the verbal text, commenting on, or illustrating it (Montgomery 2005, 2007)

• images also play a major role in priming pre-existing interpretative schemas and stimulate viewers to relate the images to ‘similar information previously stored in memory’ (Graber 1990).

• This would suggest that viewers are led to interpret new events in terms of familiar ones.

televisual context

• do we see participants:• speaking to camera while making statements?• in an interview?• out of doors, or in a studio?• or other interior setting?

Verbal/visual fit

• the analysis of the verbal/visual ‘fit’ may highlight previously unexplored aspects of how issues are framed.

• the typology of visuals, e.g. particular use of archive material or stills, recorded or live footage (and live sound), graphics

• any relevant features of the visual representation of participant ‘voices’

Comparing evidentiality in tv news

Markers which indicate

• The kind of evidence one has for making factual claims

• The indication of the nature of the evidence for a given statement

• Knowledge of the source and committment to the truth of a proposition

Choices

• Attribution of a proposition to another person or voice is a kind of evidentiality – x says y

• Witness – I was there, I saw y• Secondhand or hearsay – attributes to other

witnesses, the neighbours reported hearing a• Sensory- I felt, it seemed, it looked as if, it

sounded like• Inferential , - clues and indications, visuals

Modality

Use of simple present or past:

Use of present perfect:

Use of modals:

Visuals

• Visuals can be live or archive (some archive footage is a shorthand to illustrate institutional or social situations the viewer is meant to recognise)

• They can back up the verbal text basically showing what is being said

• they can juxtapose archive footage and they can add impressions without explicitly making a point

Post production editing

• The more a channel takes pains to edit and compile, the more they seem to be evaluating the news as important (worth making the effort)

Voices

• Some sources are given live camera footage or are interviewed on screen

• Some are given still photos• Some just their words on the screen• Some have their words paraphrased or

summarised by the NP

• You need to think about the effects of such choices

Interaction

• Sometimes we hear the question and see the participants together

• Sometimes we just hear the answer• Answers usually depend on questions and the

questions can be leading questions….

Practice

• Now analyse the items on the UN and Syria in terms of

• Framing and focussing: Linguistic featuresand in terms of verbal and visual fit

• realising: voices and visuals• and closing.