View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto CAPTURED BY CONVENTIONS On objectivity and factuality in international news agency discourse Maija Stenvall Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in lecture room 13, Main Building, on the 25th of February, 2011 at 12 o‟clock. Pragmatics, Ideology and Contacts Monographs 7 Department of Modern Languages University of Helsinki 2011 © 2011 Maija Stenvall Series published by the interdepartmental PIC project at the University of Helsinki Place of publication and publisher: University of Helsinki, The PIC project The acronym PIC is amoebic and stands for (P) pragmatics, prosody; (I) ideology, interaction; (C) contacts, constructions, culture, etc. Series editor: Jan-Ola Östman P.O. Box 24 FI-00014 University of Helsinki Finland CONTENTS Contents…..…………………………………………………………………………………….3 Preface…………..……………………………………………………………………….………7 Abstract……………….………………………………………………………………………..11 1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 13 1.1 Overview ...................................................................................................... 14 1.2 Material ....................................................................................................... 18 1.3 Structure of the study .................................................................................20 2 The power of the news agencies .................................................... 23 2.1 From the Big Four to the Big Three (or just Two?) ................................... 23 2.1.1 The birth and the development of the news agencies ..................... 24 2.1.2 The scope of the present activities ................................................... 27 2.1.3 Competition and cooperation .......................................................... 32 2.2 News agencies and globalisation .............................................................. 40 2.2.1 Views on globalisation ...................................................................... 41 2.2.2 News agencies – agents of globalisation? ...................................... 44 2.3 Bases of the news agency power ................................................................ 49 3 Breaking news – a staple of news agency distribution ........... 52 3.1 The continuing narrative of the Indonesian earthquake ........................... 52 3.2 Characteristics of breaking news ................................................................ 61 3 4 Conventions vis-à-vis factuality and objectivity ........................ 64 4.1 Conventions related to the structure of news reports ................................ 65 4.1.1 The „typical‟ structure of news reports ............................................ 66 4.1.2 Routines of specification .................................................................. 68 4.1.3 Conventions of attribution ............................................................... 68 4.1.4 Generalizing other news actors in headlines .................................. 72 4.1.5 Discussion ......................................................................................... 74 4.2 Newsworthiness – a staple of news rhetoric ............................................. 75 4.2.1 News values – a brief overview .......................................................77 4.2.2 Negativity as a rhetorical construct ............................................... 79 4.2.3 Metaphors revisited ......................................................................... 86 4.2.4 Metaphors in political news reports: is POLITICS still WAR? ...... 87 4.3 Obscuring responsibility: tactics of impersonalisation ............................ 98 4.3.1 Theoretical aspects – Functional Grammar .................................. 98 4.3.2 Construing news actors‟ responsibility........................................ 103 4.3.3 Discussion ....................................................................................... 112 4.4 Journalists and Affect ............................................................................... 113 4.4.1 Affect in Appraisal Theory ............................................................. 114 4.4.2 Affect – Attributed, Observed or Interpreted? ............................. 116 5 Findings ............................................................................................. 123 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………..……...137 APPENDICES………………………………………………………………………………143 4 Study A: The Last Round of the Maastricht Poker Game: A Study of News Agency Language……………………………………………………………………145 Study B: An actor or an undefined threat? The role of ‗terrorist‘ in the discourse of international news agencies……………………………………..213 Study C: ‗Fear of terror attack persists‘: Constructing fear in reports on terrorism by international news agencies……………………………………. 263 Study D: Unnamed sources as rhetorical constructs in news agency reports…………………………………………………………………………………………..287 Study E: On emotions and the journalistic ideals of factuality and objectivity – tools for analysis………………………………………………………….311 Study F: Responsibility and the conventions of attribution in newsagency discourse……………………………………………………………………………………..…339 5 6 Preface When I resumed my university studies in the early 1990s, my intention was to learn some Spanish. In addition, I decided to test my English trans- lation skills, as my MA degree in the 1960s had included English philology as a minor subject. What little Spanish I learned then, I have totally lost by now, whereas my English studies became a project for decades. My second visit to the academia would probably have remained short-lived, had I not asked one of the translation course lecturers, Andrew Chesterman, about possibilities to study news language. Chesterman ad- vised me to read Teun van Dijk‘s book News as discourse, and to contact Professor Jan-Ola Östman. Van Dijk‘s book proved, indeed, to be very use- ful – I have referred to it in almost every study over the years –, but it was the latter recommendation that was ‗fatal‘. It did not take long before I was engaged in writing my second MA thesis – on metaphors in news agency language – and in struggling to pass various courses and exams of the Ad- vanced Studies. And soon after finishing the Advanced Studies, I became a Ph.D. student with Jan-Ola Östman as my supervisor. I cannot stress hard enough that none of these steps would have been taken without his en- couragement and his unfailing support. As all his students know, he is al- ways busy with many commitments, but when needed, he is there to help. Besides, I have witnessed on several occasions that just a few words from him have been sufficient to put me on the right track. My debt to Jan-Ola is thus enormous, and I can only express my heartfelt thanks. I am also grateful to Jan-Ola for including me into the PIC (Pragmat- ics, Ideology and Contacts) Group, which at that time contained – in addi- tion to him – the following researchers: Diana ben-Aaron, Salla Lähdes- mäki, Anna Solin, Pekka Kuusisto and Jarno Raukko. I thank them all for their company and for helping me in my studies. I have also been lucky to share office with Diana and Salla for some time. Later, I have greatly en- joyed the company of two more recent PIC-members, Ulla Paatola and Taija Townsend. 7 When I retired from my job at YLE TV news in 2002, I was fortunate enough to be accepted into The Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG), which has provided me with the working premises. VARIENG has also enabled my participation in various confer- ences by giving me travel grants. Most importantly, I have been able to work in a friendly and inspiring research atmosphere, for which I am grateful to every member of the research unit. My special thanks go to the leaders of VARIENG, Professor Terttu Nevalainen and Professor Irma Taavitsainen, who have always made me feel a welcome member of the unit. I have also had interesting discussions with Dr. Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Dr. Seija Kerttula, Docent Matti Kilpiö, Docent Anneli Meurman-Solin, Dr. Minna Nevala, Dr. Arja Nurmi, Maura Ratia, Professor Emeritus Matti Rissanen and many others. I thank all my ‗roommates‘ for their good com- pany. In addition to Diana and Salla, I have shared an office with, among others, Dr. Heli Tissari, Marianna Hintikka, Dr. Mikko Laitinen and Teo Juvonen. I am especially grateful to Marianna and Mikko for solving many instant problems, often caused by my computer which has a nasty habit of behaving in an unexpected manner! I am also indebted to Tuuli Tahko, who did a great job scanning two articles included in my thesis. I am enormously thankful to Jukka Tyrkkö and Dr. Turo Hiltunen for sharing their computer expertise with a less knowledgeable colleague like me, and for their endless patience. I simply don‘t know how I would have met all the deadlines without Turo‘s help, when finalizing the manuscript of my thesis. Dr. Anna-Liisa Vasko I thank profoundly for being such a good friend all these years, and for always encouraging me to continue my re- search. I am very grateful to Professor Paul Chilton and Dr. John E. Richard- son for reading my manuscript; for their kind words of encouragement and for providing insightful suggestions for improvement. In the course of my news agency research, I have contacted several foreign