Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal

In several previous installments of this series, I have briefly discussed the how journalism conforms to and creates the noetic field of our age. And I’ve shown how journalism creates various relationships among the elements of the rhetorical situation. Today, let’s briefly consider the last of the questions I raised: How does journalistic language create the relationships of the rhetorical situation and deliver the news?

As previously discussed, journalism operates with an objectivist epistemology: What is real is located in the material world and human actions within that world. What can be known are empirically verifiable phenomena. We are connected to the material world by our senses and certain faculties of the mind, which are capable of perceiving the world through sense impressions and then thinking about, and acting upon, these impressions. Journalism’s challenge in this epistemology is to perceive the world correctly and then represent perceptions correctly through language.

You may be thinking that this description is inadequate because, quite often, journalists delve into subjective worlds that cannot be known through empirical methods or inexpert observation. For example, political reporters today are prone to discussing subjective assessments of politicians as if these were observations of verifiable facts. The reason is simple (and terribly complex): The noetic field is changing, and I’ll discuss this further in the final installment of this series.

For now, it is important to understand that the dominant noetic field, as described by the epistemology of journalism, still undergirds most journalistic practice.

The language of journalism creates and maintains the relationships of the rhetorical situation by using language that treats these relationships as self-evident. Journalists rarely engage in the kind of qualifying that calls into question their observations and experiences or the observations and experiences of sources. Further, the ethos of journalism leaves such assessments for the reader to make and, by default, assumes that such assessments are possible given the information that’s available.

It works this way: A news consumer reads an account of reality that considers two points of view and/or other actions or events chosen by the reporter/editor as newsworthy. Because the reporter recreates reality as it is, the reader may then apply a process of rational thought to the issues and make a decision about which of the two points of view are true or best represent the socio-political values of the culture. The implication is that one correct interpretation exists. The reporter, however, is barred by professional practice from making that assessment (pundits and editorialists may).

If we consider the last change in the noetic field, that began in the 1880s and was complete by about 1920, we see that the ethic of objectivity takes a strong hold on professional practice. Good journalists used adjectives sparingly (these are subjective assessments). They used specific nouns and active verbs for the sake of clarity and a direct correspondence with reality. And they followed almost religiously the inverted pyramid scheme of arrangement, in which answers to the six journalist’s questions are presented first (who, what, when, where, why, and how) followed, in descending order, by supporting details. And the sources of these details were eye witnesses and experts whose testimony was recorded and relayed in ways thought to ensure accuracy and fairness, i.e. a reproduction of reality that allows the reader’s rational faculty to sort out the truth.

The serious challenge to this noetic field first began in the 1970s. In the final installment of this series, I will consider the evolution of the noetic field and what it might mean to journalism as we may practice it in the early years of this century.

Prior entries in this series:
Toward a field theory of journalism
Why a “field” metaphor
Parts of the noetic field
The epistemology of journalism
Who is the knower?
The journalist, the facts, the source, and the audience