What a Quote Means, Part 2
“A quote means whatever the journalist intended by its use.”
I left that line hanging at the end of part 1 because I enjoy the mixture of complexity and interpretive ambiguity in the concept of intention. What does a journalist intend?
There are several ways to answer it. Let’s start by reviewing what I have written about the standard epistemology of journalism. To paraphrase my description this epistemology: Reality 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 world by our senses and certain faculties of the mind, which are capable of perceiving the world through the senses and then thinking about, and acting upon, these impressions. Journalism’s challenge is to perceive the world correctly and then represent perceptions correctly through language. Journalists arrive at truth through induction by collecting data from the senses and reasoning from these data to generalizations about the world. Truth comes before language. Language is a sign system for transcribing truth as it is witnessed or experienced by the reporter and/or the source. Reporters observe events and/or speak to those who have. Because humans disagree about the meaning of events (opinion), reporters collect data from “both sides” and present these data without comment, allowing readers to apply their own reasoning to discover the incorrect opinion versus the correct representation of events.
[Editor's Note: Now's a good time to remind you that this discussion, like so many on Rhetorica, is focused on reporters and the news they produce--not editorials or columns.]
The source plays a very important rhetorical and ethical role in this way of knowing. The journalist claims to be an objective observer expert in the given subject by virtue of his status as observer. But journalists privilege a even greater knower: the source.
The relationship between the reporter as knower and the source as knower creates much of what we understand as journalism. The reporter shifts between the roles of knower and conduit of the known.
Reporters are rarely on the scene when events transpire that are subsequently defined as news. Much of the reporter’s knowledge comes second hand through the source–the one who has observed, or played a role, first hand.
Let’s begin to number the answers to the question “What does a journalist intend?”
1. The journalist intends discover from the source some aspect of the news event and to transcribe that aspect from the language of the source to the printed page.
But journalists recognize that sources disagree about what events mean. Standard journalistic practice dictates they must present “both sides.” [re: fairness bias]
2. The journalist intends to transcribe aspects of events that correspond to a culturally-accepted range of understanding the world.
Journalists operate within a mythology that understands there to be a long tradition of serving the public by giving it the information it needs to make democratic life work. This mythology is codified in nearly all professional codes of ethics and in many of journalism’s finest expressions of best practices.
3. Journalists intend to discover and deliver information thought to conform with the public’s civic and political needs.
In part 3, I’ll discuss my formula of rhetorical intention and further innumerate journalistic intentions specifically in regard to the use of quotes.
