The rhetoric of political reporting in the 2012 presidential race

 

By Jarod Daily

 

In his 1963 book The Press and Foreign Policy, Bernard C. Cohen wrote that newspapers “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” (Cohen, 13). This agenda-setting theory has been expanded upon many times over the years. However, we readers should be aware that many news writers still try to sneak slanted rhetoric into reporting in an attempt to tell us what to think, particularly in political stories.

 

Most newspapers rely heavily on wire services for national and international news. Few papers have the resources that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other prominent national newspapers enjoy, so many cannot send their own staff reporters to cover events such as political primaries, party conventions, presidential campaigns, and political debates. Relying on wire services, though necessary, can be fairly problematic for any media outlet. Most of the services are concerned with getting news out as quickly as they can, often with only perfunctory checks for accuracy and mechanics and even less concern for biased or sensational writing, leaving it to wire editors at client papers to sort the facts out from the rhetoric. At the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, for example, wire editors meticulously pore over stories with the intention of deleting as much analysis and speculation as possible so as to give readers facts rather than opinion, often pulling information from multiple pieces and several different wire services to compile into a single article.

 

Media outlets all around the country treat copy from their wire services in different ways, from the Democrat-Gazette’s procedures all the way down to simply giving a piece a quick look for accuracy and style, slapping a new headline on it, and ultimately more or less running it as it came across the wires. But problems arise for readers because so many papers and online media outlets run wire copy as is in an effort to get the news out as quickly as they can in this 24-hour-news-cycle, all-information-is-just-a-click-away world that we live in. And even more-diligent news organizations can miss a dangerous phrase from time to time, with the volume of slanted and sensational language on the wires, so readers should be aware of what pitfalls they might encounter while looking for just the facts.

 

Political news in 2012 was dominated by the looming presidential election, and particularly by the race for the Republican nomination. On 6 March 2012, several states held primaries or caucuses in this year’s so-called Super Tuesday. News coverage of these contests was rife with problematic language. To be fair, some problematic articles that move across the wires are marked as analysis, commentary or opinion, but many papers still publish these analysis and commentary pieces as fact. Another problem is that many of the stories that move without such tags still contain a large amount of biased or sensational writing.

 

For example, The Washington Post moved a story on 7 March, the day after Super Tuesday, with the suggested headline “Romney marches slowly as party leaders wait and watch.” In the piece, which was tagged as analysis, the writer, Dan Balz, uses a great deal of slanted language. In the lead sentence, he says former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney “needs more help, but he may be powerless to get it soon.” Immediately, his rhetoric sets a tone that Romney is struggling to stay afloat in the GOP race. However, even at that time, Romney was in a stronger position than his rivals, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. He had more pledged delegates, had won more individual contests, and had a strong lead in terms of campaign funds. However, anyone reading Balz’s article might get a different idea of Romney’s standing in the race. Balz goes on to write that Santorum in particular “has proved to be stubbornly difficult” to vanquish, and that “movement [within the party] toward Romney has been notably slow.” It is not just that Balz’s choices of words and phrases are suspect; the arrangement of his piece belies any intention to present fair and balanced information. Balz begins with the rhetoric that implies Romney is struggling, and buries the facts of the GOP race to that point. He waits several more paragraphs to acknowledge that “Romney has not lost a must-win contest in the nomination battle,” and then spends the rest of the article discussing the Republican front-runner’s weaknesses and the reluctance of party leaders and supporters to rally around him, with few solid details to back up his statements. Anyone reading this piece must take it with a grain of salt, because it is clear that the writer’s opinions are starting to seep through, making the piece closer to propaganda, or at least full-on commentary, than analysis.

 

Unfortunately, even pieces marked as straight news often require a lot of work before they can truly be published as such. Also on Super Tuesday, The Associated Press moved an article by David Espo with the suggested headline, “Santorum, Romney duel in Ohio, split other states.” While the story’s arrangement is better-suited to informing readers, it is written in a style that seems more suited for entertainment or sports. The sensational language starts with the lead paragraph, as Espo writes that Romney “triumphed in four states, [and] seized a slender late-night lead” in Ohio but “was forced to share the spotlight with a resurgent Rick Santorum on a Super Tuesday that stretched from one end of the country to the other.” Two paragraphs later, Espo writes that “Santorum countered crisply” with victories in three states, “raising fresh doubts about Romney’s ability to corral the votes of conservatives ... .” While this kind of language may be entertaining to read, it largely serves to distract from the facts of the votes. Furthermore, this rhetoric highlights and even exaggerate the relative strengths and weaknesses of Romney’s and Santorum’s campaigns as well as the closeness of the race up to that point. To borrow from one of St. Augustine’s arguments in Book IV of On Christian Doctrine, if Espo’s intent is to sell his readers on an exaggeration or any half-truths of the nomination battle, then this rhetoric should serve him well. It is not, however, useful for communicating cold, hard facts. Newspaper editors as well as readers should be aware of this kind of language. While some of the statements are somewhat backed up with exit-poll numbers — hardly the most reliable of metrics — later in the story, readers ought to be able to draw their own conclusions from those facts instead of being spoon-fed the opinion of a writer who is supposed to be presenting straight news.

 

As the primary season dragged on, the rhetoric of the campaign and newspaper coverage of it shifted to reflect the increasing likelihood that Romney would secure the Republican nomination and take on President Barack Obama in the fall. On 3 April, Romney won primaries in Maryland, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. In the opening sentence of an article that moved that day on the wires titled “A Romney sweep: He takes Wisconsin, Maryland, D.C.,” Espo — this time along with co-author Kasie Hunt, also of The Associated Press — writes that Romney “tightened his grip” on the nomination. This sensational statement paints Romney in a rather unfavorable light, as it calls to mind fictional villains, real-life dictators, and similar individuals, and it gives us a very clear example of biased language that is best avoided in news copy. Unfortunately, few news outlets take the fairly easy step of editing that statement to say something more like “Romney moved closer to the nomination”; failure to do so risks damaging an outlet’s credibility with at least a segment of its readership. Sensational and slanted language in the piece continue with the writers calling Romney sarcastic when talking of the president, and saying Santorum “flashed defiance in the face of pressure to abandon his own candidacy in the name of party unity.” Such statements, when made in the reporter’s own voice, are similarly dangerous to an outlet’s credibility because they tell rather than show, or to borrow from Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel’s The Elements of Journalism, they assert rather than verify.

 

In that book, Kovach and Rosenstiel tell us that journalists only report what can be verified with facts:

                    In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art.

                    Entertainment — and its cousin “infotainment” — focuses on what is most diverting. Propaganda will select facts or

                    invent them to serve the real purpose—persuasion and manipulation. Fiction invents scenarios to get at a more personal

                    impression of what it calls truth. (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 71)

These days, Kovach and Rosenstiel say, rather than finding out facts and details for themselves, many journalists acquire information remotely — thanks to the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle — and regurgitate it. Furthermore, journalists often embellish their reports with their own analysis and speculation despite the secondhand nature of their knowledge. As seen in the articles above, this practice can lead to a breakdown in the separation between journalism and those other forms of communication. Biased rhetoric can turn news articles into propaganda; sensational language can reduce them to little more than entertainment. Such things happen, Kovach and Rosenstiel argue, precisely because of the ease of acquiring information: “In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, journalists now spend more time looking for something to add to the existing news, usually interpretation, rather than trying to independently discover and verify new facts” (75). Adding analysis and commentary, particularly in the form of biased language is not only unnecessary; it is irresponsible. The purpose of a news story is to inform readers, to give them the facts they need to interact with the world and make the right decisions in business, at the voting booth, or in any other aspect of their lives. Slanted language goes well beyond this purview, because, like most rhetoric, it tends to not inform so much as persuade, so reporters who write this way, as well as editors who allow such writing, overstep their boundaries as journalists.

 

Kovach and Rosenstiel advise using a number of methods to avoid these flaws. Among them is skeptical editing, a technique introduced to them by Sandra Rose, the editor of The Oregonian in Portland. This technique should involve an editor working closely with a reporter, asking questions about any statement that is unclear, not backed up, or in any way suspicious. However, that is not possible for media outlets that must rely on wire services for much of their news coverage. Because they lack constant, direct access to reporters for the news services they use, wire editors must strive to be aware of and eliminate as much biased, sensational, or speculative rhetoric as possible. In many cases, this may necessitate compiling material from multiple wire services, as the Democrat-Gazette does. This practice allows editors to stuff a story full of a great variety of facts while trimming as much commentary and rhetoric as possible. Ideally, stories will pass through several editors before publication, so as to decrease the chance that snippets of rhetorical arguments will sneak into news stories.

 

Kovach and Rosenstiel also have something to say about sensationalism in news articles. They say, “Journalists must make the significant interesting and relevant” (148). But the effort to make the news engaging for readers too often tempts journalists to become sensational, to drift into the realm of entertainment. One way that Kovach and Rosenstiel suggest to make news engaging and relevant is for a journalist to know the audience for a particular story. The importance of knowing the audience can be traced all the way back to Aristotle, if not even earlier. Knowing the audience is important for both journalists and rhetoricians, though for different reasons. While an orator must know how his audience thinks, what his audience feels, a journalist must anticipate what the audience for a story needs or wants to know about that story, Kovach and Rosenstiel suggest. For example, we know that the audience for news about the race for the GOP nomination is likely concerned with issues such as the economy, or social issues including abortion and gay rights. In order to engage that audience and make these articles relevant, it might be more useful to report candidates’ plans for the economy or their positions on other issues than it is to regurgitate raw voting numbers, repeat rallying speeches, or give a blow-by-blow of the nomination race as if it were a boxing match.

 

They also suggest rethinking the basic elements of a news story, the questions every news story must ask. They suggest recasting who, what, when, where, why and how in dramatic terms. If we use Kenneth Burke’s A Grammar of Motives as a guide, we can further expand upon this suggestion. Finding and explaining the connective tissue between each of those elements can inform and even analyze a news item without relying on speculation or commentary. For example, if we want to apply Burke’s agent-scene ratio to modern-day politics, we should show how Romney’s economic ideas have contributed to his rise at a time when the economy is the primary concern for many Americans. Similarly, we can use the act-scene ratio to show Santorum or Gingrich emphasizing their positions on gay marriage, and juxtapose that against the rapidly changing mores of many parts of the country on that topic. Instead of using sensational language to engage readers, or biased rhetoric to persuade them, journalists could be employing the ideas of thinkers and writers from various disciplines to provide context for readers, helping to both inform and engage their intended audiences.

 

Ultimately, however, analysis shows that reporters fall short of this ideal more often than not. Instead of providing context for readers in the proper way and engaging them by giving them information, far too many journalists sensationalize and insert opinion into their news stories. Editors must be on the lookout for these pitfalls, so as to minimize their publication and their impact. And readers also must be aware that problems exist in the news they consume. If we are not aware of the problems with the news we consume from any medium, we shall surely find ourselves unwittingly swayed by bias or misled by carelessness.

 

Works Cited

 

Cohen, Bernard C. The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963.

 

Balz, Dan. “Mitt Romney Marches Slowly as Party Leaders Wait and Watch.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 08 Mar. 2012.

 

Espo, David. “Santorum, Romney duel in Ohio, split other states.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 07 Mar. 2012.

 

Augustine. “On Christian Doctrine, Book IV.” The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St.

     Martin’s, 2001. Pp. 456–485.

 

Espo, David and Kasie Hunt. “A Romney Sweep: He Takes Wisconsin, Maryland, DC.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 04 Apr. 2012.

 

Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. New York:

     Three Rivers, 2001.

 

Burke, Kenneth. “A Grammar of Motives.” The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St.

     Martin’s, 2001. Pp. 1298–1324.