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Part of
Diachronic Developments in English News Discourse
Edited by Minna Palander-Collin, Maura Ratia and Irma Taavitsainen
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 6] 2017
► pp. 219–240

Chapter 12
Narrative vs. “objective” style

Notes on the style of news (agency) reports on violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

The paper examines stylistic changes in newspaper articles on violence between 1859 and 1910. I have looked both at news narratives, and at signs of the new, “objective” writing style. Whenever possible, I have chosen stories attributed to AP (the Associated Press) and Reuters news agencies, since as global distributors of news, they have had an influential role in creating and reinforcing conventions of news writing. The paper clearly demonstrates the difference between the ghastly, chronological murder stories of the late nineteenth century and the “modern” style adopted in the AP Siedlce narrative in 1906. The first evidence of the intentionally “objective” writing style I found in Reuters telegrams on the Siedlce pogrom in 1906.
Keywords: narrative, objective style, newspapers, news agencies, violence, Appraisal, Affect, Functional grammar, reporter voice, responsibility
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material
  • 3.Theoretical background
    • 3.1The Appraisal Framework
      • 3.1.1Values of Appreciation and Judgement
      • 3.1.2Journalists’ stance on emotions vis-à-vis objectivity and factuality: Suggesting a new taxonomy
    • 3.2Tools from Functional grammar: Transitivity, ergativity and nominalisation
  • 4.Objectivity as a journalistic ideal
  • 5.News narratives on violence in the late nineteenth century
    • 5.1Early newspaper narratives based on court proceedings and police reports
    • 5.2The Modocs executed: AP correspondent as an eyewitness
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.The AP story on an “infernal machine”
  • 7.Towards more “modern” writing style: AP narrative and Reuters “objective” telegrams on the Siedlce Pogrom
    • 7.1Background on the pogrom
    • 7.2Analysis of AP and Reuters Siedlce reports
      • 7.2.1AP and the narrative mode: The ideal of “story”
      • 7.2.2The Reuters’ Siedlce story: Evading responsibility
      • 7.2.3AP and Reuters: Emotions of fear and scenes of “unspeakable horror”
      • 7.2.4Judging the soldiers
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 29 August 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.6.12ste
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