Part of
Follow-ups in Political Discourse: Explorations across contexts and discourse domainsEdited by Elda Weizman and Anita Fetzer
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 60] 2015
► pp. 57–80
Edited by Elda Weizman and Anita Fetzer
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 60] 2015
► pp. 57–80
“I have nothing to do but agree”
Affiliative meta-discursive follow-ups as a resource for the reciprocal positioning of journalists, experts and politicians-as-experts in television news
The present study explores the distinctions, hybridization and ambiguities of the reciprocal positioning of journalists and experts on the news, by examining a corpus of Israeli television news items combining interviews with affiliated journalists and external experts. The analysis reveals a dominant pattern of a largely symmetrical positioning of senior journalists and experts as colleagues. A key positioning device contributing to this symmetry is the recurrent use of meta-discursive follow-ups. These follow-ups exhibit a preference for mutual alignment, support and agreement between journalists and experts, and structure items as single co-authored arguments. The affordances of these patterns for politicians performing as expert interviewees and their possible detrimental implications for the social and democratic roles of the news are discussed.
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