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INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE
NEWS
Eran N. Ben-Porath
Version of record first published: 23 Apr 2007.
To cite this article: Eran N. Ben-Porath (2007): INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS,
Journalism Studies, 8:3, 414-431
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INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS
Television news in dialogical format and its
consequences for journalism
Eran N. Ben-Porath
Unlike the edited news package, which dominates network and local news in America, the cable
news channels recount the days news predominantly through conversation, a format dubbed
here dialogical news. At the center of this article is the concept of internal fragmentation, a
consequence of the turn to conversation-based reporting, and its central implications: (1) the
authority of the news reporter diminishes; (2) question-asking replaces fact-checking; (3) news
organizations relinquish their accountability for news content; and (4) the news audience assumes
the role of witness or participant rather than receiver. As dialogical news becomes prominent in
the repertoire of viewers, short- and long-term prospects are suggested here. In the short-run,
journalists are losing their battle to control their sources and maintain their gatekeeping function.
In the long run, journalism might lose its significance as societys reflexive storyteller, reverting
instead to its former role as a partisan instrument, a source of entertainment or a bit of both.
KEYWORDS cable news; format effects; fragmentation; journalism; news and narrative;
television news
Introduction
Television news is undergoing rapid transformation in its consumption patterns as
well as in its production. On the consuming end in America, for example, the network
newscasts audience is shrinking, while the popularity of cable has consistently risen.
1
As
for production, the ascent of cable television news presents a shift not only in news
consumers habits but also in the way their news is packaged and delivered. Cable, much
like the ubiquitously successful morning news programs, delivers the news predominantly
by way of human interaction (Clayman, 2004), based on conversation rather than on
journalistic monolog.
2
A dialogical mode of news reporting presents its viewers with the
news through questions and proposed answers, standing in sharp contrast to the answers-
based certainty of the traditional news package. This article suggests a framework for
assessing the consequences of this shift in news-style for the practice and function of
television journalism, in the context of journalisms place in democracy. Following
Fairclough (1998) and Corner (1999), the two styles of news will be distinguished here
as monological (traditional broadcast) and dialogical (conversation-based).
At the conceptual core of this article is the perception of journalism as narrative,
recognizing that news is a form of literature where journalists employ the traditions of
storytelling, picture making and sentence construction . . . with vital assumptions about
the world built-in (Schudson, 2002, p. 262; also Bird and Dardenne, 1988). As narratives
change, so does the place of their narrators, the journalists (Zelizer, 1993). The new news,
marked by less mediated contact between citizens and candidates (Carey, 1995, p. 377),
Journalism Studies, Vol. 8, No 3, 2007
ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online/07/030414-18
2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14616700701276166
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alters the narrative form of the news and consequently the place of journalists and news
institutions. Considering the role of journalism in democracy, these changes in news
format may bear social impact. The study of media effects, although often restricted to
individual-level outcomes, has found that to focus merely on content as the relevant
aspect of media for producing effects is, in many respects, to abandon that which makes
communication a field unto itself (Eveland, 2003, p. 400). Whereas Eveland studies format
in comparing the effects of different media, understanding the meaning of differences in
format is essential for comparisons of genres and sub-genres within the same medium.
A shift in news format towards dialogical newscasting has more than stylistic
consequences. It entails socio-political effects. The monological format, which still
dominates the news programs of American broadcast networks, positions the journalist
as informant (Ekstro m, 2000), a purveyor of knowledge and impartial, objective
representative of all sides and none (e.g. Glasser, 1992; Hallin, 1986). In contrast, the
dialog indicates uncertainty and a willingness to cede factual and interpretive authority to
interviewees and the audience. This format shift can be conceived as internal fragmenta-
tion of the news message, acting in conjunction with the well-noted state of (external)
news-media fragmentation (Bennett, 2004; Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999; Katz, 1996). What
once was a cohesive unit of information delivery becomes diffuse and uncertain. The
medias ability to establish dominant frames (Entman and Herbst, 2001, p. 222), is
undermined not only by the plentitude of competing news outlets, but also by the
presence of competing frames within a news program or, for that matter, within a news
story. There are four central tenets at the basis of this argument:
1. Dialog, as a mode of news delivery, places less authority with any one participant, in
contrast to the tone and structure of the edited news package, which position the
journalist as the dominant source and interpreter of information.
2. Interviewees in conversation-based news are not necessarily journalists employed by the
news organization carrying the news program. Consequently, the organization is
relinquishing its authority on factuality to others.
3. Participants are not necessarily journalists at all. As a result, the authority of journalism is
established more by asking questions than by providing answers.
4. The place of the audience changes, from receiver in the monological state to witness in the
dialogical presentation.
In the first part of this article, I briefly elaborate on the notion of format effects as it
relates to the news. The second section discusses the journalism-as-narrative perspective
and the centrality of authority to the function of journalism embedded in this approach.
The third section proposes a theory of presumed impact stemming from the ascent of
dialogical news and the internal disintegration of the news text. Finally, on the basis of this
discussion I assess the meaning of dialogical news formats for the place of journalism in
society: What short-term effects should this transformation yield for what people make of
the news? What long-term consequences do these changes bode for journalism as a
practice and as a political institution?
An analysis of dialogical news requires a clarification of what it is and what it is not.
Examples of dialogical news are the prime-time programs on the cable news outlets that
aim to provide an account of some of the days main events and burning issues, much the
way a traditional network newscast does:
3
CNNs Anderson Cooper 360, or Paula Zahn Live,
MSNBCs Countdown with Keith Olberman and Hardball with Chris Matthews; Fox News On
INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS 415
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the Record w/Greta van Sustern and the bulk of CNN Headline News programming. While
each of these has its own unique format and emphases, they assume some form of news
recap. This recap is delivered predominantly by way of discussion between the studio host
and discussants in the studio or in remote locations. A second set of programs that fall
under the dialogical rubric adds another twist, the politically identified presenter, such as
Fox News The OReilly Factor and Hannity and Colmes or MSNBCs Scarborough Country.
While these programs stand out for their patent deviation from the norms of objectivity
that have governed television news since its inception, they are also notable for their
reliance on human interaction as a means of delivering the news. Both sets of programs
fall outside typical categories, such as those provided in Erler and Timbergs (2002)
Taxonomy of Television Talk. They differ in rhetorical devices from the afternoon talk show
(e.g. Oprah), or the News Talk programs such as the Sunday talk shows which are based on
lengthy expositions into one or two topics. Much like traditional newscasts, the dialogical
news programs are marked by a wide array of topics, rested on the occurrences of the
preceding news cycle. In dialogical newscasts, the news is presented and interpreted by a
changing set of discussants, with a possible monological news bulletin included in the
program.
The examples discussed in this article are predominantly American, but the ascent of
dialogical news is part of a global phenomenon of conversation-shows replacing
primetime news, a trend driven by new institutional practices and motivations (Liebes,
1999). This sea change in the way news is packaged and presented (Clayman, 2004, p.
29) has garnered scholarly interest worldwide as evidenced by the publication of studies in
the United Kingdom (e.g. Corner, 1999; Fairclough, 1998), Israel (Liebes, 1999, 2001) and
Greece (Patrona, 2006). While cultural differences in the place of news and the norms of
conversation may modify the effects of format from one society to another, there is an
underlying assumption in these studies, as well as in the present one, that when news is
presented differently, journalism functions differently in society.
Format Effects
The notion that new media genres would affect people differently than previous
ones presupposes that there are attributes other than the content of the message that
affect their recipients (Eveland, 2003). This supposition, that the media themselves shape
peoples responses to content, has spawned an abundance of research, comparing, for
example, the effects of reading newspapers to watching television news (e.g. Chaffee and
Frank, 1996; Davis and Robinson, 1986), reading newspapers to getting information online
(e.g. Althaus and Tewksbury, 2002; Eveland and Dunwoody, 2001) or other combinations
of news media. Research has centered on the social-psychological effects of particular
attributes of mediated information. These studies measured, for example, the impact of
visuals on memory (Graber, 1990; Katz et al., 1977), audio-visual redundancy on processing
the news (Brosius et al., 1996; Drew and Grimes, 1991), the effects of distressing video
imagery on recall and understanding (Newhagen and Reeves, 1992), or the effects of
screen clutter on news comprehension (Bergen et al., 2005). Such research finds that
television news that is structured for children is better understood by children and adults
alike (Walma van der Molen, 2001) or that tabloid format makes television news more
memorable, but only to the degree that the content itself is not overly dramatic (Grabe
et al., 2003). Furthermore, communication research finds broader social effects stemming
416 ERAN N. BEN-PORATH
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from the interaction of form and content, such as Robinsons (1976) videomalaise study,
which finds that exposure to different formats of public affairs television differentially
affects attitudes toward the political system. In other words, there is convincing evidence
that looking at content can predict only part of the effect that the news can have on its
audience. Formal features of the news are anticipated to matter in conjunction with the
content.
The effect of format reaches beyond recall and comprehension into the realm of a
shared societal agenda. Althaus and Tewksbury (2002) find that people who get their news
from a newspapers website rather than the same newspaper in hardcopy tend to develop
an agenda independent of the newspapers. As Internet readership expands, while
newspaper readership is declining, this finding speaks volumes for the future of news-
media agenda-setting. Following a similar logic, the central proposition of this paper is
that getting the news through dialogical newscasts allows its viewers more leeway in
interpreting news content. Dialogical news replaces the certitude of the reporter telling
her viewers thats the way it is with a journalist asking other people what is it?
The attribute at the center of this discussion is the organization of the medium or
the structure of its content (Eveland, 2003). Jeffres (1997) identifies narrative structure as a
potentially effective component of television news. In this context, communication
research turns to literary theory: for example, the structural-affect theory holds that
different affective responses can be elicited by manipulating the order in which a story is
conveyed (Brewer and Lichtenstein, 1982). Experimental research finds, indeed, that if a
news story is told linearly, in straight chronological order, the readers suspense levels are
highest. Conversely, if the story is told in reverse order, it evokes the most curiosity, while
the inverted type (most similar to newspaper stories) elicits the least curiosity and
suspense measures (Knoblach et al., 2004).
Not only can narrative format affect audience members dispositions, so can
discursive formats. Cohen, for example, maintains various ways in which interviews are
conducted and presented on the screen might have different consequences for different
audiences (1987, p. 14). The way in which an interview is conducted can affect the way in
which the interviewee, and for that matter the interviewer, are perceived by the viewing
public. Two oft-cited examples involve, on the one hand, Michael Howard, who is
considered to have lost a previous bid for the Conservative party leadership following a
combative television interview with the BBCs Jeremy Paxman. Paxman, for his role, was
dubbed Interviewer of the Year by the Royal Television Society of Great Britain (The
Observer , 1999). In contrast, CBS News anchorman Dan Rather was rebuked by his
employers following public response to a highly aggressive live interview with then Vice
President George Bush (Auletta, 1991), an incident, which had left Rather politically
suspect ever since. Thus, as a form of social interaction, the way in which an interview is
conducted can be just as effective as the content of the interview itself (Clayman and
Heritage, 2002).
An arena ripe for the investigation of format effects on emotional responses is
politics. Politicians shun typical news programs and turn to talk and entertainment venues
so as to avoid the scrutiny of journalists and address their constituents in settings they find
favorable (Just et al., 1996). Outside the newscast, in personal interviews and staged town-
hall meetings politicians engage an audience, which, in response, is affected not only by
the unbridled content of the politicians appeal but also by production techniques and
stage factors including shot length, image graphication, and the social context of the
INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS 417
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media appearances (Bucy and Newhagen, 1999, p. 205). In their study, Bucy and
Newhagen find that extreme close-ups in one-on-one interviews produced more positive
appraisals of President Clinton, compared with long-shot based town-hall meetings. The
significance of this finding is twofold: it reaffirms the perception that circumventing the
news media yields positive outcomes for the politician and it indicates, once more, that
format in and of itself can affect the audiences response to a discussant.
These two lines of reasoning, circumvention and format effects, are the basis for
anticipating the effects of dialogical news: (1) this is a news format that affords non-
journalists an opportunity to serve as news purveyors; (2) the structural attributes of the
format, in particular its diffuse narrative structure, weaken the control and authority of
journalists and the news media as a whole. In order to explicate this second point, a
discussion of journalism as narrative and its relation to the establishment of authority is
warranted.
The Function of Journalism as Social Narrative
NBC News relaunched its news product in 2004 under the slogan reporting
Americas story. The network was, in a sense, reaffirming the point some media scholars
have been making that journalists do not write articles they write stories (Bell, 1991, p.
147) or melodramatic accounts of events (Weaver, 1975, p. 83). Reality does not present
itself to news producers, but rather, flesh-and-blood journalists literally compose the story
we call news (Schudson, 1989, p. 264). Journalistic storytelling has been analyzed as a
means through which the media construct a shared view of the world (Zelizer, 1993), or as
mythic texts (Bird and Dardenne, 1988; Lule, 2001) that foster certain perceptions of social
reality (Smith, 1979). Television news stands out as the most coherently organized form of
news narrative, with this cohesion spanning both individual stories and newscasts as a
whole, where there is hardly an aspect of the scripting, casting and staging of a television
news program that is not designed to convey an impression of authority and omniscience
(Weaver, 1975, p. 89).
The plot of the news story not only conveys the details of occurrences deemed
newsworthy, but also establishes the authority of the journalist (Zelizer, 1990b). If a
journalist is to succeed in telling a nation its story, day in and day out, the credibility of the
reporter, her news organization and of journalism as an institution must be preserved.
Credibility, in this case, refers not to the perceived veracity of content but to the
acceptance of the person and the institution as authoritative societal storyteller. Authority
is established through linguistic devices such as synecdoche, omission and personalization
(Zelizer, 1990), visual devices such as live reporting on location (Zelizer, 1989), the news
anchors position in the studio set and on the television screen, or their direct stare at the
unseen audience (Morse, 1986), as well as aural devices, predominantly the intonation of
the news (Zelizer, 1989).
The clearest manifestation of journalistic authority is the soundbite. Taped
interviews with sources and experts are reduced to soundbites through a process of
decontextualization in the editing suites and then recontextualization as part of the
reporters narration of a news story (Ekstro m, 2001; Nylund, 2003). Hallin (1992) associates
the ever-shrinking soundbite with an increase in the interpretive role assumed by
television journalists. Newsmakers and experts may voice an opinion but it is the reporter
who ultimately packages and contextualizes it for the viewer. In other words, the authority
418 ERAN N. BEN-PORATH
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to decide what is and what is not of consequence, out of all that has been said, is the
reporters.
A natural companion to authority is accountability. A practice so steeped in
preserving its own authority on factuality cannot walk away from its ownership of all that
is said and done on its premises. Hence the culture of corrections in newspapers and the
recent extensive mea culpas on the pages of the grandest media authority in the United
States, the New York Times.
4
Likewise, if the sad ending to Dan Rathers career at CBS has
taught us anything, it is that the authority that furnishes the allure of news anchors, also
burdens them with responsibility. They can not lay the blame elsewhere. Whatever they
report is in their charge.
5
A further bond between narrative structure and journalistic authority rests in the
consistency of language. The construction of the news is practically identical across all US
broadcast networks (and the local news for that matter). News is delivered by one or two
anchorpersons and a team of reporters, who have all undergone similar training (see
Indiana University School of Journalism, 2003). Both visual and aural language across the
newscast is, therefore, highly standardized. Similar organizational needs of television news
outlets result in similar routinized depictions of events (Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1978).
Consequently, a similarity in the language through which news is organized and reported
emerges.
Dialogical News
Guided by economic and technological considerations, television formats are in a
constant state of change, with the news being no exception (Corner, 1999; Timberg, 2002;
Webster and Phalen, 1997). Two notable factors are responsible for the emergence of
dialogical news: technological upgrades that facilitated greater channel capacity, and the
first Gulf war of 1991 (see Webster and Phalen, 1997). Channel capacity made the
production of cheap news feasible and marketable, while CNNs ratings success during the
war made 24-hour news channels institutionally desirable. Not only has the popularity of
the news channels grown persistently, it is also an inexpensive news format compared
with the production costs of news packages that involve much more manpower,
equipment and facilities (see Mullen, 2003). Economic competition has encouraged
news organizations to minimize costs by turning to talking-heads formats (see also
Entman, 1989). Political elites, appearing on the air at no extra cost, have consequently,
joined the ranks of journalists as sources for information. Due to its profitability, the market
has been booming with additional news channels joining the fray of dialogical
newscasting since the 1990s, such as Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC and the recent redesign
of CNN Headlines primetime as dialog- rather than monolog-based.
6
Subsequent to Corners (1999) classification, this dialogical format falls under the
category of talk and leaves the realm of narrative. The dialog mentioned here occurs,
usually, between the anchorperson, representing the news organization, and respondents
that fall broadly into three groups: (1) journalists from the news organization that carries
the program; (2) experts, including journalists from other news outlets; and (3)
newsmakers or advocates on their behalf. The presence of the first set of respondents
mentioned here, the organizations own journalists, suggests that not all conversations in
these programs are devoid of institutional control. This class of discussions fall under
what Schudson (1995) categorizes as known-information interviews (see also Corner,
INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS 419
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1999, p. 42), in contrast to interviews with newsmakers that are predominantly designed
for information seeking.
Irrespective of the interviewees identity and affiliation, these dialogs are similar to
interviews and distinct from the soundbites or short exchanges between a reporter and an
interviewee that are sometimes interjected into taped news packages. Dialogical news-
casts are based on a preset order of turn-taking (Clayman and Heritage, 2002), where
studio hosts have the authority to ask the questions and decide when the discussion
commences or concludes, but often refrain from contributing their own answer (Clayman,
2002). Unlike the soundbites, which are recontextualized and meticulously selected from a
longer interview, the discussions in dialogical programs are usually broadcast in their
entirety. These interviews are either live or at the very least bear a semblance of liveness
(Bourdon, 2000; Clayman, 2004; Hoskins, 2001).
Internal Fragmentation
Presently, dialogical news sources have yet to overtake the prominence of
traditional formats in the ratings charts.
7
But as the popularity of the former has increased
at the expense of the latter, some deductions from the observations made here can be
made, amounting to the central tenets of this paper.
Diminished Authority for the News Reporter
Although the metaphor of their title suggests that anchorpersons are the most
prominent contributors to the newscast, the traditional, monological format highlights the
news reporter as the custodian of fact. Reporters are featured live on location, or on tape,
stating their name and their organizational affiliation (Andrea Mitchell, NBC News). The
anchorperson may lead into the report but from the viewers perspective, it is the
journalist who claims her authorship of the story and authority on the facts by her voice-
over, her choice of visuals, her careful selection of short soundbites and their
interpretation. More often than not in the United States, for example, the reporter leads
into the package herself and only upon sign-off does the anchorperson assume control of
the program, furthering the authority granted to the journalist.
In contrast, dialogical news formats evolve around the anchorperson or host
(Fairclough, 1998). They ask the questions, cut their respondents (including their own
reporters) short and talk directly to newsmakers and experts. In a sense, the beat system
(e.g. Fishman, 1980), which afforded the journalist expertise on a given domain (politics,
crime, education) is eradicated when journalists sources, such as politicians or public
officials, are interviewed live rather than being filtered by the process of news gathering.
Even when the news organizations own reporter is the discussant, she is obliged to do so
in a conversational format, under the stewardship of the anchorperson.
This is not to say that dialogical news does not bolster the authority of reporters in
other ways. For one, dialogical news is usually live and the idea of liveness is powerful. It
reinforces the authority of journalists by suggesting unmediated access to the viewers and
a semblance of being there, which equates liveness with an authentic representation of
reality (Griffin, 1992; Rath, 1989; Vianello, 1985). Live news projects a dual message of
authenticity: photojournalisms ideal of visual truth as authentic knowledge derived from
seeing (Newton, 2001, p. 8), and the authenticity of simultaneity. The geographical and
420 ERAN N. BEN-PORATH
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temporal proximity of the reporter going live affords journalists expertise, authenticity
and, accordingly, authority. Furthermore, as they engage in conversation, journalists are
seemingly elevated to ranks of experts, interviewed by the studio host who defers to their
knowledge and expertise.
While the reporter may indeed preserve or augment her level of authority by being
introduced as an expert and reporting live from the scene, she no longer has at her
disposal the use of voice-over intonation, and the careful selection of visuals and
soundbites. In contrast to live reporting, the taped account preserves the message of
spatial proximity (Zelizer, 1990a), while adding authoritative narration (Zelizer, 1990b), as
the editing of available visuals is carefully matched with the reporters coherent narrative
(Graddol, 1994; Meinhof 1994). Soundbites allow the journalists to contextualize the words
of newsmakers, whereas dialogical news grants news sources equal footing to journalists.
Goffmans (1979) concept of footing applies here to the language as well as tone and
gaze of journalists and newsmakers who appear as equals engaged in dialog with the
programs host. What seems an elevation to expert status is also a relegation: non-
journalists may get to answer the same questions as the reporter, openly challenging the
journalists account of occurrences, thus stressing once more the depleted state of the
journalists authority on factuality.
Diminished Authority and Accountability for the News Organization
Not only are reporters ceding their authority, their organizations as a whole are
following suit by allowing others (experts, newsmakers, advocates) to present facts and
interpret them. On the monolgical evening news, the networks are the proprietors of
content, for better or worse. The words of others are clipped and contextualized by
journalists employed by the organization and accountable to its standards and practices.
Authority in monological newscasts is expressed by quoting experts in support of the
journalists narrative (Zelizer, 1990). Conversation-based news is actually concerned with
establishing the interviewees expertise (Clayman, 1991) rather than the authority of the
news organization itself. The reliance on external experts, such as academics, ex-officials,
and journalists from other news organizations has dual consequences: the news
organization cedes authority on the news to others and it relinquishes responsibility for
what is being said on its airwaves.
An example would best illustrate this point. Former New York Times public editor,
Daniel Okrent (2005) criticized Times correspondent Judith Millers appearance on MSNBCs
Hardball with Chris Matthews, where she reported a story, concerning developments in Iraq.
This story did not appear on the pages of the Times on the day of her television appearance,
nor on the day after it. Okrents concern was that Miller was misrepresenting the paper.
From the perspective of the news channel, things are murkier still. Who is accountable for
Millers story? According to Okrent, it is not the Times. Matthews introduced her, however,
as Judith Miller of the New York Times, suggesting Matthews and, for that matter, MSNBC
as a whole, claim no responsibility over what is reported on their airwaves either.
Apparently, Judith Miller received free time on MSNBC to prognosticate on the future of
Iraqi politics, with no news organization accountable for this content.
The dialogical news environment leaves facts and their interpretation in journalistic
limbo. In his account of the talk television environment, media critic Howard Kurtz (1996)
details a host of instances where pundits and other experts would pontificate with
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certitude on one issue or another, at times actually affecting politics or the economy, only
to find that their predictions failed to materialize. Whereas the monological environment
cannot tolerate inaccuracy, dialogical news programs treat factuality tongue-in-cheek:
these same pundits were on the air the following day, their failures not withstanding.
When the news organization is not responsible for the content of its product, it has
inherently less concern for standards of factuality.
Question-asking Rather than Fact-checking
A corollary of the decline of responsibility is the demise of fact checking.
Clayman observes: If journalists previously gained professional status and popular
renown mainly by virtue of their investigative and literary abilities, their ranks have been
joined by journalists known mainly for their skills at questioning and interrogating (2004,
p. 46). The sometimes-muddled border of fact and opinion becomes unrecognizable when
the newsmakers themselves and their advocates provide information to the viewers rather
than being subjected to the interpretive filters of journalists. Interviews are incompatible
with fact-checking. Unless some impartial arbiter appears at the end of the interview and
proclaims the truthfulness of the arguments made, fact and fiction are afforded the same
credence by this form of journalism. Granted, the anchorperson can call out an interviewee
who is patently lying, but fact-checking requires resources and time, which a live television
discussion does not allow.
Once more, an example can illustrate the point. A CNN afternoon newscast featured a
debate between a gay-rights activist and a conservative Texas legislator. The conservative
guest buttressed her position favoring antigay legislation by citing evidence from a
psychological study that was unfamiliar to the other guest as well as the programs host. An
investigation conducted a day later by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the author of
this study was an antigay scientist/activist, and the findings were specious to say the least
(Bialik, 2005). But in the live debate, the news presenter did not and could not have the
informational wherewithal to contest the findings cited by her guest. All she could say was:
Thats a bold statement. Consequently, dubious information was delivered live by an
interested party, while the journalists role was restricted to asking questions. She did not
anticipate this studys mention and could obviously not take the time needed to verify its
scientific merit, as traditional journalism would expect her to. All she could do was defer to
the other interested party involved, as explained by a CNN spokesperson: the opposing
guest was given an opportunity to respond to the guests statement in question.
In dialogical newscasts, reporting becomes subservient to discussion. Clayman
(1991) notes the differences between the type of information offered by the news bulletin
at the beginning of Jim Lehrers NewsHour on PBS and the information on the same
subject leading to a discussion later in the same program. While the news bulletin is
marked by decisiveness concerning the facts reported, news interviews begin with
asserting the expertise of the interviewee. Viewers watching the program in its entirety
receive both types of information, but those exposed strictly to the interview will receive
more information and certainty from the interviewed specialist than from the news
organization they turn to. The two components of NewsHour, the brief news bulletin and
the lengthy discussion section are, in this way, analogous to the two types of television
journalism that occupy our cable boxes: one of certainty and authority, one of
noncomittance and a relinquishment of authority and responsibility.
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Audience as Witness Rather than Participant
Interviews are not merely dyadic interactions between interviewer/s and inter-
viewee/s, but rather, a triadic relationship, involving the active participants and their
viewers (Schudson, 1995). As a result, the audience of dialogical news fare is not merely a
recipient of the product of news gathering but more so a witness to the production of
information. Unlike the news package, not every word or every image on the screen at any
given time during a three to five minute interview can be perfectly pre-planned. It is up to
the viewers, then, to pick and choose where to direct their attention, which discussant to
trust, what bit of information to retain and how to package all the verbiage and imagery
directed their way into a story that makes sense of their world.
This state of affairs is illuminated by Faircloughs (1998) analysis of the BBCs Today
program, where brief news bulletins, steeped in formal journalistic vocabulary, are
followed by discussions about the news:
We might see this distinction in terms of bifurcation of the institutional voice: news
maintains some of the authority and distance traditionally associated with the voice of the
BBC, whereas the dialogical elements mark a shift away from authority and distance to a
voice which simulates and takes its legitimation from the voices and discourses of ordinary
life and their common-sense ethos (Fairclough, 1998, p. 160).
As Fairclough interprets it, the dialogical portion of the show introduces into the
news program discourses other than the BBCs. These discourses are both the voices of the
programs guests as well as the discourse adopted by the anchors for the purposes of
engaging their audiences. This need to grant the audience a feeling of participation in the
program (American morning programs have actually turned a live audience into part of
the studios backdrop) is foreign to the monological newscasts. In this way, television
journalism is, in essence, turning over the control over what is said to their guests and over
what is understood to their audience. This is a complete reversal of the logic Hallin (1992)
and Nylund (2003) find in television soundbites: dialogical news does not seek to tell a
story by recontextualizing or interpreting the words of others. Narrative authority is thus
replaced by discursive engagement.
Discussion
Journalistic authority has been lambasted, over the years, by critical students of the
press. These scholars have demonstrated how this authority, facilitated by the professional
standards of news work could, introduce a distorted political perspective in the news yet
legitimize the perspective as broad and realistic (Bennett, 1988, p. 76). Likewise, the
standards derived from the professionalization of news, which are inherent in monological
news broadcasts, afford news organization an authority that could help preserve a socio-
political status quo (see Gitlin, 1980; McChesney, 2004). Authors such as Hall et al. (1978)
argue that the media tend to reproduce interpretations which serve the interests of the
ruling class, or the reproduction of dominant ideologies (Woollacott, 1982, p. 10), even
though they are not invariably successful at it. A strong effect of journalistic authority is
inherent in the agenda-setting function of the press (McCombs, 2004; McCombs and
Shaw, 1972), an agenda often tied to the interests of power-holders (Gandy, 1982) and the
medias ability to delimit the sphere of legitimate controversy in society (Hallin, 1986). A
slightly different perspective holds that the authority of news organizations serves as a
INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS 423
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guard dog for the powerful and influential among the community served by the
organization (Donohue et al., 1995).
In this vein, the erosion of news authority in dialogical news formats might be
considered a blessing for the press rather than a problem. Fiskes (1996) idea of
multiaxiality factors into this discussion, suggesting dialogical news allows the hitherto-
restricted discourse of minority groups into Americas story. Similarly, Bimber ties the
increased abundance of information to a post-bureaucratic form of government (2003,
p. 21) where political elites ability to set agendas and mobilize society is hampered by
their loss of control over the availability of information. Dialogical news, in this context, has
a democratizing quality letting through more than one account of the news, reclaiming
the privilege of storytelling from a narrow group of elite professionals.
Dialogical news, as practiced in the 24/7 news environment, fails, however, to
provide an alternative to elite sources as custodian of fact. As Fairclough cautions, the
conversational news format is institutionally controlled democratization: the voices of
ordinary people are ventriloquized rather than directly heard. It is also arguably a
democratization that is open to manipulation: it lends democratic legitimacy which can be
used (1998, p. 160). Just because there is more than one voice heard, it does not mean
this is truly a more inclusive format, free of the control of elites. The content, the
discussants, the ideology and taboo of the news are still controlled by the same
institutions, who maintain close ties with political institutions. In other words, a projected
decline in journalists authority in the dialogical news environment does not necessarily
pave the way for non-elite or counter-elite voices to shape the public agenda. Previous
work on studio guests and pundits has indicated the ways in which institutions exert tight
control over who gets to talk on their air other than the organizations employees (Soley,
1992). Another parallel can be drawn from the study of online journalism in general
(Cohen, 2002) and journalist-blogs in particular (Robinson, 2006; Singer, 2005). These
studies indicate that even where new formats are employed, open to the voices and
influences of non-journalists and non-elites, the traditional constraints of the parent news
organization are still mostly in effect.
Not only does the ascent of a new format fail to promise relief from the shortcoming
of journalistic authority, dialogical news takes away the redeeming qualities of this
authority. A news environment bifurcated from without (external fragmentation) and
within (internal fragmentation) can hardly provide a coherent alternative agenda and is
less capable to challenge the reality presented by others or at the very least filter and
contextualize it. Consider the ease in which issues raised by the dominant political party in
the United States, such as gay marriage or the culture of life, dominated all news outlets.
When facts are reduced to questions, factuality is constructed directly by those powerful
enough to have access to the open airwaves. While journalists may utilize this format to
assert authoritativeness in live broadcasts and extended conversations, their voice is in no
way privileged in comparison to that of politicians, other elite members or their proxies.
Interviews, a prominent fixture in dialogical news, offer non-journalists the most
opportunity to voice their perspectives and journalists the least (see Just et al., 1999).
Although these interviews may often assume a semblance of adversarial journalism, they
are also a product of a cooperative effort between politicians and the press, typical of a
media environment described as, a strange hybrid of deference to authorities, and
ritualistic displays of antagonism and feeding frenzy against those same authorities [the
media] cover (Bennett and Serrin, 2005, p. 174). Rather than pave the way for new voices,
424 ERAN N. BEN-PORATH
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the authority relinquished by journalists in dialogical news is more likely to allow the old
voices of elites unfiltered access to the viewing audience.
Format Effects of Dialogical News
Journalistic accounts are imperative for citizens to collect the information necessary
to discharge their democratic responsibilities, namely holding their public officials
accountable and deciding on a course of action based on this account (Zaller, 1998, p.
111). This role ascribed to journalism positions the profession itself and journalists
personally as strategic players in the democratic arena as conduits of information and
political scorekeepers. What happens, though, when journalism is voluntarily reshaped in a
way that diminishes its capacity to function along these lines? The discussion so far
suggests that the emergent dialogical news format represents a stage in which these news
organizations have willingly abdicated this role, ceding control of and responsibility for the
nations story to others. This concluding section discusses the projected short- and long-
term outcomes of this news format.
Short-term outcomes. An empirical study (Snoeijer et al., 2002) finds under-
whelming results in measuring the effects of reporting-style on recall and appreciation
of news stories. The experimental study observes similar levels of both dependent
variables for those getting the news through traditional news packages and those getting
it through live reports. These findings fail to affirm the authors hypothesis that politics
would be better understood when presented in live conversation than through a news
package containing little visually relevant material. Of course, the problems of measuring
short-term effects are a longstanding concern that has often frustrated communication
research (e.g. Curran et al., 1982). The one-time exposure to format may not yield any
tangible effects. This should not discourage further studies, along these lines, considering
the vastness of studies, cited above, that have indicated narrative structure and visual
components may well affect cognitive processing of the news.
Narrative authority as an intervening factor can also account for affective short-term
effects. Bucy and Newhagens (1999) findings indicate that the format through which
politicians are presented influences the way viewers perceive them. The proliferation of
talk-venues that accommodate politicians demand conversational skills that have not been
previously required of them (Clayman, 2004), but for those who possess these skills,
dialogical news formats are highly valuable. Rather than plead their case through skeptical
mediators, such as news reporters, politicians (not only the US President, who has had
command of the airwaves for years; see Kernell, 1997) and their spokespeople have
unfettered access to the public. While bypassing traditional news sources is by no means a
novel phenomenon (e.g. Just et al., 1996), the proliferation of news venues offering direct
access to the public suggests that even in the short run, journalists are losing their battle
to control spin and in a broader sense, losing their relevance as political players.
Long-term outcomes. Consistent and increasing exposure to dialogical news is
bound to have accumulative effects on the degree to which journalism can maintain its
place as a social-political institution. Not only is this format ill-equipped for holding other
institutions accountable, it is also a format that subverts journalists capacity to wield their
authority over the narration of all that has transpired in the course of the day. The medium
INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE NEWS 425
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once identified as most cohesive in its narrative structure (Weaver, 1975) is disintegrating
from without and within. Media fragmentation, through the proliferation of news sources,
already causes political communication to surface in bits and pieces in diverse outlets and
contexts, restricting the possibility of a unified story emerging from news account (Blumler
and Kavanagh, 1999). What dialogical news creates is a parallel process of fragmentation
taking place within the journalistic account itself. The notion of journalists as authorities, or
custodians of fact is constantly eroding. In the long run, journalism might lose its
significance as societys reflexive storyteller, reverting instead to its former role as a
partisan instrument, a source of entertainment or a bit of both. The incipience of this trend
can be observed on venues such as the Fox News Channel or the political blogosphere.
Since the positive side of dialogical news is not entirely clear, we should carefully
consider the consequences of its ascent. The format of news affects its recipients. It affects
how they understand the news and how they evaluate newsmakers. Dialogical news
amounts to a format whose central deviation from the traditional monological news-
package format is in the degree to which it undermines journalists narrative authority and
leads journalism, in general, to cede its control over and responsibility for the way people
understand their society and polity. The power of journalism as a political institution, in a
broad sense of politics, withers when it can no longer fulfill its task as professional
storyteller.
8
Journalism in the foreseeable future may well need to redefine its social role,
while the citizenry is left without a definitive account of public life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author thanks Michael Delli Carpini for his guidance and Matt Carlson for his input.
NOTES
1. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press cable surpassed the
networks as a source of news viewers regularly watch in 2002, and the trend persisted
in 2006 with 34 percent claiming to watch cable sources regularly and 28 percent citing
the networks; a slight decline for both compared to 2004 (http://people-press.org/
reports/questionnaires/282.pdf).
2. The Project for Excellence in Journalism nds 52 percent of cable news content is
interviews and live conversations with reporters, 24 percent is news packages and the
remaining portions, anchor voiceovers and live events. Network news, in contrast
consists of 86 percent packages and 2 percent interviews and live reports (http://
www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/narrative_cabletv_contentanalysis.asp?media5&cat
2).
3. These are also the most watched cable news programs. According to the Nielsen ratings,
the average primetime viewership on a given night for the cable news networks for the
rst quarter of 2005 was greater than three million (http://www.mediabistro.com/
tvnewser/original/ratings_2005q1.pdf).
4. On May 26, 2004 the New York Times published an elaborate editorial critique of its own
coverage of the Iraqi threat, prior to the US-led invasion the year before, stating:
coverage . . . was not as rigorous as it should have been (Sec. A, p. 1). On May 11, 2003,
the New York Times published a full account of reporter Jayson Blairs deceptive conduct
426 ERAN N. BEN-PORATH
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leading to ctitious and misleading reports that were published by the newspaper (Sec.
1, p. 26).
5. On September 8, 2004, CBS News aired a report in its 60 Minutes II program presenting
evidence that President Bush wielded family inuence to land a comfortable military
assignment during the Vietnam war. The story was authored by news anchor Dan Rather.
An internal CBS investigation revealed that a document prominently featured in the
report was fabricated. Consequently, several senior producers were red; Rather decided
to leave his position as anchorman, sooner than he had previously planned.
6. The morning news shows, a form of dialogical news, have been around since the 1950s,
yet they are the exception on the networks, rather than the rule. Interestingly, these
programs are doing well in comparison to the sharp decline in ratings of the monological
evening news.
7. Although the Pew data cited in Note 1 suggest more people watch cable news regularly
than network news.
8. Phrase from Bell (1991, p. 147).
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