Title: Moving out of the Inverted Pyramid: narratives and descriptions in television news
Abstract: The article critically reviews a central premise behind existing research on European and Scandinavian television news: that, in the 1980s and 1990s climate of deregulation and intensified competition, narrative has come to dominate television news reports. It is argued that in order to understand more precisely what this "conquest of narrative" entails, one needs to explore further not just narrative, but also non-narrative textual modes in reports. With a basis in rhetorical text type theory, this article argues that the traditional "inverted pyramid" structure may be considered as a composite mode of description. Following from this, analyses of news reports from the main newscast of the Norwegian public service broadcaster, NRK, are presented to support the argument that developments feature a spread of narrative modes, new modes of description, and new interrelations between description and narrative. The article situates these changes in the context of the institution of journalism, from the objectivism of the "news paradigm" towards a more individualized and empathic ideal, extolling the virtues of "storytelling".
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 52
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