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News as storytelling

03.21.2005

After not looking at it for a few days, I read through a hard copy of my MPSA paper; corrected a few typos, added some footnotes, and some other minor changes.

Also, a recent article about Bolivia in the Chicago Tribune sparked something I've been thinking about (in terms of news media "bias") for some time. Now, I don't mean just overt political bias, but also a sort of structural-narrative bias built into contemporary news. Principally: "news" now shares more structural-narrative characteristics with fiction writing, than non-fiction writing.

First, we now talk about news "stories" (rather than "dispatches" or "reports"). This has implications. After all, stories & story-telling imply a certain type of narrative structure. Stories have characters, a plot, and (if they're good) some dramatic tension. In stories, we are clearly given one character's point of view (it might be a narrator, but we're still rarely given more than one perspective on a single event, thus, the narrator simply becomes an external "character"). You'll notice, if you look, that "news stories" follow this kind of pattern, whether in print, radio, or television.

The Trib's story is a case in point:

Pascual Condori steeled himself with a cheekful of coca leaves and poured drops of beer as an offering to Pachamama, Mother Earth. As citizens gathered in the central square of this dusty Andean town, he raised a voice that had been muzzled for five centuries.

"As indigenous people, we will not be discriminated against!" he told his fellow Aymara Indians at the rally last fall. "We all have rights, my brothers!"

What we're presented w/ here (in the first paragraphs, the lede, mind you), is not a reporting of events, facts, context. Instead, we're given the opening of a dramatic scene. We are instantly presented w/ the story's main protagonist (Condori) who "steeled himself" before raising "a voice that has been muzzled for five centuries". This is not "fact" reporting, this is scene-setting & character development. Only later, are we presented w/ a relatively more "factual" style of reporting:

Across Latin America, many of the region's 40 million indigenous citizens are raising similar voices of discontent, angry that greater political freedom and free-market economic policies fostered by the spread of democracy have not lifted them out of poverty. And in Bolivia, they have brought President Carlos Mesa's government to the brink of collapse.

But notice that this comes not first, but later. This widespread movement in Latin America serves as a backdrop, the stage (if you will) upon which our main character's story is told. Further, because Condori is already presented as the story's hero (the David-Coliath archetype is readily seen), the context is one of a broader narrative struggle in which Condori is merely one player. He is, if you will, our Private Ryan.

From that point, the story continues to tell how Condori is trying to challenge the status quo, while avoiding the violence of other activists. But, ask yourself, what structural quality does much of the story display? I suggest that, by focusing on Condori, it principally serves the function of character development & placement (we want to know where Condori fits in relation to the story's other protagonists). Notice that the story continually returns to Condori, with other people serving as supporting characters, or even merely as extras.

My point isn't to criticize this particular story. It's to attack a general trend in news journalism. By approaching news reporting as "storytelling", they introduce an element of bias into almost any story covered. Because most storytelling, if it's quick, superficial, and often-repeated (as reinforced by news cycles), tends to use the simplest archetypes. And (here's the real point) most of these archetypes involve black & white, good vs. bad distinctions. And by accepting the conventions of storytelling, which presuppose a narrative point-of-view, w/ no "real truth", we get "news stories" that aim solely to present a single point-of-view, the "human interest story", to its audience.

This is why critics complain about the media's "narrative" bias, when covering things like Iraq or Social Security or gun legislation or anything else. The accusation's that stories that don't fit the broader "narrative" are discarded. That certain news organization have "scripted" story lines they pursue, and must therefore find characters to fit their basic story arc.

Similarly, stories must have dramatic potential; they must include danger, suspense, and even cliff hangers: "Our heroes are safe for now, but what will happen to them tomorrow? Tune in to find out!" Think of all the times you've heard a TV reporter say "as the drama unfolds" in a newscast. That kind of language isn't really possible in news "reports" or "dispatches". That kind of literature doesn't have "drama" (just as office memos or encyclopedia reports are void of any drama, plot structure, etc).

This is why we rarely get good stories on the news (unless they're those heartwarming "special interest stories", which usually involve someone overcoming some obstacle, which is the dramatic plot device). Bad news (war, famine, disasters) have more dramatic tension & action. Tsunamis, earthquakes, and wars are the "blockbusters" & "bestsellers" of news as a narrative genre. Used to be that "journalism is history written on the run". Perhaps what we really have today is "journalism is meta-fiction written on the run".

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UPDATE: Apparently, the author of the Trib article in question is brother to Barrio Flores' author. That doesn't change my opinion about journalism, of course, but it does make me want to reiterate that I wasn't slamming this particular story, but rather using it as an example of how news is told as "story" rather than as "dispatch" or "report" (and, hence, follows different literary conventions, which have implications).

Posted by Miguel at 04:03 PM

Comments

Posted by: tom at March 21, 2005 11:05 PM