Exploiting the tension between the news media's “objective” and adversarial roles: The role imbalance attack and its use of the implied audience

Television's ascent to the position of society's dominant medium precipitated significant changes in news reporting, including information presentations suited to an entertainment “supra‐ideology”; and the erosion of barriers separating public figures’ “backstage”; from their “onstage”; areas. Combined with the need for print and television news to compete for profits, especially since the advent of CNN, these changes promote a tendency toward adversarial reporting. However, to sustain their legitimacy and value to democracy, the news media must appear to respect social norms on when and what kinds of adversarial reporting are appropriate and maintain an acceptable balance between adversarial and “objective “ reporting. In a role imbalance attack (RIA), a rhetor who has been the subject of negative news coverage tries to deflect judgments by arguing that the news media have been inappropriately adversarial and by developing an ideal implied auditor ready to act against the news media. If actual auditors identify with the RIA's implied audience or if the news media fear that they might, the rhetor is in a position to benefit by exploiting suspicions about the news media's practices in the contemporary environment. The factors influencing this strategy's success and the news media's complicity in the attacks on them are discussed.

Key concepts:

• Adversarial reporting
• Agnew
• Bakker
• Hart
• ideograph
• Mecham
• news media
• objective reporting
• role imbalance attack