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Abstract
The need to distinguish clearly the disciplines involved in quality reporting from the now universal capacity for conveying facts and opinions has never been more widely acknowledged. To date, attempts to classify the attributes of journalistic practice have encompassed professional traits or values, journalists' criteria of quality or excellence, and the elements or principles underlying journalism. This paper considers the utility of those streams of work for evaluating the practice of journalism and builds on the classical study of rhetoric in order to propose a new assessment framework. The proposed framework is organized within five “faculties” (discovery, examination, interpretation, style and presentation). Specific evaluative topics are associated with each of the faculties, plus potential standards (quality journalism is independent, accurate, open to appraisal, edited and uncensored) and criteria of excellence (the best journalism is ambitious, undaunted, contextual, engaging and original).
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Professors Ann Rauhala (Ryerson University) and Heather Murray (University of Toronto) for introducing him to the study of rhetoric late in his career, and the Master, fellows and staff of Massey College, University of Toronto, for hospitality during the period of research for this paper as a Senior Resident of the college.
Notes
1. The consideration of best practices in reporting is a factor in jurisdictions where courts consider questions of malice (especially in the United States) or (in an evolving area of contemporary common-law jurisprudence in certain areas of the British Commonwealth) the “qualified privilege” defence of “responsible” journalism.
2. In this light, Booth approvingly quoted Burke: “You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language … True, the rhetorician may have to change an audience's opinion in one respect; but he can succeed only insofar as he yields to that audience's opinions in other respects” (Booth, 2004, p. 76; Burke, Citation1969; Richards, Citation1965).
3. While “memory” undoubtedly plays a role in journalistic practice, that role is intimately associated with reporting, rather than as the immediate precursor of “delivery.” Not even the orator requires much memory for delivery in the age of the teleprompter.
4. Adam, too, proposed a five-fold classification that appears at first glance to reflect somewhat the stages of journalistic production, but there are important differences between his proposed typology and mine, which follows more self-consciously the evidentiary and production process in order to capture the variety of quality indicators suggested in the various streams of scholarly and professional exploration. My first faculty, Discovery, reflects not only the first of Adam's five principles, “news judgment”, but also the primary activities in his second, “evidentiary method,” the others being captured in my Examination. Interpretation covers both Adam's fourth principle, “narrative technique,” and his fifth, “method of interpretation or meaning.” The scope of my Style goes beyond his “linguistic technique,” and Adam did not specifically address issues of production.
5. The constraints of narrative shape the way human beings understand as well as the way they explain. So, in journalism as in any other form of communication, the way in which the story is shaped will profoundly affect the meaning it conveys. Conversely, the fact that narrative coherence demands that facts be collected and shaped with purpose can cause meanings to be lost, gained and changed. Narrative is, as Abbott (2002) argues, “a universal tool for knowing as well as telling, for absorbing knowledge as well as expressing it” (p. 10). But because of the power of story, “Narrative can be used to deliver false information; it can be used to keep us in darkness and even encourage us to do things we should not do” (Abbott, 2002, p. 12).
6. This is one of the great questions in rhetoric. Quintilian classified the faculties of inventio and dispositio as forming one of the two essential aspects of oratory, res (matter), and the other three (elecutio, memoria and pronuntiatio) as comprising the other aspect, verba (words). It is clear that for him, the five faculties were sequential (that is, words should flow from matter), and language is mere clothing for thoughts. In this, he took issue with his predecessor, Cicero, who held that sound rhetoric must be a synthesis of res and verba (implying their equality) (Cicero, Citation2001; Dixon, Citation1971; Quintilian, Citation1920).
7. Originality is not intended here in any way to be the opposite of plagiarism. In that sense, originality would be nothing like a mark of excellence, but something far more basic than a quality standard.