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News Language and the Study of International Reporting

JACK Li iJi

The years 1990 and 1991 again confirmed the importance of studies in international reporting. The annual wire service rankings of the top 10 stories of 1990 contained seven international subjects, including Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the reunification of Germany, and the surrender of Panama's Manuel Noriega.' And with war in the Persian Gulf and revolution in Eastern Europe, 1991 has seen international reporting continue to dominate the news.

Recent years have also seen great changes in the practice of journalism around the globe. The Communist press model was discarded in several Eastern European nations, including the Soviet Union, yet governments proved unwilling to relinquish state control.^ U.S. international reporting, especially from the Middle East, has been subjected to increasing censorship from other governments as well as the U.S. military.

Death and danger have also marked the years. Reporters were assaulted and

detained in tlae Middle East. In many nations, especially in Latin America, reporters have been kidnapped and slain by those who sought to silence their investigations.-

As international events continue to shape the world and journalism, study of international reporting should assume great importance in the journalism curriculum.

Students who will never set foot off U.S. soil will need to know key international events, how and why those events are reported, and the implications of those events for the practice of journalism around the world.

The purpose of this essay is to present a model outline for the international reporting class. Attempting to incorporate aspects of instruction in comparative media systems as well as analyses of media, it explores the structure of the course and the outcome of its instruction. Specifically, the approach was an analysis of international reporting, rather than a skills course in foreign correspondence. It applied concepts from philosophy, political science, and rhetoric to focus on the language of international news and the reporting process by which a very few global events are selected and crafted into the symbolic form of the news report.

The goal was increased understanding of international news. News language

was defined as journalistic conventions and canon—traditional practices and policies —that structure and shape news reports for both print and broadcast media.

Jack Lude is assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University.

Journalism EDUCATOR 66

These conventions include the focus and reliance upon events, summary leads, inverted pyramid construction, broadcast stand-ups, use of interviews and official sources, the dominance of political leaders as sources, and the very conception of the news report. Often taken for granted, these conventions, and the ways they are used in global settings, are integral to understanding international reporting.^ This approach —although a difficult philosophical leap for many