The Devil in the Details
How building a Rhetorical Frame is Essential to Interpret American News Media
American news media is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because unlike the majority of other countries in the world, the availability to access the news is ever present. Through television, newspapers, the internet, social media sites and through the word of mouth one must try to not have at least a modicum of knowledge about the happenings of the world. It is a curse because of the medias ability to put its own bias into the news, changing the perspective for the audience. This bias then affects the public's point of view and will sway how they perceive the world. Building a rhetorical frame will combat the affects of bias and allow the audience to make their own choices by not allowing media to sway their opinion.
Rhetorical Frame is described by Christina Haas in her report Learning to Read Biology. She defines rhetorical frame as “a model of representation of discourse situations…that helps readers account for the motives underlying textual acts and their outcomes”. (48) Essentially a rhetorical frame is the who, what, when, where, why the writer is writing the piece. If you know the writers or organizations’ background or reasons for talking about the topic, then you will be able to figure out how that writer might slant his opinion in the article. Then the audience will be able to adjust for that bias and have a better chance for that spin to not affect their point of view.
The development of a rhetorical frame is not as complicated as it seems. Christina Haas describes rhetorical frame to include elements that include “participants, their relationships and motives, and several layers of context”. (48) The several layers of context is simply if the article is either building upon or arguing against closely related or distant text. Understanding how these factors affect the writer starts a rhetorical frame.
For example, when a fictional article is written about a company who donates to a certain political party. In this scenario, the writer associates with the opposite party and the company the writer works for also agrees with the opposite party, a rhetorical frame will allow the audience to understand that the writer will have a bias for the opposite side. Understanding the background information to the article and the writer will allow the audience to have an idea of the articles bias.
Most of the American public agree that the news medias of today either slants to a more conservative or a more liberal viewpoint. Pew Research Center finds that 88 percent of Americans believe their is at least some media bias, with 37 percent saying their is a great deal of bias, and 30 percent saying their is a fair amount of bias. (Figure 1) Since the public believes that this bias does exist, the need for building a rhetorical frame is imperative.
Information without bias allows the audience to create their own opinion naturally. Without bias affecting the way news is presented to the public, they will be better informed about the facts. A more knowledgeable public will lead to better choices. These better choices can benefit families, communities, cities, and the country as a whole.
Resources
Haas, Christina. “Learning to Read Biology.” Written Communication Vol 11. No 1 (1994):43–84. Print.
Pew Research Center. www.people-press.org. Version 1. Pew Research Center, Febuary 7, 2012. Web. December 2014.
