Towards a multidimensional approach to journalistic stance: analyzing foreign media coverage of Belgium

This paper argues for an expansion of the traditional notion of journalistic stance as defined by Martin and White (2005). Its main plea is that appraisal resources, metaphors or agency expressions in a newspaper article are not the only traces of a journalist’s line of vision: a journalist’s assessment as to whether particular information is worth mentioning in the article and whether or not the information will be covered in substantial detail are also – be it less explicit and hence more difficult to pin down – expressions of evaluation.
News production is in essence a delicate game of choice-making at various levels, not only between including overt or implicit evaluative expressions in the text, but also between providing more or less relevant information, and between giving a detailed or vague description of that information: choices which are at all times governed and constrained by the specific socio-economic and professional context in which the journalist operates. For that reason this paper argues that future research on journalistic stance should try to expand the notion of evaluation to all discursive levels at which choice-making is at stake.
In order to support our claim, the paper presents a case study cross-comparing 48 news articles reporting on one and the same news event: the resignation of the Belgian federal government in April 2010. The articles were written by 16 different foreign correspondents attached to broadsheet newspapers from four neighbouring countries of Belgium. The majority of the news articles are characterized by a low frequency of explicit evaluative language (reporter voice). Relying on systematic cross-comparison of appraisal resources and triangulation with ethnographic data, the paper uncovers manifestations of journalistic stance across multiple levels of discourse in order to demonstrate how the intricate puzzle of choice-making affects coverage of the news event.