Framing is one of the most powerful, communicable mechanisms in news story that provides meaning to a series of events and associates them so as to demonstrate the main controversy. It is therefore defined by de Vreese (2005, p. 33) as “an emphasis in salience of different aspects of a topic”.
This study investigated news coverage of a suspected chemical weapon attack in Lyria by analyzing its content through one of the framing devices - “syntactical structure” - classified by Pan and Kosicki (1993, p. 59).
Syntactical structure is an inverted pyramid structure in which the power of news elements decreases as the level descends (van Dijk, 1988, p. 26). In the news story, the lead activates readers’ minds by notifying the deaths of 200 people including women and children in a Lyria government attack. As a result, audience are systematically guided to take the sentence as the central idea, thus viewing the news in a particular angle - rebels’ perspective. Therefore, the lead is the most powerful part of the story, which is in consistent with the principle of the structure. The following episodes explaining the details of attack and casualties in hospital are the second important part since they are able to promote the factual nature of the main illustration above and to convince people (Liebler and Bendix, 1996, p. 54). Some words, either “I couldn't breath” from a child hit in the attack, or “the worst incident” from a doctor aiding injuries, augment the validity of the main idea. They are persuasive because people who suffered in the attack are more likely to reveal the truth, those quotes are thus put ahead while the opposite statement with little evidence of Emma is at the end of the story.
In addition, many approaches used to develop impartiality and objectivity of the news are also the characteristics of syntactical structure (Pan and Kosicki, 1993, p. 60). The implied view in the story that government might be hiding the truth is linked to authority whilst marginalizing the standing of Emma by relating it to deviance. For example, despite the report by UN, which demonstrated the usage of toxic chemicals in the attack, the government ostentatiously denied all usage of them, and at the same time, they explained increased hospital admissions were down to a ‘flu epidemic’ while the hospital was inundated with injuries including chemical burns, according to the doctor.
On the other hand, if the news was written in the prominence of the government forces, to be compatible with syntactical structure, their standing that this was a no-chemical-weapon attack focused on rebel forces to protect people would be at the top of the story as the core idea delivered. However, because there is less corroboration supporting the main idea compared to the evidence for rebels’ statement, the story would become unconvincing, which means the failure to convey objectivity.
On the other hand, if the news was written in the prominence of the government forces, to be compatible with syntactical structure, their standing that this was a no-chemical-weapon attack focused on rebel forces to protect people would be at the top of the story as the core idea delivered. However, because there is less corroboration supporting the main idea compared to the evidence for rebels’ statement, the story would become unconvincing, which means the failure to convey objectivity.
Reference list
de Vreese, C. (2005). News framing: Theory and typology. Identifying information and tenor in texts, 13(1), pp.51-62.
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1984). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39(4), pp.341-350.
Liebler, C. and Bendix, J. (1996). Old-Growth Forests on Network News: News Sources and the Framing of An Environmental Controversy. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73(1), pp.53-65.
Pan, Z. and Kosicki, G. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication, 10(1), pp.55-75.
van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News as discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
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