JOURNALISM AS RHETORIC: READING BEYOND THE MYTH OF OBJECTIVITY
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Date
2020-01-01
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Department
English
Program
Texts, Technologies, and Literature
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Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan through a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
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Abstract
Distrust in journalism coupled with the recent explosion of social media sites significantly contributes to the proliferation of disinformation on the Internet. As a result, many readers can not differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources. Using the work of Margaret Kantz, who maintains that both facts and opinions must be understood as claims, I argue that "rhetorical reading” promotes a critical news literacy. More specifically, my theses focuses on the work of the Black Press to illustrate how enthymemes, which historically have informed the way mainstream news outlets covered racial issues, were challenged by African American reporters and editors. Through a close comparison of local news coverage of the Baltimore riots of 1968 and the Baltimore Uprising of 2015, I maintain that the notion of journalistic objectivity is false. Ultimately, I argue that by understanding enthymemes in news delivery, readers can better understand how to evaluate sources for reliability. Furthermore, teaching rhetorical reading fosters a critical literacy that is necessary in a healthy, functioning democracy.