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GLOSSARY ANCHOR: The on-camera person who reads the script for a broadcast news show. Some anchors write their own scripts, but most read only what reporters and other off-camera writers have written. ANONYMOUS SOURCES: People willing to provide information only on the condition that their names not be used in the story. ATTRIBUTION: Telling readers or viewers the source of the information. BANNER/BANNERLINE: Headline across or near the top of all or most of a newspaper page. Usually refers to the Page One headline of the main news section. BENNETT, JAMES GORDON: Legendary newspaper editor. In 1835, James Gordon Bennett, disillusioned with the state of journalism and deeply in debt, founded the New York Morning Herald. His office was a cellar on Wall Street, his equipment a single desk, a second-hand chair and a box of files, and his staff numbered just one: himself. From this humble beginning, Bennett built one of the most profitable newspapers of his time, one that by 1860 would be the world's largest daily. The Herald first owed its popularity to its coverage of crime, competing in sensationalism with the New York Sun, but it soon developed in other areas. Within a few years, it was publishing the best financial section of any standard newspaper. It developed a critical review column and society news, provided readers with the most up-to-date news of events in Europe and was one of the first papers to publish sports news. Until the creation of the Herald, newspapers were the mouthpieces of political groups. Bennett was the first to recognize that readers might want to read news rather than views. His first edition of the Herald declared: "We shall support no party - be the organ of no faction or coterie. . . If the Herald wants the mere expansion which so many journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity, variety, point, piquancy and cheapness." BIERCE, AMBROSE: 19th century American newspaperman, wit, satirist, and author of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. Following service in the Civil War, Bierce moved to San Francisco to write newspaper articles and short stories. Soon, he had become the literary arbiter of the West Coast. In 1887, he joined the staff of William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, for which he wrote the "Prattler" column for nine years before moving to Washington, D.C., where he continued newspaper and magazine writing. Bierce separated from his wife, lost his two sons, and broke many friendships. As a newspaper columnist, he specialized in critical attacks on amateur poets, clergymen, bores, dishonest politicians, money grabbers, pretenders, and frauds of all sorts. His most well-known books are "In the Midst of Life" (1891), which included some of his finest stories; "Can Such Things Be?" (1893); and "The Devil's Dictionary" (1906), a volume of ironic definitions, which has been often reprinted. In 1913, tired of American life, he went to Mexico, then in the middle of a revolution led by Pancho Villa. His end is a mystery, but some believe he was probably killed in the siege of Ojinaga in January, 1914. BLY, NELLIE: In 1886, a young reporter who called herself Nellie Bly feigned insanity to gain entry to New York's insane asylum and exposed the inhuman conditions in the hospital. Bly worked for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. BULLDOG EDITION: Early edition of a newspaper, usually the first edition of the day. BYLINE: Name of the reporter who wrote the story, placed above the published article but below the headline. Decades ago, bylines were only given to reporters covering important or unusual stories, or if the writing was particularly good. Today, nearly any story more than four or five paragraphs typically gets a byline. CHECKBOOK JOURNALISM: Paying for a source to tell his or her story. Critics of checkbook journalism say that it encourages sources to lie, or at least exaggerate, in order to earn money, and that it discourages citizens from coming forward to expose wrongdoing without being paid. CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT: Responsible for gaining subscribers and ensuring that newspapers arrive at the right places at the right times. CIRCULATION WARS: Usually refers to the battle for readers in New York at the turn of the century between papers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and those owned by William Randolph Hearst. CITY EDITION: The edition reserved for selling in the city. Usually the news is selected specifically to meet the needs of people who live in the city. Newspapers often reserve other editions for the suburbs or other parts of the country. For example, the Los Angeles Times has a city edition that is sold in Los Angeles, as well as separate editions for Orange County, Ventura County, the San Fernando Valley and Washington, D.C. CITY EDITOR: The editor who runs the city or metropolitan desk and is in charge of local news coverage and the reporters covering local news. CLIP: News story clipped from a newspaper, usually cut out for future reference. COLUMNS: 1. Columns are vertical divisions of a news page. A standard-size newspaper is divided into five to eight columns. Headlines are measured in columns (as well as type size). A three-column spread means that the headline stretches across three columns. 2. Columns are bylined articles of opinion - a sports column, medical column, political column, arts column or social commentary. They are frequently written by an authority on the subject who does not work for the paper, or by a reporter who switches from news writing to opinion writing becoming a columnist. COPY: Raw news article written by a reporter before it is edited. COPY DESK: The desk inside a newsroom where copy editors process copy written by reporters and write headlines and captions as required. COPY EDITOR: One of two types of editor. The copy editor checks stories to ensure that they follow the newspaper's style, usage, spelling and grammar rules. The copy editor also makes certain that stories are well-organized, factual and not libelous. After editing stories, the copy editor writes headlines, and, if requested, captions for them. COPY PAPER: The paper on which a story is typed. With the widespread use of computers, copy paper is rarely used anymore. Copy paper is often newsprint trimmed to 8½ by 11 inches. Before the advent of computers, copy paper often came in "books" that contained carbon paper with each page a different color. One page was kept by the reporter, another by the copy desk and the original sent to the composing room to be set in type. CUB: An untrained reporter who is learning how to collect and write news. CRONKITE, WALTER: Anchor for the CBS Evening News from April, 1962, to 1981. He was also the first managing editor of the "Evening News," which gave him considerable say in the selection, timing and arrangement of the day's news items. During his tenure, the nightly broadcasts expanded from 15 to 30 minutes (the first half-hour show was aired on Sept. 2, 1963, a week ahead of NBC's first expanded newscast). Cronkite anchored the network's marathon coverage of President Kennedy's assassination and funeral in November, 1963, and the coverage of almost all of America's space missions of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1968 when he returned from Vietnam, his conclusion that Americans had been misled about the course of the conflict and that the United States should negotiate a withdrawal is said to have dramatically changed public opinion about the U.S. position on the Vietnam conflict. During the 1960s and 1970s, Cronkite was considered my many as the most trusted man in America. DANA, CHARLES: A legendary 19th-century newspaper editor. Dana first rose to prominence as an assistant to Horace Greeley on the New York Tribune before becoming managing editor in 1849. One of the London correspondents he hired while at the Tribune was Karl Marx, whose political and economic writings led to the social system of communism. In the early days of the Civil War, Dana left the Tribune and entered government service, before returning to journalism and buying the New York Sun, the original penny newspaper and one of the city's most popular rags. Dana ran the Sun from 1869 to 1897 and earned a reputation as one of the most respected editors of the post-Civil War period. He combined style and wit with serious journalism in the Sun's four pages of news every day. Originally a follower of socialism as it emerged around the middle of the century, Dana's Sun grew conservative and anti-union as Dana grew older. DUMMY EDITION: A mock newspaper or magazine page that has advertisements with specific sizes on it. News stories, features and photographs are laid out around the ads. A dummy page or dummy edition helps newspaper journalists gauge how long an article, or how large a picture, should be. EDITION: One version of a newspaper. Some papers have one edition per day, some several. EDITOR: The person in charge of the editorial function of a newspaper, including reports, columns, editorials, photographs. There is also a hierarchy in newspaper and magazine editorship, from editor-in-chief (considered the editor) through managing editor, city editor, features editor, news editor, and so on. EDITORIAL: Article of comment or opinion that speaks for the paper. Usually printed on the same page as the paper's masthead. EDITORIAL MATERIAL: Everything in the newspaper that is not advertising. ELECTRONIC/PRINT JOURNALIST: Electronic journalists work for radio, television or Internet news organizations. Print journalists work for newspapers and magazines. EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: The person who runs a television newsroom. He or she is responsible for story content, coverage, long-range planning and scheduling and countless other decisions. At smaller stations the executive producer may also make assignments, edit reporters' copy and decide the layout of each news show. EXTRA: Special edition of a newspaper to provide an update on a particularly newsworthy, breaking story. FILE: To send a story to the newspaper's office, usually by wire or telephone or to put news service stories on the wire (see WIRE SERVICES). FIVE STAR FINAL: Fifth and final edition of a day's newspaper. Each edition would be marked by a number of stars displayed at the top of the newspaper's pages, with the first edition getting one star and the final five. The term is rarely used anymore. FREELANCE: To produce news stories for a publication when one is not a full-time employee. A reporter who does this is described as a freelancer. GREELEY, HORACE: Legendary newspaper editor. Between the 1830s and the Civil War, the penny press directed their efforts at attracting readers from the emerging working class by running stories about sex and crime. When Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841, he declared that the paper would avoid the "immoral and degrading police reports, advertisements and other matters which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading penny papers." Greeley was soon running some of the material he had condemned, but the hallmark of the Tribune was serious discussion of the issues of the day - temperance, politics, farming, labor, education, the horror of debt, women's rights, marriage, the frontier and slavery. Greeley was considered the best newspaper editor of his generation. In 1871, he won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, but was trounced in the following election by incumbent Ulysses S. Grant. Greeley died a few weeks later.
HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH: A successful California miner turned U.S. senator turned newspaper publisher. Hearst imitated Joseph Pulitzer's financially successful brand of journalism, which emphasized crusades, self-promotion, and sensational crime and sex stories, but failed to incorporate Pulitzer's respect for accuracy and truth. Hearst owned the New York Morning Journal, which, around the turn of the century, became locked into a circulation war with Pulitzer's New York World. He cut the Journal's price to a penny, hired away many of the World's top journalists and battled Pulitzer over whose paper could most overdramatize Spanish injustices in Cuba. This last issue snowballed into a public cry for American intervention in Cuba that in turn led to the Spanish-American War of 1898. A reporter for Hearst described a typical Hearst paper as "a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut." Hearst had the man fired. Hearst was the real-life subject for Herman Mankiewicz's roman-a-clef "Citizen Kane," directed by and starring Orson Welles. HOPPER, HEDDA: Along with Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper was one of the best known journalists in the United States, a powerful Hollywood gossip columnist. At the height of her popularity, she appeared in about 85 big-city newspapers, 3,000 small-town dailies and 2,000 weeklies in addition to a national radio programs. More than 75 million people read her every day. She began her column in 1938 and wrote it until her death in 1966. Her legendary feud with Parsons was said to have lasted until the day she died. HUMAN INTEREST STORY: A feature story that focuses on a subject's uniqueness, appealing to the reader's general interest apart from breaking news. HUNTLEY, CHET and BRINKLEY, DAVID: During the 1956 political convention, NBC paired the baritone Montanan, Chet Huntley, and the dry, cynically whimsical North Carolinian, David Brinkley, to compete with CBS's number one news anchor team. Four years earlier, CBS's Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite had together dominated network coverage of the convention. But in 1956, Huntley-Brinkley began to convert American viewers to NBC. By 1960, the pair were number one in news ratings. Their final exchange on the air every evening would often be imitated: "Good night, Chet." "Good night, David, and good night for NBC News." CBS News eventually topped NBC again in 1969. A year later, Huntley retired. Brinkley continued working, however, eventually moving over to ABC News before his retirement in 1997. JAZZ JOURNALISM: Like yellow journalism at the turn of the century, jazz journalism was typified by sensational crime reports and court stories, but the term refers to the period of the 1920s and the rivalry of the three top tabloid papers in New York: the Daily News, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Graphic. LAYOUT DEPARTMENT: Responsible for designing each day's newspaper, making sure that photographs, stories and ads fit into the space allotted. LEAD: First paragraph in a news story. Unless the article is a feature, the lead usually summarizes the main facts. In feature stories, it sets a mood or re-creates a scene. Reporters write a new lead if late breaking, important news supplants the initial lead. LIBEL: The legal offense of publishing or broadcasting a story that damages a person's reputation by holding him or her up to public ridicule, hatred or scorn. The Supreme Court has ruled that to win a libel suit, plaintiffs (those filing the suit) who are public officials or public figures must prove that the controversial material was published or broadcast with "actual malice." This means that plaintiffs must prove that the information was communicated "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." [See PUBLIC OFFICIAL and PUBLIC FIGURE] LINOTYPE: A typesetting machine that cast type in complete lines rather than in individual characters. It was patented in the United States in 1884 by Ottmar Mergenthaler and made newspaper printing much faster. Linotype has now largely been supplanted by photocomposition, which is accomplished with computers. MASTHEAD: Formal statement of a newspaper's name, officers, place of publication and other descriptive information. It is usually found on the editorial page. MISREPRESENTATION: When a reporter deceives people into thinking that he or she is not a journalist. Reporters often misrepresent their identities when they go undercover, but many critics disagree with the technique, arguing that a reporter's job is to educate the public about important issues, not to deceive people. Proponents of undercover reporting counter that misrepresentation is sometimes excusable when there is no other way to get an important story. MORGUE: Newspaper library, where the old or "dead" issues of the paper are kept. Most morgues now store electronic (or computer-generated) files. MURROW, EDWARD R.: The most influential and esteemed figure in American broadcast journalism during its formative years. Murrow joined CBS in 1935 and went to London two years later to head the network's European bureau. There, his reliable and dramatic eyewitness reports of the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the Battle of Britain during World War II brought Murrow national fame and marked radio journalism's coming of age. After the war, Murrow returned to America with a weekly newscast, "Hear It Now," which he soon transferred to television as "See It Now." During the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 50s, Murrow produced a now-legendary exposé of the dubious tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who had gained prominence with flamboyant charges of Communist infiltration of government agencies. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Murrow director of the U.S. Information Agency. Murrow died in 1965. NEWS DIRECTOR: The top person in a television newsroom. He or she usually does the kind of jobs that a managing editor does on a newspaper. The news director is responsible for what goes on the air and the hiring and firing of newspeople. NEWSREEL: Short motion picture accounts of current events introduced in England about 1897 by Frenchman Charles Pathé. Newsreels were shown first in music halls between entertainment acts and later between feature films in motion-picture theaters. Because spot news was expensive to shoot, newsreels covered planned events, such as parades, inaugurations, sports, bathing beauty contests, and events with an impact that outlasted their actual duration, such as floods and fires. "The March of Time" (1935), produced in the United States by Time Inc., combined filmed news with interpretive interviews and dramatizations. The number of newsreels declined markedly with the rising popularity of television news and documentaries. By the late-1950s, the last of the American newsreels, "Fox Movietone News," had gone out of business. OBITUARY/OBIT: Account of a person's death, followed by a description of their life. OFF THE RECORD: Information given on the condition that it be confidential and not used. ON BACKGROUND: An agreement reached by a reporter and source prior to interview that the material can be used as information, but not attributed to the source by name. ON DEEP BACKGROUND: A similar agreement that the material can be used, but not in direct quotations and not accompanied by attribution. ON THE RECORD: An agreement reached by a reporter and source prior to interview that the material can be used and the source fully identified. PARK ROW: Once to American journalism what Fleet Street was to British journalism. In the 1880s it was the residence of the most successful and well-known of New York's newspapers, including Joseph Pulitzer's World, Charles Dana's Sun, James Gordon Bennett's Herald, and two other famous New York papers, the Tribune and the Times. PACK JOURNALISM: The coverage of stories by a large number of reporters and photographers. One criticism of pack journalism is that, apart from looking unseemly, it encourages conformity in news reports because journalists talk to one another as they are covering the news. As the number of news organizations covering national events has ballooned along with the advance of news-gathering technology, pack (or "herd") journalism has become a bigger problem, media critics say. PARSONS, LOUELLA : For more than three decades, she was one of the best known journalists in the United States, a powerful Hollywood gossip columnist. At the height of her popularity, she appeared in about 85 big-city newspapers, 3,000 small-town dailies and 2,000 weeklies in addition to a national radio programs. More than 75 million people read her every day. She was virtually unchallenged until 1938 when Hedda Hopper, a character actress fallen on hard times, was hired as a gossip columnist. The feud between the columnists lasted until Hopper's death in 1966. PRESS AGENT: Nowadays part of the public relations profession, a press agent provided information to reporters about a cause, a company or a person for whom the agent worked. PRESS PASS/CARD/CREDENTIAL: An identification card that grants a reporter access to places usually off limit to the public. PUBLIC FIGURE: In libel cases, a person who is judged to have "voluntarily thrust" himself or herself into a public controversy, or a person who has a role of "especial prominence." In libel cases, a public figure who sues must prove that the controversial material was untrue and published with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. [See LIBEL] PUBLIC OFFICIAL: In libel cases, a government employee who has substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of governmental affairs. Like a public figure, public officials who sue for libel must prove that the controversial material was untrue and published with actual malice or a reckless disregard for the truth. [See LIBEL] PULITZER, JOSEPH: American newspaper publisher born in Hungary in 1847 before immigrating to the United States, where he rose to prominence first as a reporter and then as a newspaper owner in St. Louis and New York. His newspapers earned a reputation for crusading in the public interest, exposing crooked politicians, police corruption and wealthy tax-dodgers. But they also became known for sleazy reporting with their sensational stories of sex and violent crime. Pulitzer is best remembered today for his endowment of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, which awards annual Pulitzer Prizes for excellence in journalism. PULITZER PRIZE: Annual award for achievement in American journalism, letters, drama and music. Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded by Columbia University since 1917 on recommendation of a Pulitzer Prize Board. For print journalists, the Pulitzer Prize represents their profession's highest achievement. RE-PLATE: To reset the lines of type on the printing press and make new plates for another press run. With the advent of photocomposition, replated pages contain new copy, headlines, photos or captions produced by computer, then re-shot for new plates to on the press. Replating is done to add new information or to correct errors. RETRACTION/CORRECTION: Errors that reach publication are sometimes retracted or corrected if they are serious or someone demands one. Often these appear in a box - such as the "For the Record" section in the Los Angeles Times - or in an article of their own if the mistake was libelous. REWRITE: The name for the desk where reporters sit typing and rewriting news fed from other reporters out covering a story. RUTH SNYDER AND THE ELECTRIC CHAIR: In 1927, Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray were tried for the murder of Snyder's husband. When Snyder was found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair, New York's tabloids fell over each other to grab exclusives of the execution. While the Daily Graphic ran a scoop interview with Snyder before her death, it was the Daily News that made headlines. Pictures of executions were forbidden, but a News photographer, Tom Howard, strapped a tiny camera to his ankle and took a picture just after the electric current was turned on. The photo ran on the paper's front page and the day's issue sold out quickly. Howard's stunt is an oft-repeated theme in journalism movies. SIDEBAR: Story that emphasizes and elaborates on a mainbar as part or parts of a bigger story. A human-interest or color story with anecdotes growing out of a mainbar would add information or perspective to the primary news story. Charts or graphs can be part of sidebar materials. SLUG: A one- or two-word label on all pages of a story before it's put into print. A slug helps identify the story and before the advent of computers identified missing pages of a story. SOCIETY EDITOR: The person who organized the section of newspaper decades ago that used to print society gossip and features. Nowadays, society news, if covered, is usually part of a newspaper's Lifestyle section. SOURCE: Something or someone that provides information for the story. When talked about in movies, it usually refers to a person. SUB: Information that substitutes for, or replaces old material. SULLIVAN, ED: The syndicated Broadway columnist whose "Toast of the Town" weekly television program from 1948 to 1971 was the longest running variety show in television history. In 1955, the program was renamed "The Ed Sullivan Show," to capitalize on his growing popularity as the host. SWAYZE, JOHN CAMERON: NBC anchorman who narrated newsreel clips for his 15-minute show, "Camel News Caravan," which ran from 1949 to 1956. When Swayze's show began, "Camel News Caravan" was one of only two news shows on television, competing with Douglas Edwards on CBS-TV News. These newscasts were primarily "talking heads," offering viewers little in the way of dynamic visuals from across the globe that today's audiences are accustomed to seeing. What little newsreels they used were time-consuming to produce, but provided audiences with their first glimpse of the world. Every night, Swayze called on viewers to "go hopscotching the world for headlines." -30-: Old newspaper symbol indicating the end of a story. It was preferred to "The End," or some other such phrase, so that workers in the printing rooms would not mistake the phrase for part of the story and include it at the end. TELETYPE MACHINE: In 1924, AT&T introduced a printing telegraph system called the Teletype that helped reduce the time news took to travel from one part of the world to another. The unit consisted of a typewriter keyboard and a printer. Each keystroke generated a series of coded electric impulses that were then sent over a transmission line to a receiving system. There the receiver decoded the pulses and printed the message on a paper tape. WINCHELL, WALTER: New Yorker who promoted the gossip column as the Broadway reporter for tabloid newspapers from the 1930s through the 1950s. Winchell was the king of sensationalism, lacing stories with intimate details about celebrities' private lives. When he moved his column onto radio, he drew huge audiences, earning the top spot in listener ratings in 1946. He continued on the air with the salacious material that had made his tabloid columns so popular, but he also enlightened Americans about the threat of Nazism and provided Franklin D. Roosevelt with strong support during the 1940 presidential campaign. WIRE SERVICES: News organizations that transmit stories to subscribers through Teletype machines or computers, often simply referred to as the "wires." The stories are frequently used as tips, as information to flesh out stories generated by staff reporters and freelancers or as articles printed as written. The most famous wire services are Associated Press (AP), Reuters and United Press International (UPI), formerly known as United Press (UP). WOODWARD-BERNSTEIN: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were reporters on the Washington Post who broke open the Watergate scandal in 1973 that eventually forced President Richard M. Nixon to resign. Their last names together became synonymous for good investigative reporting and the name was often shortened to Woodstein in newsrooms across the country. YELLOW JOURNALISM: A term of derision coined for newspapers with an emphasis on sensational stories, usually crime reports, that typified the newspapers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst in New York at the turn of the century. Yellow journalism got its name from a popular cartoon of the era -- the Yellow Kid. Driven more by profits than a desire to print high-quality journalism, Hearst and Pulitzer fought over syndication rights for the Yellow Kid. ZENGER, JOHN PETER: Zenger's name has become synonymous with freedom of the press ever since the landmark trial in 1735, in which he was accused of libeling the governor of New York. Zenger's New York Weekly Journal had indeed criticized the governor and his administration. In the 18th century that was enough to warrant a charge of libel. All a trial had to do was establish that the accused was responsible for printing the critical material. During Zenger's trial, however, the publisher's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, proposed a revolutionary view of libel law - that the controversial statements must be false in order to be libelous. The jury bought the argument, and Zenger was freed. Although the case did not change libel law, it provided proponents of change with a moral and psychological victory. Zenger has now become a hero of American journalism. Source: http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/indexf_j.htm
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INSTRUCTOR: Roderick Macdonell INSTITUTION: WB Studios AUDIENCE: This core course on Investigative Journalism will promote improvement in ones professional work through group tasks which require rigorous engagement within a milieu which also promotes a sense of joyousness. DESCRIPTION: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This exciting international course will thoroughly engage the Investigative Journalist with a mission. Ten highly interactive sessions, woven together by a compelling case study and supported by seven substantive sessions, will energize participants and help them hone their skills to maximize the quality of their professional work. This core course is designed to equip journalists with the professional skills needed to investigate and report on incidences of corruption. The goal is to raise public awareness that “clean government” is every citizen’s right, and that it should not be necessary to pay a bribe to receive a public service. The Investigative Journalism core course, which is conducted in 3 hour sessions over ten consecutive weeks consists of an intriguing case study supported by 7 substantive sessions which assist participants in their responses to the problematic situations which emerge from the case study. The fictitious case study of 'Freedonia', presents a case of graft and corruption in the country of Freedonia, mainly in Palisades, the capital. The setting is typical, and one that many participants in WBI's workshops have found familiar. As the case unfolds, so does an intricate web of bribery and corruption- each scenario presenting new information and challenges which journalists need to make critical decisions about. Participants get very involved in the story as it focuses on key issues to be addressed by journalists when undertaking investigations, including: - the need to ask probing questions; - the desirability of being skeptical, especially when receiving information from interested or biased parties; - how to handle sources of information; and - such ethical issues as to whether it is appropriate to pay sources for exclusive information. The seven support sessions deal with areas such as Curbing Corruption, Defining Investigative Journalism, Interviewing Techniques, Media and The Law, Journalist's Code of Conduct, Self Regulation and The Importance of Documents. Source: African Virtual University |
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Rhetorical devices/ Analysis of argumentation When refuting an argument, use rhetorical criteria such as generalization, oversimplification, exaggeration, selective use of facts, use of double standards, slanting, use of truisms/clichés, polarization · an argument can be: lousy, valid, sound, (rationally) compelling, logically (in)consistent Fallacy: an error in reasoning, a false argument. · Circular reasoning: reasoning where the conclusion is hidden in the premise of the argument. · Double Standard: comparing two or more similar things or situations by a different sets of standards. Example: "Well, it’s OK for him, but if she tries it I’ll punish her." · Equivocation: using words that have at least two different definitions to support or refute an issue. Using ambiguous words is also a form of equivocation. · False analogy: a fallacy of comparing two things that are not sufficiently alike to be compared. Such comparison concentrates one a singular similarity while ignoring all differences. · Hasty generalization: an assertion or conclusion drawn on insufficient evidence; jumping to conclusions. · Non sequitur: from the Latin for "it does not follow." A fallacy of claiming a conclusion that does not follow logically from the premise. · Oversimplification: attempts to obscure or deny the complex issues of a claim, syllogism, or enthymeme. · Red Herring: (sometimes called Trojan Horse) a decoy argument; one that ignores the real issue while bringing up totally irrelevant issues. Example: "How can you justify spending money to fight crime in America when there are children starving in Africa?" · Self Contradiction: giving two premises that when used together cannot be true. Example: If you die while you’re asleep, you won’t know about it until the next morning when you wake up. · Slanted language: (also called stacking the deck) evidence, words, or expressions whose connotations favor a particular bias of the arguer and which distort the opposition. · Slippery Slope: "one thing leads to another" fallacy, also called the "domino effect." This uses a false or unproven thesis, one without foundation. Example: "If we do this, then that will happen, then something else, and then other things; where will it end?" · Stacking the deck: (also known as slanting) giving evidence, words, or expressions supporting a premise while disregarding or withholding contrary evidence. · Stereotyping: a form of hasty generalization, assuming that all members of a group are the same; this can be racist in nature or simply sweeping generalizations. Example: "All red heads have a fiery temper." · Strawman (strawperson): this fallacy creates its own issues and then attacks or refutes these rather than addressing the issue of the core argument.
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