Radio Leaks : Presenting and Contesting Leaks in Radio News Broadcasts

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Radio Leaks : Presenting and Contesting Leaks in Radio News Broadcasts

Adam Jaworski, Richard Fitzgerald and Deborah Morris

Journalism 2004 5: 183

This paper analyzes the discursive construction and contestation of ‘leaked’ stories in news broadcast programmes.

Drawing on a sample of BBC Radio 4 news programmes recorded between May and June 2000, we analyze four items of news presented as leaks about upcoming events.

In these extracts, the frame of authenticity for the leaks is introduced through a number of predicated features:

• secrecy – that the document was hitherto not publicly available;

• authorship – that the document is attributable to a credible source;

• ownership – that the document is now in the possession of someone (who may

or may not be the same as its author); and

• future orientation – that the document has temporal relevance for the present

and future.

Secrecy

In the first two extracts, the secrecy or public unavailability of the documents at the moment of broadcast is implied rather than highlighted overtly

Authorship/ownership

In each of the leaks discussed here, there is special prominence given to the authorship and ownership of the document and leaked story, respectively.

Other things being equal, any document written by or on the authority of a prominent public figure or organization will be more newsworthy than an

anonymous one,

Future orientation

Not unlike other news stories (see earlier), the four leaks discussed in this paper display a future relevance of the information contained in the documents.

Negotiating and contesting leaks

CASE 1

What becomes noticeable during the course of the interview is the use of temporal organization and shifts in the discourse of prediction made so far. In the run up to the interview, the programme has been emphasizing the relevance of the leaked document for the current and future state of affairs (seeExtract 5).

However, during the ‘main’ interview, Geoff Hoon attempts to play down the immediacy of the information. Although accepting that it is a leak and the information accurate, he attempts to shift the relevance to the past by claiming that ‘this document seems to me to be an out of date assessment of those risks’.

With a shift in temporality, from the presenter’s orientation upon present and future to the Defence Secretary’s orientation upon past and present, and with focus, from specifics to generality, the Defence Secretary is able to refer to a ‘public response’ to the issues contained within the document as already in the public domain.

CASE 2

Furthermore, during the course of the three-hour programme, the presenters begin to add more ‘hedging’ to their reporting of the Conservatives’ claim that the document is leaked. This hedging distances the news programme’s acceptance of the Conservative Party claim and makes it possible for the former to distance itself from the story being authenticated as a leak.

Thus, notwithstanding the claims made by the Conservative Party about the secrecy or confidentiality of the Tax Harmonization document, which reinforces the newsworthiness of the news item, the presenters can be seen to distance their reporting and, hence, the ‘programme’ from the document by attributing the leak to the Conservatives and emphasizing their failure to succeed. 

Note the use of active voice hedging and other word choice expressing tentativeness, for example, ‘the Conservatives have claimed’ 1); ‘what they’re trying [and] what they describe’ (Extract 9, line1); ‘a confidential document (.) apparently from the’ (Extract 10, lines 1–2)

In examining how the rise and fall of this news item is presented over the course of the day, it is clear that a pivotal issue at the outset is the status of the document as leaked as well as the accuracy of the information..

GGA

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