Blog ·
Quoted is not committed: reading propaganda inside news reports
A report says: "The minister called the protesters 'traitors paid by foreign enemies'." The sentence contains name-calling and a conspiracy claim. But who is making them? The minister is. The report is telling you what was said.
Two layers in every report
Most texts about public life have two layers: the voice of the author and the voices the author quotes. Propaganda techniques can appear in either. Mixing them up leads to two opposite mistakes. One is blaming a journalist for the words of the person they quote. The other is missing propaganda that has been passed off as neutral reporting.
When reporting becomes amplifying
Quoting is not always neutral. Look at three things.
Framing around the quote. "The minister rightly called them traitors" adopts the claim. Words like "admitted", "exposed" or "so-called" around a quote tell you which side the author is on. See framing.
Selection. Which quotes were chosen, and which side gets the last word? Running only the most extreme quotes from one side and only measured ones from the other is card stacking.
Headlines. A headline that repeats a loaded quote without quotation marks turns the speaker's words into the outlet's own.
Reposts and channels
On messaging channels and social media, the line is thinner. A channel that reposts a speech with no comment is usually amplifying it, not reporting on it: the reason to post is that the audience should agree. In those cases it is fair to treat the quoted techniques as the channel's own.
How to read
Mark quoted speech separately when you analyse a text. Ask who is speaking in each sentence, and whether the author takes a position on it. The techniques in the quotes tell you about the speaker. The framing, selection and headline tell you about the outlet. Both are worth knowing, but they are different findings. Reports that strip a statement of its context are covered in quotes out of context.