National temporality and journalistic practice: temporalising anniversary events in Estonian television news.
Harro-Loit, Halliki ; Koresaar, Ene
1. Introduction
Time is one of the most central organizing concepts of news
production (Schlesinger 1978/1999), news genre (Bell 1991, 1995, 1998)
and news discourse. Although immediacy is the central concept of
broadcasting, news production and the occupational ideology of news
journalism (Schlesinger: 124, 125), news discourse represents more
distant (larger than the immediate present) time frames by creating
bridges between the present, the past and the future (Jaworski et al.
2003).
The growing body of scholarship about the role of journalism in the
construction and articulation of collective memory reflects that the
function of journalism as a 'social time machine' becomes more
apparent (e.g. Kitch 2003a, 2003b, 2007, Edy and Daradanova 2006, Le
2006, Carlson 2007, Ebbrecht 2007, Winfield et al. 2002, Winfield and
Hume 2007, West 2008). Less attention has been paid to the various
strategies, which news journalism employs in constructing cultural time
as one component of collective memory. One set of devices is linked to
the intertextual nature of news genre: a news story relates the reported
event or topic to other events diachronically--referring to the events
which precede and follow it. The duration of the time covering these
historic or future events could be highly variable: a news story could
possibly refer to events that happened hundreds of years ago, few hours
ago or will happen tomorrow. Another set of devices are linked to the
way the news value overturns temporal sequences of linear narrative;
moves backwards and forwards in time by picking out and bringing
together different actions and agents according to socially relevant
concepts of temporality. The third set of devices comes from the
newsworthiness of certain pre-scheduled events, such as anniversaries.
Anniversaries could be single events or calendar-based annual
celebrations. The latter type of anniversary journalism plays an
important role in mnemonic synchronization of particular communities. On
the same day an entire mnemonic community manages to focus their
attention on the same moment in history (Zerubavel 2003:4) and the daily
news frames the manner of commemoration.
By bringing together the theoretical approach of cultural memory
studies and analysis of news discourse, this study focuses on how
commemorative news processes temporality, specifically in analysing the
modes and strategies news text employs in the cultural construction of
time within the framework of national temporality. The analysis will
demonstrate how the afore-mentioned devices function in a single news
story and the manner in which national temporality is narratively
provided with causality and coherence. The study of media constructions
of temporality provides important insights on how temporally situated
and memory saturated national identity is re-created on day-to-day basis
through regular news flow.
Traditionally a collectively used medium, television journalism
with its periodicity plays a major role in the construction of social
time structures. In addition, television's agenda-setting function
for the community grants it a pivotal role in nation building and
'inhabitalisation' of the national memory (cf. Edensor
2006:535). As a form of 'global memory bank', the electronic
archives of television hold apparently more complete and verifiable
histories of the emerging new century, not to mention the previous one,
than the traditional resources of historians: physical archives,
personal testimony and official records (Hoskins 2001a:214). On the one
hand, the complexity of television news temporality comes from the
synthesis of visual and verbal text in parallel with the synthesis of
past and present: e.g. old photographs or documentaries (extracts)
illustrate the comments on current affairs and vice versa. On the other
hand, as well as being place-less, television is in effect timeless,
operating in a perpetual present: television news is always broadcast
'live', which creates the presentness effect of the news
(Moores 1995, Hoskins 2001b:341, 342).
In the context of the current study, using television news stories
for empirical analysis enables us to make visible complex temporal
constructions by demonstrating how different cultural time-types are
being constructed and strategically linked to convey a story of
nationalism and thereby symbolically inhabit the public time space. To
this end a tripartite methodology is proposed that takes into account a
variety of news temporisation modes from the basic news time structure
to the more complex implementation of chronotypes and mnemonic
templates.
2. Anniversary journalism and national temporality
Anniversaries are important building blocks of national identity:
The anniversary--of a person, institution or event--is regularly
'news' in the media. Beginnings (debuts, openings) and
closings (death of people or institutions) provide an opportunity to
exercise some kind of self-conscious sense of history (Schudson
1986:102).
Anniversary journalism can be considered "as a temporal sphere
in which national identity is continually reproduced, sedimented and
challenged" (Edensor: 526). In this sense anniversary journalism
brings the community together and provides national and cultural
consistency by 'bridging' historical gaps (Zerubavel: 52) and
habitualising values and norms of behaviour by repetition (Hobsbawm and
Ranger 1983:2). Hence anniversary journalism serves as a framework
within which social groups can construct their own sense of public time,
that dimension of collective life through which human communities come
to have what is assumed to be a patterned and perceptually shared past,
present and future (Kitch 2003a:48, partly referring to Molotch and
Lester 1974).
This is what makes anniversary journalism one of the main agents in
identity buiding and mediation of memory.
Anniversary journalism, as a form of ritual communication (Carey
1989, cited in Kitch 2003a) functions both in linear and cyclical time
and in doing so intersects the 'formal nationalism' of the
modern nation-state with the 'informal nationalism' taking
place in civil society and everyday routines (Eriksen 1993, cited in
Edensor: 528). Anniversary journalism is partly subordinated to the
state management of national temporalities such as governing the
organization of weekly, calendrical and ceremonial time (Edensor:531).
Among the news samples used in this article, this is the case with the
anniversary of the Tartu Peace Treaty, which is a law-regulated state
anniversary in the Republic of Estonia. National holiday news draws on
values like continuity and predictability rather than traditional news
values and the central event, in news stories like these, is the
reproduction of the social order (ben-Aaron 2005:693).
Anniversary journalism from another aspect reflects events at the
level of the civil society or smaller groups that perhaps have no direct
outlet in the official calendar of events but that have for some other
reasons an extensive basis in society. Among our examples is an
announcement about erecting a monument to the 'father' of
Estonian journalism Johann Voldemar Jannsen. In the example of those
aforementioned events, the function of an anniversary news manifests as
a double synchronization (Zerubavel). This means reproducing from one
side the national ambition to make the national identity habitual,
communicable and governing, and from the other side, it has a more
informal communal participation aspect through reflection at which a
certain national synchronization is aimed.
With close connections with the calendar year and other social and
cultural practices, national anniversary journalism adopts the main
national narratives, around which the national menmonic community is
formed, where the news organizations, journalists, journalistic critics
and naturally the public are all participants. This, however, does not
mean that differences disappear--an individual can really participate
simultaneously in several mnemonic communities, the relationship of
which towards the image of the past (or its function in the concrete
news) (re)produced by journalism may be affirmative, critical or
contesting (Koresaar 2008). It is essential that the concerned
journalists turn to the public as a group with whom they share common
values and vision of the past and use different (available) textual
means to express those values and viewpoints. As Fiske and Hartley
(1978:85) have argued, the 'map' of meaning produced by a news
producer or a journalist, either deliberately or routinely, always
exceeds individual intent and contain 'myths and mythologies'
that are actual in a cultural setting. In this aspect anniversary
journalism may be understood as a mediator and a product of cultural
memory (cf. Kitch 2008:312).
The empirical analysis is carried out on the qualitative text
analysis of three television anniversary news stories broadcasted in
2008, 2009 and 2010. The sample represents the single anniversary news
story and calendar-based anniversary news coverage (cyclic anniversary
news) in ordinary years and a jubilee (major anniversary) year. The
samples are selected on the basis of a survey concerning the
construction of the past in newspaper news during selected months in
2009, 2010 (Rebane 2009).
The first news story selected for this analysis covers the
commemoration of an event the meaning of which is established by its
entry in the official national calendar--the anniversary of the Tartu
Peace Treaty. The Tartu Peace Treaty was a bilateral treaty between
Estonia and Russia which ended the Estonian War of Independence
(1918-1920), established the border between Estonia and Russia and
provided the newly founded Republic of Estonia with international
recognition. The treaty was signed by Jaan Poska on the Estonian side
and Adolf Joffe for Soviet Russia. In the national liberation movement
at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the Tartu Peace
Treaty was re-topicalised to stress the juridical continuity of the
Estonian independent statehood. The Treaty is regarded as the birth
certificate of the Republic of Estonia because it was the very first de
jure recognition of the state. In the official rhetoric of the day, the
Tartu Peace Treaty is celebrated as "the grand achievement of
Estonian diplomacy and one of the most important stones in the
groundwork of Estonian statehood" (Arjakas 2008).
The second news story is about the opening of the monument of
Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819-1890)--the man who in summer 1857 launched
the Estonian-language weekly Perno Postimees (Postman of Perno) that
marked the birth of regular Estonian-language periodicals. In Perno
Postimees Jannsen conveyed his ideas to his mostly peasant readership,
he presented programmes with stress on cultural and national development
of the country. Hence Jannsen and his paper played an outstanding role
in arousing Estonian national self-consciousness (Lauk et al. 1993:72,
74).
3. Time construction in a single news story: a tripartite viewpoint
In this study the time dimensions of news discourse are analysed from a
tripartite viewpoint by probematising a) the genre-specific time
structure of news which enables us to understand how current newsworthy
events or issues actualise different time horizons of the past, present
and future; b) the sense given to the relevant time horizons through
their social categorization, and c) the narrative identity of the
community expressed in the (national) temporization of an anniversary
event. The relationship between these levels of analysis reveal a
broader sense of (national) temporality, which organises individual
temporal units presented in the news.
In order to deconstruct time structures, it is important to focus
on genre categories. The chronological order of a narrative in hard news
format is disrupted, as the most important information is placed at the
beginning as the news must have clear implication to current topical
reality. (1) This disrupted news structure has been labelled an inverted
pyramid. This format enables quick readability. Chronologically
structured texts invite the reader to read the whole text, as the last
piece of information in the text frequently has to be read to understand
the point of the article (Kolstrup 2005:112, 113). Breaking up the
linear time structure enables journalists to create
'shortcuts' between seemingly unrelated past and current
events. Bell (1998) makes the time structure of news story visible as he
takes the time of the lead event (the event that is actually newsworthy)
as point zero. Times prior to this are labelled -1 for the event
immediately preceding and -X the earliest occurrence in the reported
background. The story may also report events subsequent to time labelled
+1 etc. (Bell 1998:95). This analysis enables the visualization of the
'time-reach' of a single news story.
The discourse structure of news genre consists of attribution,
abstract and the story proper (van Dijk 1988). There are three
additional categories of material in a news story: background,
commentary and the follow up. These represent the past, the (non-action)
present and the future of the events described in the main action of the
story. If the background goes back beyond the near past, it is classed
as 'history' (Bell 1998:67). The background in a news
discourse provides a way for journalists to comprehend the event and
create a time perspective for their audiences. These structural elements
disclose the temporality paradox of news: although journalists seek news
as close to the present as possible (journalists are always keen to get
the news fast and first), many news stories would not be stories at all
if some degree of shared historic depth could not be assumed
(Schudson:80, 84).
In general, historical references serve many useful functions in
the news story, not just by augmenting the story with context, but also
by adding new pieces of evidence, revising a once-agreed past, marking a
commemoration, and giving the story a narrative context (Winfield et
al.: 290). In addition to the background and history, the audience can
find historical background elements if the news story is analysed from
the intertextuality approach. Fairclough (referring to Kristeva 1986)
provides an approach that enables to reveal how the time structure of a
single news story is linked to other discourses both horizontally and
vertically:
On the one hand there are 'horizontal' intertextual
relations of a 'dialogical' sort (though what are usually seen
as monologues are [---] dialogical in this sense) between a text and
those which precede and follow it in the chain of texts. [---] On the
other hand, there are 'vertical' intertextual relations
between a text and other texts which constitute its more or less
immediate or distant contexts: text is historically linked with various
time-scales and along various parameters including texts which are more
or less contemporary with it (Fairclough 1992:103).
The intertextuality approach broadens the category of background
covering "events prior to the central action of the story and may
include either recent past events or more remote history" (Bell
1998:88). Absorbing different types of texts (usually fragments of
texts) from various past periods into syncretic relations empowers news
discourse to create more complex temporality than just a chain of events
on a time scale: e.g. tangible historicity, historical interpretations
of certain events, future predictions announced in the past etc.
According to how different time horizons are related to one another
and how this relationship is conceptualized, time models and time
patterns or chronotypes (Bender and Wellbery 1991) can be differentiated
in news items, such as biographical time (someone's life story),
political time, the time horizon of a generation etc. (Schudson 1986).
Thus, chronotypes (time-types) represent culturally, socially,
historically and politically formed conceptions of being temporal: the
patterns through which time is depicted (in a news story) simultaneously
reflect how events, institutions and social actors are discursively
integrated into the idea of the national. If the problem of combining
the present, past and future in creating news forms our first level of
analysis, the issue about the biographic, cultural and social
conceptualization of temporality through chronotypes forms the second
level of analysis. The issue here is which chronotypes actualize in the
news (re)producing national temporality, how those chronotypes interact,
and what their interrelations are and their relationship towards the
whole, i.e. the message of the news item.
Chronotypes, as far as they can be reproduced and changed, have a
history (or histories); they are not created from either nowhere or from
nothing, but are created from an existing cultural repertoire (Bender
and Wellbery: 4). In addition, the form of anniversary journalism
necessitates memory. At this point a link is initiated between the
notion of chronotype and cultural memory theories to be born in mind
when studying how national temporality is created. The idea that
chronotypes are based upon an existing interpretation of time in a
culture links well with the recently indicated concept in collective
memory research that no commemoration act is created out of a void, but
is based upon knowledge of preceding commemoration practices (Olick
2007). Another connection is created around the relationships of time
and narrative. Chronotypes contribute to creating national identity
through their narrativity and are thus based on memory, reproducing it.
As James Wertsch (2002) has pointed out in his concept of a
'distributive version of collective memory', narratives are
cognitive instruments, tools that offer both 'affordances' and
'constraints'. The aspects that narratives offer to
remembering are the elements of temporal organization and emplotment,
which includes both a 'grasp' of events, the actors and a
moral scheme. Collective memory embodies an orientation to the past, as
do news agenda to the future; and together both frame the reporting of
news. According to an exemplary study by Lang and Lang (1989),
journalists invoke the past with four purposes: to delimit an era, to
provide yardsticks by which they can evaluate the significance of an
event, to draw explicit analogies, or to give short-hand explanations;
and, as over time personal memories of events tend to fade and become
more remote, the more important is mediation for the event to be
remembered. In evoking the past for present purposes, journalists act as
memory agents by making use of the narrative resources of a particular
textual community, as well as mediating the different voices and
versions of the past. The third level of analysis deals with the issue
about the modes and strategies of narrativization of national
temporality in anniversary news, with the ways of evoking certain
'memories' of the past and the means of acting out
journalistic authority.
4. Non-cyclic construction of national temporality
We have analysed, as an example of a non-cyclic anniversary news, a
story on Estonian Public Television (September 1, 2007), in which the
inauguration of a monument to Johann Voldemar Jannsen, an important
figure of Estonian cultural history serves as the newsworthy impetus.
Newsworthiness within the inauguration of the monument appears
non-recurrently, linked to a significant event in Estonian history, the
150th anniversary of the first daily Estonian-language newspaper. The
presence of the President of Estonia adds value to the newsworthiness.
In this context journalists not only actualize but evaluate history.
However, most of the TV audience would probably not have recollected
that 150 years have passed since the first daily newspaper was published
in Estonian.
The visual text of the news story (presented in the left column of
Table 1) stresses the importance of the event: the camera shows
different well-known and powerful people in Estonia who have come
together to celebrate the event. The news text is explicitly
intertextual, as it incorporates fragments from speeches of newsworthy
people (speech genre is explicitly present in the news story) at the
event, as well as absorbing texts from the past. That aspect Fairclough
labels as "manifest intertextuality (specific other texts are
overtly drawn upon within a text)" (Fairclough:117). Visually the
news story does not include any other time than 'today', the
image creates a presentness although the verbal text is presented in the
past simple tense. The temporal complexity of the news story is
presented in the verbal text.
On the basis of Bell's time-scale, the historic
'reach' of the story is 150 years (-4) from the present day.
Today's event has been presented in the past simple tense (i.e. The
President told; the monument was inaugurated). The 150 years long period
since the national awakening, which is represented by establishing the
daily newspaper Perno Postimees in the news item, has been constructed
as 'continuous' uninterrupted process (From that moment on the
continuous Estonian press ...). Explicitly the connection between today
and the prior past is being presented ( ... the then edition;
predecessor).
The 'time-reach' extends back to the first half of 18th
century, the principle of separation of powers by Montesquieu, (-5)
although that time is not explicitly mentioned. A history of ideas is
being incorporated into the context of national history, while it
thematises the issue of 'free press' as being eternal.
The vertical intertextual relationships are explicitly represented
in the news text, as one of the speakers at the statue's opening
ceremony quotes from the first issue of the newspaper Perno Postimees
part of the text that was published 150 years ago (Jannsen addressed his
readers by writing: "I greet you, my dear Estonian people!").
By quoting this old text in a current context, the speaker re-emphasised
the phrases. By using this reference, the news item about inaugurating
Jannsen's monument gains another one, in addition to the motive of
the journalistically historic beginning--the motive of the national
beginning.
Estonian ethnic cultural narrative based on linguistic identity is
actualized which feeds the self-stereotype of Estonians as an
educationally curious, literate people. Jannsen's historic address
my dear Estonian people is interpreted through a quote by politician and
historian Mart Laar in terms of disruption and progress: progress
represents national development leading to establishing a nation state,
which launches from (a positive) interruption--a mental turn in Estonian
national history by establishing the continuous publishing of a daily
newspaper ([it] actually changed Estonian history). Creating a linear
causation between different 'phases' of national development
(country people--Estonian people--Estonian nation), the idea of a
homogeneous time of difference (Estonianness) is being (re)created,
which enabled the consolidation of the modern nation state (cf. Spivak
1991, Bender and Wellbery:9).
Building, through Jannsen, links between establishing a regular
daily newspaper and ethnic patriotism and creating a nation state
(future in the past) and also current conflicts are being contested. The
latter reference was in President Ilves' speech, which touched on
the relationships between state powers, the public, and the media (the
fourth estate and the watchdog of democracy). During the entire news
item, Jannsen's biography serves for the national idea. The
biographical chronotype is implicit and contextual: the news text
mentions the important acts carried out by Johan Voldemar Jannsen during
his lifetime (Establishing Perno Postimees was not the only cultural
merit by Jannsen. He was also the man to originate the tradition of the
song festivals and while singing the national anthem of Estonia we
should remember that it was Jannsen who wrote the lyrics.). Another
reference of his creative importance to Estonian identity is
incorporated into the news when the choir sings the Estonian national
anthem. In that way the self-stereotype of Estonians (a singing nation)
and the symbols of state are connected. In this news item no traditional
biographical time (e.g. the news does not include biographical schemes,
the important acts are not presented diachronically) is presented.
However, as "biographical schemes endow the meaning of short-term
action with long-term significance and link large stretches of
individuals' life" (Luckmann 1991:161-162), and since we can
propose that most of the viewers of the Estonian television news knew
the main storyline of the biography of Jannsen, the news story
indirectly links the biographical time of the man to the national time
of the Estonian people.
5. Annual anniversary news--cyclic construction of national
temporality
The anniversary of the Tartu Peace Treaty represents the type of
news that is more or less presented each year. In 2009, commercial
Television Kanal 2 broadcast a short news story concerning the Tartu
Peace Treaty. In 2010, Estonia celebrated the 90th anniversary of the
Tartu Peace Treaty, therefore as the news story was more than 5 minutes
long, we shall present only excerpts from it.
In the 2009 news story, the combination of the visual and verbal
texts creates a bridge between the past and present time. Verbally, only
the headline of the news frames the currently newsworthy element: The
President of Estonia lays a wreath on the grave of the Estonian
statesman, Jaan Poska, who successfully headed the peace negotiations in
Tartu. The verbal text presents the diachronic biography of this
important statesman, which makes the biographic chronotype the central
narrative in this news story. Visually the news also contain old photos
that construct the authenticity of the time the treaty was signed. In
this news story the vertical intertextuality is achieved by the use of
old photos, i.e. the photos as a text. As news should have a meaning for
the audience today, the year the treaty was signed is less important
than the period that has since passed, 89 years. On the metalevel the
news item constructs the founding story of the Estonian nation (the
beginning), while other time constructions more or less serve this
story. Poska's career has been 'biographized'
(Luckmann:164) by being situated in the chronology of municipal and
newly established national institutions. The other side of the story
focuses on the event of signing the Peace Treaty and its relevance in
the history of the Republic of Estonia. The photos of the document and
signing procedure represent the function of authentication of the
commemorated fact (2) and thereby legitimizing the commemorating
institution. The latter has been amplified by the laconic, conventional
and monologic character of the reporter's report, which helps to
achieve an illusion of completeness against the background of
discussions and contradictions about the Tartu Peace Treaty (cf. Table
3). The past has acquired the authoritative form of history by adding
carefully chosen facts, chronological representation and archival
discourse. By all news creating methods (visual and auditory) the
official version of the meaning of the Tartu Peace Treaty has been
represented. Hereby, history acts as a collective memory (Burke 1989),
which is guarded by the state and its institutions. This celebrates the
infinity of the institution of the state, creates continuity towards the
future.
The 2010 news story about the Tartu Peace Treaty is more complex
(it could be four different short news stories). The newsworthy events
were the celebration of the historic day in Tartu via different events:
a one-day exhibition of the Treaty document, a political demonstration
concerning the Estonian-Russian border and the opening of the monument
to commemorate the statesman and the head of the Estonian negotiating
delegation Jaan Poska later in the evening. So the viewers can
chronologically follow the selected moments of celebration throughout
the entire day.
At the same time, the news story refers to the events 90 years ago
and also to the events in 1940. As one of the main focuses of the news
story was the exhibition of the historical document of the Treaty, the
historical discourse related to this event is incorporated into the
news. The audience can also see the Tartu Peace Treaty document as it
was exhibited for one day. Hence, the past is exposed as authentically
as possible. The news story involves not only the interviewees
commemorating the present, today, as television also creates the
impression of a past continuous tense. The distant context is
incorporated into the news text more visually than verbally. The time
leaps are very noticeable as the visual text includes excerpts of
documentaries from the period of the Tartu Peace Treaty days and from
the 1940s. This is a 'manifest intertextuality' where
historical text is overtly drawn upon within the text (Fairclough:117).
The future dimension is implicit in this news story. Visual text
shows small children holding the national flags. We can assume that the
words of the Estonian Prime Minister (I believe that there are no such
people out there who wouldn't appreciate today's importance.
This day is extremely significant for the Estonian state ...) are
contextually directed to the continuity in the future.
The news item of 2010 about the Tartu Peace Treaty has many common
genrestrategic features with the news item of 2009. Just as one year
earlier, the central figure being commemorated was Jaan Poska whose
national role and the monument constitute one newsworthy act for the
news item. Although the news item of 2010 does not include any
explicitly biographical time, the commemoration of Poska performs a
hidden dialogue with his nationally historicized career, which
'addresses' the viewer from 'behind' the news text.
The same effect occurs while presenting the trajectory of the Treaty
document's 'fate': hereby the narratives important in the
post-Soviet cultural memory start referring to 'returning
home' (the original of the treaty ... was for one day brought home
... from were it had been away for 90 years) and the related
'national disruption' (after the coup d' etat; were taken
to Sweden) (cf. Koresaar 2005). (3)
Also, as in the news item of 2009, the Tartu Peace Treaty was
constructed as the 'onset' of the state (the continuity of our
independence begins ...; if that day had not taken place, we
wouldn't be standing here) and its longevity is being blessed (it
shall last eternally). In addition, the main authentication strategy of
the 'onset' is being repeated by bringing in the historic and
archival discourses.
The major difference of the 2010 news item of the previous year is
the festive nature of the anniversary, 2010 is the 90th anniversary of
the signing of the Peace Treaty. Whenever a major anniversary of an
important political event occurs, several political interest groups move
to bring their messages into the arena of 'symbolic politics of
public time' (Halas 2002). Both in 2005 and 2010, a political
demonstration took place concerning the Estonian-Russian borderline
issues, which directly affects people living either side of the border,
such as the Setu ethnic group (Meeleavaldused 2005). In 2005, some
public figures also expressed views that differed from the officially
accepted version of the Tartu Peace Treaty (Hvostov 2005, Medijainen
2005), according to which if that day had not taken place, we
wouldn't be standing here. The news item of 2010 contains no
conflict but the state authoritative voice does not massively dominate
either as it did in 2009. For instance the vox pop, which revealed that
some respondents did not know the relevance of the day (some know, some
do not) and the footage of the demonstrators.
Conclusions
This paper focused on anniversary journalism as a management
mechanism of 'banal nationalism' (Billig 1995), which sees its
role in reminding a community of its place in the 'world of
nations' by re-producing national temporality. The main focus of
the study was about time being managed in anniversary television news
and to achieve this aim, a tripartite methodology has been proposed to
deconstruct the modes and strategies of the temporization of the
national. By using the tripartite methodology, the complexity and
structural power of news discourse as temporality constructor become
visible. The deconstruction of the journalistic interpretation of a
national anniversary (as it is presented in television news discourse)
provides an opportunity to analyze how cultural templates, canonized
historical narratives, myths and ideologies but also speeches,
historical records and national rituals are mixed or embedded into news
discourse. Hence, the methodology on the one hand enables to see the
complexity of everyday news flow. On the other hand the methodology
enables to open up the variety of time conceptions that could be found
from a single news items. The complexity of the temporal matrix of news
was revealed while we deconstructed the variety of devices, of which the
news discourse consists of constructing social and cultural categories
of time.
Among the variety of news types (e.g. science news, consumer news
etc.) anniversary news play a substantial role in (re)-constructing
collective/cultural memory. We can distinguish between calendar-linked
anniversaries that are celebrated yearly and the infrequent 'single
anniversaries'. The main difference between the cyclic and single
anniversary news come from the repetitiveness.
As anniversaries usually include some kind of ritual celebration
(event), it is important to note that television news could present
these celebration events, which happened some time in the past, visually
as 'now' for the viewers while the verbal text is in the past
simple tense. Within a few minutes, news visually creates the simulation
of participation in events that in reality have lasted for far longer
than represented by the news.
One of the temporization strategies our analyzed news stories have
in common is that they refer to the period since the event, e.g. 90
years and 150 years, rather than to the year (e.g. 1920). Thus building
up a sense of duration seems to be one strategy of linking current
newsworthy events to the past. Within these periods, the 'turning
points' that affect our past and present are constructed: the
beginning of the Estonian-language weekly newspaper, the moments in the
careers of individuals or the significant travel aspects of an important
document. Accentuation of the temporal turning points in the news
stories refers to another important strategy in anniversary news: the
beginnings and endings mark the dynamics of the continuity and
interruptions of national temporality.
In both types of anniversary news, the narrativizations of time,
dependence on meaningful chronotypes and other cultural resources occur.
The analysis of our anniversary news shows a construction of two
narrative templates topical in contemporary Estonia: state-nationality
and cultural-nationality. In order to present collective history,
biographical time is grounded in a group's shared history. Thus by
synchronizing biographical, cultural and state time horizons we could
follow the construction of national temporality in anniversary news.
The use of vertical intertextuality (e.g. old photos or
documentaries that are verbally explained today) and the variety of
'voices' in news stories brings us to the issue about the
journalistic authority's relationship to the perception of time. In
other words, to discern how journalists perform as memory agents in
shaping public time and collective memory. Anniversary news in
comparison to other genres of anniversary media (features, interviews,
whole-day reportage of a national celebration etc.) provides journalists
with quite passive roles. Journalists naturally select the facts and
episodes, and construct them into interpretative frames. But the level
of journalistic commitment depends on the type of news stories. While
the short 'Tartu Peace' news story did include very little
journalistic interpretation, the other two anniversary news expose more
complex interrelations between journalism and other institutions (e.g.
The President, the municipality), organizations (e.g. museums and
exhibitions) and individuals in society concerning their involvement in
the commemoration. For example, the question by the reporter to the
Prime Minister, "But what [do you] say to those people who cannot
or refuse to respect the events of 90 years ago?" represents a
confrontation with the belief that all people in Estonia share the one
and the same narrative about the past. Thus, the role of journalists as
collective memory agents in news depends on the news story and is
dominantly implicit. Concurrently anniversary news empowers various
strategies for the construction of public time.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the European Union through the
European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural
Theory); SF0180002s07 and the Estonian Science Foundation (Grant 8190).
Address:
Halliki Harro-Loit
Institute of Journalism and Communication
University of Tartu
Ulikooli 18
50090 Tartu, Estonia
Tel.: + 372 737 5189
E-mail: halliki.harro@ut.ee
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Halliki Harro-Loit and Ene Koresaar
University of Tartu
(1) For instance the fairy-tale about the Little Red Riding Hood in
news format would not begin "Once upon a time, there was a little
girl living with her mother" or "One day her mother told
Little Red Riding Hood that ...", but rather as "Huntsman
saves a girl and her grandmother from the stomach of a wolf today",
followed by a historic context about how Little Red Riding Hood took off
to Granny's place and the huntsman's story based on an
interview of how he launched the rescue activities on arriving at
Granny's house.
(2) Jaan Poska's biography used for personfying history can
also be considered as a part of the authentication strategy.
(3) The template of 'returning home' in Estonian national
narrative represents the 'restoration' of national temporality
after the time of the 'rupture' representing the Soviet
occupations.
Table 1. "Today the monument of Johann Voldemar
Jannsen was opened", verbatim transcription of
the news text.
Representation of Verbatim Timeline schema
visual text of transcription of (Bell 1998)
newscast verbal text of news
broadcast
The anchor The bronze statue of 0 the news-
broadcaster Johann Voldemar evaluated moment
Jannsen was
inaugurated today in
Parnu.
The anchor 150 years ago, under -4
broadcaster the editing of
Jannsen the
newspaper Perno
Postimees appeared.
The anchor From that moment on -3 continuous tense
broadcaster the continuous since the moment
Estonian press 150 years ago
publication started.
The anchor Both Postimees and
broadcaster Parnu Postimees +1 Connection
consider the then between today and
edition to be their then (the past)
predecessor.
Panoramic view The statue of -2 event prior to
moving from people Jannsen was made by the central action
in Ruutli Street via Mati Karmin and it of the story date of
the choir on to cost over 600,000 creating the
President Ilves, kroons, of which monument not
Minister Janes, news half was provided by indicated precisely
publisher Kadastik the state and the
and others. other half was
contributed by Parnu
Postimees.
President Ilves The statue of Johann -4.5 (biographical
unveils the Voldemar Jannsen, time of Jannsen)
monument, the creator of Perno -4 (5 June 1857) and
Postimees, which 0 (the statue)
appeared on 5 June
1857, was erected on
Ruutli Street, in
front of the office
of Parnu Postimees.
* 3 Local celebrity At the inauguration, 0
with a child, two President Toomas
elderly persons next Hendrik Ilves spoke
to her, crowd behind about the press,
them, often defined as the
Fourth Power
* 4 President Ilves
giving a speech,
* 5 Minister of
Culture Laine Janes
in folk costume with
flowers, Mart Laar
(politician) etc.
* 6 Happy old people As to the principle -5
among the crowd, one of the separation of
lady holding a powers by
reprint of the Montesquieu, he had
original Perno in mind only the
Postimees. legislative, the
executive and the
court powers.
* 7 The reprint of According to the Time factor is
the original Perno President, calling absent
Postimees. the press the fourth
power would be
wrong.
* 8 People listening He said that the Reference to longer
to the President's press could be time period
speech. called a rank in
society, as later
philosophers have
claimed.
* 9 President TOOMAS "Being defined as a Historical ideas
HENDRIK ILVES, 'power' and a presented as
delivering the 'watchdog', the continuously topical
speech press tends to
legitimize only
* 10 Jannsen's ideas tackled by the
monument with Government, the
people, from the Parliament and the
entrance of Court. Or in other
Postimees building words: being the
fourth power and not
Speech is narrated a rank in society
as in live allows the state to
broadcast, though set the agenda for
the speech is the press."
actually recorded
and edited
Reporter's report Jannsen approached Historical
his readers by background
writing: "I greet -3
you, my dear
Estonian people!"
Mart Laar speaking "Those lines -4
* 12 MART LAAR actually changed -3.5
historian; at the Estonian history.
back: Jannsen's Maybe these lines
monument, president are the most
Ilves, etc. important ones ever
written, meaning
* 13 Kadastik, etc that--as through
these lines the
* 14 Jannsen's hitherto 'country
monument, people' turned into
integral Estonian
* 15 Monument people. And only
surrounded by five years passed,
elderly people, after which the
elderly people in meaning of Estonian
the crowd. people and Estonian
nation, about which
nobody knew anything
in 1857, had spread
all over Estonia.
* 18 Souvenirs Establishing Perno -4
presented to the Postimees was not
sculptor the only cultural
merit by Jannsen.
* 19 The monument-- He also was the man -3 (the tradition of
sliding from the to originate the song festival was
feet up to the face, tradition of song established in 1869)
festivals and while -3 and +1 connected
* 20 Choir singing the national in mentioning the
performing the anthem of Estonia, national anthem
national anthem we should remember
that it was Jannsen
who wrote the
lyrics.
Table 2. "President IIves laid a wreath on Jaan Poska's
grave". (02.02.2009, 19.00, Kanal 2, newscast Reporter).
Representation Verbatim transcription Timeline schema
of visual text of of verbal text of news (Bell 1998)
news broadcast broadcast
The anchor President Ilves laid a 0 the news-evaluated
broadcaster wreath on Jaan Poska's moment
grave.
President IIves The Estonian statesman Jaan -3
lays a wreath on Poska was born on 24 -1
Jaan Poska's January 1866 and died on 7 time between -3 and
grave. March 1920. Poska was the -1
Mayor of Tallinn, the
Deputy Prime Minister of
the interim government of
Estonia, a Minister of
Justice, and the first
Foreign Minister of
Estonia.
Photos of Tartu Author: Jaan Poska headed -1 (today 89 years
Peace Treaty the Estonian delegation at ago)
and the signing the negotiations with
ceremony. Soviet Russia. Today 89
years ago, Poska signed the
Estonian-Russian peace
treaty, which put an end to
the Estonian War of
Independence and by which
Soviet Russia recognized
the independence of
Estonia.
Table 3: News story about the 90th anniversary of Tartu Peace
Treaty, Kana1 2 'Reporter', 2.02 2010 (shortened transcript).
Representation of Verbatim transcription Timeline
visual text of news of verbal text of news schema (Bell 1998)
broadcast broadcast
Reporter standing, the Today, on the 90th 0--today, news
car of the news channel anniversary of the Tartu evaluated moment
with the Estonian flag Peace Treaty many
in the background prominent statesmen--
starting with the
President and the Chair
of the Parliament and
concluding with the
Prime Minister and many
other Ministers have
gathered in the
university town. The
entire town has been
decorated with flags.
Pictures of children Patriotic lyric song-- 0
and other people with "Estonia, you are my
flags in the streets of homeland ".
contemporary Tartu
Photos of the Peace Text of the Reporter in -6
Treaty document and the background: If the (90 year ago) +
historic views of treaty had not been continuous time
Tartu; concluded 90 years ago,
we would probably not be
living in the Republic
of Estonia in its
current meaning.
Photos of the Peace The international treaty -6
Treaty document and between the Republic of -5.9
historic views of Estonia and Soviet -5.8
Tartu; Russia put and end to -5.7
the War of Independence,
demarcated Estonia's
eastern border and,
importantly, Soviet
Russia recognized
Estonia's independence.
The Minister of Defence The celebration of the -3 (celebration
laying a wreath at the anniversary of the vital started in the
statue of Kalevipoeg, treaty already started morning)
commemorating the in the morning, laying
victory in the War of wreaths at the monument
Independence to the War of
Independence.
Portrait of the Minister: "If that day -6 until 0
minister had not taken place, we (a period since
wouldn't be standing the historical
here. It would be turning point up
impossible to equate to the present
anything else to its moment)
importance. The
continuity of our
independence begins on
the day we were
internationally
recognized, and
hopefully it shall last
eternally ..." /---/
Flag on the reporter's Reporter behind the 0 (today) ...
car; interior of the scene: And today there
premises where the was a unique opportunity
Treaty was signed; the to see with your own
Treaty document, eyes the document, which
prominent people enabled the Republic of -6
looking at the Treaty Estonia to emerge. The
document original of the Treaty--
with a very complicated
fate--was for one day
brought to the building,
from where it had been
absent for 90 years
/---/ The significant
document was not be
touched, but one could
have a close look at it.
Priit Pirsko, the state "After the coup in June, -4 (after the coup
archivist; documental the Government started in June
footage of Soviet Navy discussions of how to
cruisers on the Baltic preserve the most -5 March 1940
Sea important national
documents /.../ by
evacuating them out of
the country and already
in March 1940 four
sealed caskets [were
taken to Sweden]..."
/---/
Children's choir Children's choir 0
singing, Foreign singing. manifest vertical
Minister and the Mayor and horizontal
of Tartu ceremonially intertextuality
cutting the ribbon to
open the exhibition of
the Treaty document.
Footage of people in Vox pop among the
the streets ypassers-by if they knew
the reason for hoisted
national flags. Some
know, some do not
Children with flags in Reporter at the back: 0-5
the street, interior of /---/ But what to tell
the building with those people who cannot
historic paintings, or refuse to respect the
Prime Minister, events of 90 years ago?
historic photos on the
walls of the interior Prime Minister: "I
believe that there are
no such people out there
who wouldn't appreciate
today's importance. This
day is extremely
significant for the
Estonian state. The
Tartu Peace Treaty has
been called the birth
certificate of Estonia
--and that's the truth.
Footage of the picket Reporter at the back: 0 (during the day)
with close-ups of the During the day in -2 was a public
banners, demonstrators Vanemuise Street, next meeting
to the building where
the treaty was signed,
there was a public
demonstration where
people demanded re-
establishing the
frontiers of Estonia
designated by the
Treaty.
The President, the In the evening darkness, -1 (in the evening
Prime Minister and the the monument was darkness ...)
Mayor shaking hands inaugurated to
with people; flags are commemorate the
held by student Statesman and Head of
corporations, Prime the Estonian negotiating
Minister, Mayor and a delegation, Jaan Poska.
former dissident Another patriotic song
inaugurating the "Lord Save St Mary's
memorial bas-relief Land"
