The journalist in the story. Conceptualizing ethos as integral framework to study news production, news texts and news audiences

Abstract

Abstract This theoretical article presents ethos as a conceptual framework to understand journalism’s authority and shifting epistemologies. We argue that ethos, the strategic self-image of the journalist in the text, is an essential part of the performative potential of journalism, even in detached “objective” journalism where journalists are seemingly absent in their articles. Analyzing journalism from an ethos perspective, elucidates how journalists build on and rework epistemological frameworks while ensuring the performativity of their text. Drawing on narratological theory, we show that ethos is ambiguous and that the possible disparate evaluations of the journalist’s reliability by audiences impact the possibility of news stories to enact their performative potential. Ethos offers an integrated framework for studying relationships between news texts and news production, contexts and audiences, highlighting how values such as reliability, authenticity or objectivity are projected, circulated and attributed in the journalistic field and the information ecology at large.