Reportern som ett verktyg för att belysa de andra

Narratologiska konsekvenser av den journalistiska ögonvittnespositionen

Abstract

The Reporter as a Tool of Enlightenment: Narratological Consequences of the Journalistic Eye-Witness Position

A reportage is the reporter’s story about reality. Even though it details real events, it always presents a personal interpretation of these events. In contrast to the news article, which primarily informs readers, a reportage involves a pronounced degree of personal narration. Normally it is based on the reporter’s role as an eyewitness.

This essay discusses how the position of the eyewitness establishes narratological structures in the text, which seem to differ from the structures present in other kinds of non-fiction narratives told in the first person. For instance, in reading an autobiography, a reader’s empathy will be drawn toward the main character. By contrast, a reportage will direct the reader’s empathy away from the reporter and towards the other.

The narratological construction of a reportage may be studied as an interplay between three instances: the experiencing reporter, the narrating reporter and the director (the implied reporter). Thus, a three-part model may be utilised in order to help explain, for example, how a homodiegetic narrator can be combined with external focalisation, and how a character other than the experiencing reporter can be internally focalised. It can also illuminate how the text may employ a form of dissonance between the experiencing and the narrating reporter to serve a journalistic purpose (displacing the perspective from person – the reporter – to subject-matter).