Eesha Sardesai University of Pennsylvania June 15, 2012
[email protected] Paper originally submitted for a “Comparative Political Communication” class
Staging the Investigation: The Objectivity Paradox in Traditional and Non-Traditional Investigative Outlets This paper examines verbatim theatre as a non-traditional form of investigative journalism and its consequent role in the democratic process. It seeks to elucidate if verbatim theatre faces the same paradox as traditional newspaper investigation—namely, the competing need to provide an unbiased forum for public discourse and an adversarial argument that holds government to account. I argue that political theatre does confront this paradox, but that its objective and critical elements are conveyed and consumed differently from that of newspapers. The study analyzes original data from three verbatim plays staged in the United Kingdom, and from corresponding news coverage on the real-life events of their plots. In these case studies I find clear evidence of the objectivity paradox in both investigative forms; however, the question of how the paradox is treated in each form is more complex.
2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Research Question and Hypothesis 2. Literature Review 2a. Democratic Function of the Press and Investigative Journalism; Verbatim Theatre as Investigative Reportage 2b. Verbatim Theatre and the Objective—Critical Paradox 3. Methodology 3a. Explanation of Data Collection 3b. Background on Events of Case Studies 3c. Presentation of Data 4. Analysis of Evidence 5. Conclusion 6. References
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1. Introduction: Research Question and Hypothesis The last twenty years have seen the development of a new form of investigative journalism—and one that, perhaps surprisingly, takes place in the theater (Norton-Taylor, 2011). First created by playwrights in the U.K., verbatim theatre refers to the dramatic presentation of investigative results, the staging and reiterating of individual testimony with governmentcommissioned reviews and/or newspaper reportage (Norton-Taylor, 2011). Like newspaper investigators, the verbatim playwright aims to elucidate the causes behind incidents of major political unrest or government corruption. Given that verbatim plays are a non-traditional form of investigation, this paper examines their function in the context of free, participatory democracy. Using the work of Pippa Norris (2000), James S. Ettema (2007), and Ettema and Theodore L. Glasser (1989) as guides, it asks if verbatim theatre confronts the same paradox that newspapers find in their investigations: the competing need to be unbiased informants, facilitating the public’s exchange of ideas and opinions, and more partial critics, articulating a pointed opinion based on collectively held values (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 2)? The corollary question to this one is, if verbatim playwrights face this paradox, do they treat it differently from traditional newspaper journalists? Do they develop the critical and objective elements of their work similarly or differently from their newspaper counterparts? I hypothesize that the verbatim playwrights do face this paradox, and that the difference in communicative medium necessitates their strategies for objectivity and argument be distinct from those of newspaper journalists. Specifically, I suggest that verbatim authors rely more on the careful arrangement of testimony to make their arguments, while news authors do so through overt injection of their own voices into articles.
4 In section 2, I present a review of literature on the democratic functions of the press and
the place of non-traditional investigative journalism in this context, followed by a more thorough look at the objective–critical paradox outlined by Ettema and Glasser (1989) and others. Section 3 explains the methodology for this study, which includes a breakdown of the research methods, background information on the selected case studies, and presentation of original data. In sections 4 and 5 I analyze the results of the data collection and present my conclusions. 2. Literature Review As the introduction outlines, this paper focuses on the workings of both newspapers and verbatim theatre as investigative agents, specifically in relation to the objective–critical paradox. But before exploring the functionality of these media in the investigative role, it is necessary to outline what that role entails, and why the verbatim stage can be held to a comparable standard with long-established newspapers. 2a. Democratic Function of the Press and Investigative Journalism; Verbatim Theatre as Investigative Reportage Doris Graber (2003) identifies four expectations that the public have of the press, and these include varied surveillance and public forum functions (p. 143). Of great importance for this discussion is the expectation that the press “act as a public watchdog that barks loudly when it encounters misbehavior, corruption, and abuse” (Graber, 2003, p. 143); it is within this “watchdog” domain that investigative journalism typically operates (Graber, 2003, p. 147). If, in a free democratic system, investigative reporting proves an adequate watchdog, the assumed result is a more just and responsive government. Investigative journalists would ideally work on behalf of the public, actively and consistently holding the government accountable for its
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actions—to the point where just the threat of investigation is enough to deter malfeasance (Graber, 2003, p. 147). James Ettema (2007) adds to this point the importance of public forum, noting that a rigorous journalistic investigation must present a balance and diversity of opinion and provide marginalized groups of the public with adequate voice (p. 156). He cites a mid-1990s Chicago Tribune investigation into overturned homicide convictions as a quintessentially bad example: “The investigative reports and editorials spoke almost not at all on [the victim families’] behalf or the justice owed them. This journalism merely invoked their existence” (Ettema, 2007, p. 157). Newspapers have long been delegated investigative responsibility, with coverage of Watergate and the Mai Lai massacre of the Vietnam War attesting to their potential for success (Graber, 2003, p. 147). But what of verbatim theatre? Little academic work has been done to compare the relative investigative merits of verbatim theatre and newspapers. This is due to several factors: aside from the predictable dearth of research on verbatim theatre in general (it being a new form, emerging in the 1990s), the assignation of set standards for “good” investigation journalism is problematic. Quality-based judgment calls are usually circumstantial for journalistic pieces; comparing what is “good” or “thorough” in one investigative case might not apply to another. That said, there has been vociferous support for the investigative legitimacy of verbatim theatre from the non-academic community of journalists and theatre experts. And while their opinions lack the rigorous research backing of a scholarly argument, their deep understanding of one or both fields (journalism and theatre) promote their inclusion in this discussion. Richard Norton-Taylor (2011) perhaps best illustrates this point, as an investigative journalist for the
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Guardian whose transcripts on various cases of British corruption (the arms-to-Iraq and Stephen Lawrence murder inquiries) have been translated to the stage. He writes, I began to appreciate that theatre is a tremendous platform for journalists, a medium that offers more space, more words, and more scope than newspapers and TV and radio news bulletins. Our “tribunal plays”…are taken from longrunning public inquiries…that are treated quite superficially or incompletely in the mainstream media. (Norton-Taylor, 2011) Similar articles on the subject have been published in support of Norton-Taylor’s opinion (see Blank and Jensen, 2010, and Gardner, 2012). 2b. Verbatim Theatre and the Objective—Critical Paradox If we consider verbatim theatre as a legitimate investigative force, it is necessary to evaluate whether or not it falls prey to the same issues that plague traditional newspaper investigation. Pippa Norris (2000) and James Ettema (2007) articulate investigative journalism’s main problem in roughly the same terms, and it draws directly from the different democratic functions mentioned above. Norris and Ettema posit that the news media, and investigative journalists more specifically, seem caught between the need for fair, impartial reporting that encourages pluralistic civil debate and more critical, editorial argument on government actions (Norris, 2000, p. 29). In an earlier work with Theodore L. Glasser (1989) Ettema puts a name to this conflict: “the paradox of disengaged conscience” (p. 3). He and Glasser explain that this paradox has deep roots in Western (specifically American) journalism, that the “full account of the intimate relationship between adversarialism and objectivity would begin where the history of modern journalism begins: the penny press” (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 4). From there they bring up
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an interesting point, a nuance that proves useful for identifying the objective and critical aspects of investigative analysis. They argue that while certain elements of coverage might be clearly “objective” or “adversarial,” the case-by-case nature of investigative work also means that the “[a]ppropriate objective standards are rarely self-evident,” and that “the task of ‘empirically determining’ them is rarely simple” (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 2). In-depth investigation requires journalists to “articulate the moral order by exposing incontrovertible transgressions against that order”; the very act of “articulating morality” to justify one’s stance on an issue implies a subjective basis for supposedly objective standards (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 2). Ettema and Glasser (1989) distill these objectified moral claims into five categories of appeals, all of which rest on a social accepted authority. These are appeals to laws, formalized codes and guidelines, recognized expertise, normality or statistical comparisons, and common human decency (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 2). The authors assert that appeals to these authorities, while seemingly objective, actually aid in critical, opinionated argument. This paper takes these studies (those of Ettema (2007), Ettema and Glasser (1989), and Norris (2000)) a step further: it examines whether verbatim producers face the same paradox between objectivity and opinion or adversarialism. Is the tension between the two investigative goals evident in verbatim theatre plays? If so, what strategies do these producers employ to deal with the paradox, and how do these strategies differ from those of newspaper journalists as indicated by the texts? Connecting these ideas to the broader democratic functions of the press, how does each outlet’s response to the objectivity paradox implicate where it stands in the “public forum” versus “watchdog” debate? In the following sections I obtain original data on this topic, and examine according to criteria based, in part, on the work of the above-cited scholars.
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3. Methodology The hypothesis of this paper was previously set out as follows: that verbatim plays and newspapers confront the same paradox between detached, objective reporting (encouraging public forum) and incisive editorial comment (assuming a watchdog role), but that they do so in fundamentally different ways. I further conjectured that the style of the medium affects the nature of opinionated argument in each case, with verbatim theatre relying more on the arrangement of testimony to convey a certain message, and newspapers on the writer’s voice. This section explains the methods used to this hypothesis and presents the results of my original research. 3a. Explanation of Data Collection In selecting plays and newspaper articles for this study I focused on work done in the United Kingdom, where verbatim and political theatre has enjoyed substantial popularity and critical praise (Norton-Taylor, 2011). I collected qualitative data from three plays, each of which followed a scene of political and social upheaval in the U.K., and from the Guardian newspaper coverage that ran in the time period that the plays are concerned with. (An in-depth explanation of each incident and my reasons for choosing it immediately follows this explanation.) The Guardian is known for tending politically left (“General Election,” 2010), and therefore makes a suitable counterpart to the plays, which all offer more of a liberal-minded opinion of the events.1 For the sake of balance (the play texts ranged from about 60 to 100 pages) I examined all of the newspaper articles in a given case study as one body, and looked for holistic patterns.
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Note: That said, there is a strong possibility that the results of this study would be different if more newspapers (especially those with larger circulation and a center-right stance in contrast to the Guardian) were considered. The
9 The criteria along which I examined these texts were derived inductively, based on
patterns I saw in the articles and dramatic pieces, and also guided by Norris (2000) and Ettema and Glasser’s (1989) description of the objectivity paradox. The general guidelines for examining both a play and its accompanying set of articles were inevitably similar, but it is worth noting that the two distinct forms were not compared on how much more or less objective they were than each other. Rather, I looked at how each medium treated the paradox, how these respective treatments aligned or differed from one another, and what they both meant for the nature of investigative work more generally. In approaching the plays, I first noted those elements of the text that were definitively characteristic of the detached observer who facilitates public forum, or of the opinionated investigator who holds the body in question to account (p. 3). The former (the gauge of objectivity) was determined largely by the nature of research and testimony that the piece drew from, especially the diversity of opinions included. In one case (The Colour of Justice, explained in depth later) the objective side included the structure of the play: it was set up in the style of a tribunal, with a balance of witness–prosecutor back and forth. Determinants of editorial comment were found in the narrative elements of the play: how the set of testimony, though transcribed directly, was arranged to tell a story or convey a point; emotional appeals or prompts to personal identify with one of the afflicted parties; or emergent themes and patterns in the piece. I also looked for instances in which the plays proved their point through what Ettema and Glasser (1989) described as the articulation of a moral order (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 2). These messages rested on appeals to social and political authorities such as laws, formalized codes and guidelines, recognized expertise, normality or statistical comparisons, and common
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human decency (Ettema and Glasser, 1989, p. 10). The appeals were noted as evidence of a critical bent to the piece. As was mentioned before, the criteria for elucidating the relatively objective and subjective in the newspaper articles closely followed those used for the verbatim plays. I first gathered evidence of decidedly impartial and critical reportage. “Impartial” reporting included the diversity of people and opinions represented, as with the plays, but also the ratio of straightreported (i.e. simply covering the events, with little to no added comment) to editorial pieces within each set of articles. On the “critical” side, I considered how many of the pieces had either a strong or subtle editorial voice, and the effect of this voice and the viewpoint it conveyed; I also looked for emotional language and prompts for personal identification with one party or another. Finally, I noted the newspapers’ reliance on the authority appeals outlined by Ettema and Glasser (1989). 3b. Background on Events and Corresponding Theatre and Newspaper Coverage 1. Stephen Lawrence Case In April 1993 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by a group of white youths in what soon became clear was a “murder motivated by racism” (Barkham, 1999). The case was (and still is) controversial for the Metropolitan Police’s failure to administer Lawrence the proper first aid treatment when they arrived on the scene, and to bring successful charges against the five men who were “widely viewed as prime suspects in the murder” (Barkham, 1999). The Macpherson report, a government-commissioned public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death, was published six years later in 1999, and its critical finding was of “institutional racism” in the police force (Barkham, 1999). Richard Norton-
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Taylor’s verbatim play, The Colour of Justice (also published in 1999), is devoted to the text of the inquiry, and derived directly from its transcripts. I therefore looked at the corresponding news coverage: that which surrounded the publication of the report. 2. Deepcut Barracks Case Between 1995 and 2002 four recruits died at the Deepcut Barracks in Surrey, England, and all were explained as suicides. The Surrey Police conducted two investigations into the deaths (they acknowledged the first one—which posited the suicide explanation—to be “flawed”), and Ministry of Defence commissioned Nicholas Blake QC to carry out a review to determine whether a full-fledged public inquiry was needed (Ralph, 2008, p. 19). Blake’s report correlated with the Surrey Police’s second investigation, maintaining that the deaths were suicides but that there were “institutional failures to identify potential sources of risk and address them” at the barracks (Norton-Taylor, 2006). The families of the Deepcut victims refuted Blake’s review and demanded an independent public inquiry, citing corruption in both Surrey investigations and flaws in Blake’s review: Blake could not cross-examine witnesses, his only evidence came from the Surrey investigations, and the conclusion that these were “probable” suicides (meaning more than 51% chance) did not verify that they were “beyond all reasonable doubt” (Ralph, 2008, p. 20). This paper examines two reactions to the Blake review. First is the verbatim play Deep Cut, which focused on the fight of victim Cheryl James’ parents against the review; it sourced both original testimony obtained by playwright Philip Ralph and transcripts of previously published materials. The second is the newspaper coverage that surrounded the Blake review’s publication. 3. Tottenham Riots Case On August 4, 2011, Mark Duggan was fatally shot by a police officer in Tottenham, London.
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Tottenham police initially justified the shooting by saying that Duggan pulled a weapon on the officer, but the evidence surrounding that claim was quickly disputed by people close to the victim (Bolesworth, Neild, Beaumont, Lewis, & Laville, 2011). Two days after the shooting Duggan’s friends and family attempted to hold a peaceful protest in Tottenham, but this soon escalated into a fiery set of riots—perpetrated not by the original protesters, but by local residents who heard about a resistance movement via Twitter and Blacbkerry Messenger. The Duggan shooting has been generally agreed to be simply the “spark” that incited the riots, but not the real underlying cause (Lewis, Newburn, Taylor, & Bell, 2011). This paper looks at two attempts to elucidate this cause: one through verbatim theatre (Gillian Slovo’s The Riots, published in November 2011), and the other in the Guardian’s “Reading the Riots” investigative series published in December 2011. Both source exclusively original material obtained by Slovo and Guardian staff, respectively. 3c. Presentation of Data Stephen Lawrence Case 1. Verbatim Play: The Colour of Justice by Richard Norton-Taylor The first of the verbatim plays examined in this study is The Colour of Justice, which was transcribed directly by Norton-Taylor from the government-commissioned Macpherson inquiry. For the play Norton-Taylor distilled 11,000 pages worth of testimony into roughly 100. He included the questions of eleven lawyers from the defense and prosecution (including those speaking on behalf of Stephen Lawrence’s family and friends). He also used testimony from nineteen witnesses, who included police officers on the scene of the crime and detectives who were in charge of the case afterward, Lawrence’s family and his friends, another witness to the crime, and a suspect (Norton-Taylor, 1999, p.17-18).
13 The objective, “public forum-worthy” portions were many. As indicated above, the play
offered a diverse range of opinions, from family to policemen to suspect. The voice of the writer was notably absent; the entire action of the piece played out through reiteration of testimony from the inquiry, with no added narration from Norton-Taylor. It was set up in the style of a tribunal, which, in allowing the witness immediate opportunity to defend him or herself, gave the impression of balance—and inherently fairness—to the piece. This impression was reinforced by inclusion of Macpherson’s directions to both sides’ counsels to abstain from harsh questioning (Norton-Taylor, 1999. p.30, 121). On the other hand, there was substantial evidence to support Norton-Taylor making a pointed, critical argument in the piece. He included passages from the Macpherson inquiry that repeated the same few themes—namely, the police officers’ failure to provide Lawrence with first aid training or to take adequate notes of the investigation, and more broadly, the Metropolitan Police Service as “institutionally racist” (Norton-Taylor, 1999, p.5). Of the ten police officers put on the stand, all but two received questions like “Have you experienced racism in the police force?” and “What is the word that you use most regularly to describe nonwhite people?” (Norton-Taylor, 1999, p. 46, 74). Norton-Taylor further emphasizes the corruption in the police force by including the long, often emotional anecdotes of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence and Duwayne Brooks, Stephen’s friend who was with him when he died; theirs are the only passages of this kind in the piece, and they inherently prompt empathy from the audience. An excerpted portion of Brooks’ statement reads: “I think of Steve every day. I’m sad, confused and pissed about this system where racists attack and go free but innocent victims like Steve and I are treated as criminals…”(Norton-Taylor, 1999, p. 97).
14 As for Ettema and Glasser’s (1989) more subtle notion of objectified value judgments,
Norton-Taylor indirectly relies on them through the patterns of testimony that he crafts. In addition to the question of racism, officers were asked about their first aid training (which they had all received), and their appalling failure to administer this aid to a man in clearly critical condition (Norton-Taylor, 1999, p. 26, 30, 42-43). The repeated appeal here was to both a formalized code—it is the duty of any first-aid-trained person, and a police officer foremost, to administer aid to those in obvious need of it—and to common decency. 2. Newspaper Coverage: February-August 1999, surrounding Macpherson report The Guardian coverage surrounding publication of the Macpherson inquiry comprised sixteen articles, including one as a “look back” on the aftermath of the report in August 1999. Six of the articles offered straight explanation of the report’s main tenets, with little added comment. The other ten analyzed the document in more depth. Some authors included reactions of the public, the police, and the Lawrences to the report; others expanded on the report to make their own arguments on the topic of racism in the police force and in society. The impartial elements of the newspaper’s coverage—those that would ideally promote public discourse—were clear. Over a third of the total coverage was devoted to summarizing the report and explaining its findings, without added comment; from these articles, the readers were to presumably draw their own conclusions. There was even an article devoted to exploring different definitions of the term “institutional racism,” which was central to the Macpherson report’s findings (“What is institutional racism?” 1999). Diversity of opinions featured in the paper was also substantial. Sir Paul Codon, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner whose testimony Richard Norton-Taylor omitted from his play, was the subject of three of the articles and gets to speak in his own defense (Campbell and MacAskill, 1999). Readers could also learn
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the opinions of then-Home Secretary Jack Straw, who commissioned the report, of members of the public such as the Bishop of Southwark and an Eltham teenager, and of the Lawrence family, who still felt marginalized after the report’s publication (“Reaction to the Lawrence report,” 1999; “Angry family,” 1999). Still, a critical message emerged over the totality of the coverage, and it can be encapsulated by the caption to one of the articles: “The Macpherson report is thorough and wise, but only a beginning” (“Let this be his epitaph,” 1999). It is significant that ten of the articles went beyond a simple breakdown of the report and into deeper analysis; within those, five were pointed editorials with a clear writer’s voice calling for reform in the police force and explaining how that institution’s racist tendencies reflected on English society at large (“Angry family,” 1999). In the most strongly opinionated of these articles authors employed emotional language and anecdotal examples—tools that boost a specific reading of an event. An example from one author reads, “The heart breaks, not just for [the Lawrences] but for what we have done to them” (“Let this be his epitaph,” 1999). As the last quote suggests, this coverage contained authority appeals to common decency, especially for the sake of the Lawrence family. An article calling for more action in the aftermath of the report began as follows: “The parents of Stephen Lawrence made it painfully clear yesterday that the euphoria surrounding the publication of the Macpherson report cannot hide the truth of racism in Britain” (“Angry family,” 1999). These appeals were often coupled with an appeal to laws and governing bodies. The work of the Commission for Racial Equality was integral to the argument of at least two of these pieces, and in demanding police reform one author writes, “First and foremost the police – along with other public services—are to be brought within the ambit of the 1976 Race Relations Act” (“Let this be his epitaph,” 1999).
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Deepcut Barracks Case 1. Verbatim Play: Deep Cut by Philip Ralph Deep Cut was drawn from transcripts of interviews conducted with the author; Nicholas Blake QC’s “Deepcut Review” (the Ministry of Defence-commissioned review into the case, which concluded that a full-scale inquiry was unnecessary); press releases from the Surrey Police, IPCC, and the House of Commons Defense Select Committee; and six pieces of journalism that included newspaper articles and BBC interviews. Ralph conducted interviews with the parents of Deepcut victim Cheryl James, with a recruit who was at the camp with Cheryl, and with Frank Swann, the forensics expert for the case who refused to cooperate with Blake’s review because he suspected it was biased. Ralph purposefully abstained from interviewing members of the serving army, government, and Ministry of Defence (MoD). As with The Colour of Justice, the first evidence of the detached, informative observer in Deep Cut came in the lack of an articulated narrative voice: Ralph arranged testimony and transcriptions without inserting personal commentary. There play offers some diversity of opinion—though perhaps not as much as in the Norton-Taylor play—and Ralph’s interviewee omissions can be defended on two counts. First, the play was not entirely void of the government or MoD opinion: these were expressed through reiteration of the Blake report, and of BBC interviews with the chair of Defence Select Committee and the commanding officer at Deepcut in 1995 (Ralph, 2008, p. 31). Second, as Ralph explains in his introduction, the decision to avoid re-interviewing these officials sprung from a desire for a more open public forum. “[T]he government and MoD have daily, unfettered access to the loudest possible megaphone—namely, the UK press” (Ralph, 2008, p. 23). He continues, “If…I can go some way to provide [Cheryl James’s] family and others with access to a megaphone of their own then I see that as being
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absolutely the right course of action” (Ralph, 2008, p.23). Thus in focusing on the James family’s testimony, he gives greater voice to an important but previously marginalized group. But the focus on the James family also allowed an opening for critical argument, and Ralph made this argument through narrative. More so than the other two plays, Deep Cut billed itself as a story sympathetic to one party; the back cover of the play book described it as “a bold and compelling account of one family’s journey through a time they thought they’d never experience” (Ralph, 2008). He excerpted long, emotional passages of the James parents recalling their daughter, a choice which would inherently attract audience sympathy and (if the piece did not already) align them with the parents’ call for justice and another public inquiry (see Ralph, 2008, p. 35-36). Ralph compounded this impression with his free arrangement of testimony in the play, which, unlike The Colour of Justice, was obtained from various sources and not restrained by a tribunal format. His positioning of passages from the Blake inquiry was telling: on at least three occasions, he immediately followed the reading with testimony that either contradicted Blake or exposed a flaw in Blake’s work. Ralph excerpted, for example, Blake’s announcement in 2004 of the inquiry, in which he invited those “who have relevant information to come forward” (p. 70). Directly after this came testimony from Cheryl’s fellow recruit, who said, “QC Blake had no interest in speaking with me whatsoever” (Ralph, 2008, p. 70). The authority appeals of Ettema and Glasser (1989), and the objectified argumentation they represent, appeared in Deep Cut as well. The appeals came in various forms, but perhaps the most representative example was Frank Swann, the forensics expert on the case. He stood for what Ettema and Glasser (1989) loosely term “recognized expertise”; his repeated interjections—often after a reading of the Blake report, with forensics evidence to debunk Blake’s findings and prove that the Deepcut deaths were not suicides—were to be accepted as
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fact. Whether or not this assumption was valid, but it was in service of an argument on “right” and “wrong,” with clear indication as to who falls into each camp. 2. Newspaper Coverage: Late March 2006, surrounding Blake review
Guardian coverage anticipating and following the Blake review comprised just seven
articles, all of which relayed the contents of that report with only slight comment or analysis beyond that which echoes Blake’s own suggestions. (The dearth of newspaper analysis would, in fact, be a prime motivator for Ralph and the Welsh theatre company that commissioned him to write Deep Cut (Ralph, 2008, p. 22).) Sources that the Guardian consulted in addition to the Blake review included the father of one of the dead recruits, the Surrey Corroner, an MP, and the armed forces minister. As a result of being mostly direct reportage of the Blake report, this coverage easily adopted the voice of a detached observer seeking to inform. The headlines for these articles often referenced or directly quoted the inquiry: “Bullying systematic at Deepcut, says QC’s report,” or “Deepcut officers blamed over ‘failure to protect’.” And, as with the Macpherson inquiry, most of these pieces aimed simply to explain the report and its findings to the newspaper’s readership: the article about bullying, for example, detailed the exact abuses that Blake identified to be happening at Deepcut, with a link to the full review online for those seeking more information (Norton-Taylor, 2006). And though coverage beyond the immediate contents of the Blake review was scarce, five of the articles did attempt to balance the reporting with a sentence or two about the unhappy reaction of the victims’ families to the report. Three other sources beyond the Blake review were consulted, so some variety in opinion—though not nearly as much as reporting on the Macpherson inquiry garnered—was available to the public.
19 Although there was a lack of overt editorial argument in Guardian coverage of the piece,
the coverage was not entirely impartial. The paper implicitly agreed with the findings of the Blake report, and the proportion of space given to Blake and his conclusions versus that to the adverse reactions of the victims’ parents speaks to this point. The main theme of Blake’s review—that harsh treatment of recruits at training camps was the problem at hand, and not the possibility that these deaths were murders and deserved a public inquiry—was mirrored in six of the seven articles. Testimony from the affected families, while indeed obtained and inserted in five articles, was taken from only one of the eight parents involved. With the exception of one article, which offered a four-sentence expansion on the topic, this testimony consisted solely of the following sentence: “The families of the dead soldiers have demanded a public inquiry” (“Deepcut report,” 2006). In several articles this sentence was followed by a justification of Blake’s position (namely, that insufficient evidence had been found for the inquiry), an arrangement that would at least in part discredit the marginal opinion (Townsend, 2006). This de-emphasis on the family opinion is supplemented the sort of appeals mentioned by Ettema and Glasser (1989). Nicholas Blake and the Surrey police investigators were the recognized experts in this case; the articles repeatedly justify the merit of his work, using his expertise as a reason. After one mention of the families’ unhappiness, a Guardian reporter writes, “The controversy surrounding the deaths has already been the subject of a series of investigations. Blake told The Observer last week there had been so much research into the enduring controversy a large section of his ‘lengthy’ report…was dedicated to analyzing old findings” (“Deepcut report,” 2006). The call for reform in the army was also strengthened by an appeal, only in that case to a formalized code: it was the responsibility of officers to protect their trainees and report any abuses of power (Townsend, 2006).
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Tottenham Riots Case 1. Verbatim Play: The Riots by Gillian Slovo The Riots was created entirely from original testimony obtained by Slovo in the four months following the August 2011 riots in Tottenham, London. At least thirty people were interviewed for the piece, most of them multiple times, and they represented a cross-section of the population involved: members of the police and government, a man whose apartment burnt down in the fires of the riots, leaders of youth and community organizations, a pastor, a doctor, and the rioters themselves. Slovo’s intent was to elucidate—or at least begin to understand— what caused the riots (Slovo, 2011, p. 5). As with the other plays, the most obvious objective element was the lack of overarching narrative voice. The play was constructed entirely from spoken testimony, not including that of the author. Slovo’s efforts to obtain testimony from members of different professions and classes—from policy figures to the looters on the ground in Tottenham—also provided the audience with a demonstrable variety of opinions. She further supplemented this impression of objectivity with her initial stage direction: “They speak throughout in matter-of-fact tones. No heat, no melodrama, just telling us how it is” (Slovo, 2011, p.7). There were, however, certain emergent themes in the piece, and a clear message by the end of it. These included, first, a sense of the heightened, frenzied, uncontrollable emotion that surrounded the riots; and second, that the riots were not primarily a senseless, opportunist rampage, but rather an explosion of underclass dissatisfaction with the police, government, and dire economy. The first point was mostly relegated to the first act and played out in Slovo’s many artistic and dramatic stage directions. The piece began with the following instruction: “Large and prominent: photographs and moving footage. The most dramatic that can be found of
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the riots in progress….Noises of riot. Of sirens. Helicopters. Shouts” (Slovo, 2011, p. 11). Twitter messages were projected onto the walls as well, and at increasing speeds, to impress this idea on the audience (Slovo, 2011, p. 21). The second, more important point about social and political discontent was conveyed through Slovo’s arrangement of the testimonial evidence. The point was made explicitly and extensively in the last act, the part that audience members are most likely to remember. All of the police testimony (i.e. their defense against the accusation that they failed to immediately or effectively respond to the escalating riots) was left in the first act. The rioter testimony, which in the first act included only that which would paint the event as opportunity crime (“I even took aa-a DVD box set…I know it’s free so I’m takin’ it”) turned suddenly more rational: “If I had money to myself put away in a bank or wherever from workin’, then why do I need to go out risk myself getting risked for lootin’?” (Slovo, 2011, p. 23, 53). And the final ten pages of the play text are almost exclusively devoted to testimony critiquing the lack of government-subsidized services for disadvantaged youths. The authority appeals in The Riots followed those seen in other pieces examined in this paper. The anecdotes from rioters about their inability to rise from poverty, coupled with the sharp critiques about youth engagement that Slovo inserts after them, function both as an appeal to common decency (to help the fellow man) and to formalized code (it is the government’s responsibility to care for its youth and provide them opportunities to prosper). 2. Newspaper Coverage: December 2011, “Reading the Riots” series Similar to Slovo but a month later, the Guardian, in partnership with the London School of Economics, published the first part of its “Reading the Riots” report with original investigation into the August 2011 riots. The report was drawn from “confidential interviews
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with hundreds of people directly involved in riots in the six cities” (Lewis and Newburn, 2011). (The second part of the report, forthcoming this year, will interview government and police officials.) Thirteen articles were published summarizing the first portion of the report. Seven of the articles offered extensive analysis into the causes of the riots; six examined the rioters themselves, and often directly quoted the youths; two studied public reactions to the event. (Note that a few of the lengthier articles overlap in topic—hence the discrepancy in number of articles and topic breakdown.) There were aspects of the “Reading the Riots” coverage that would definitively count as impartial and objective. None of the thirteen articles were straight editorial pieces; rather, the writers focused on summarizing the report and relied on direct quotation of the rioters for the bulk of their pieces. And although this series represented just half of the final project and therefore offered a one-sided view of the issue (the rioters’ side), it encouraged public forum through the voice it gave a group not always allowed press access (Topping and Bawdon, 2011). On the other side of the objective–critical paradox, there were elements to this coverage that did promote a specific reading of the issue. The significance of the Guardian publishing rioter testimony first cannot be denied, especially with such a gap between the publication of each section (as of April 2012, there was still no word on when exactly Part II would be released). For months, this would be the only perspective available for readers uninvolved with the riots to understand them. Moreover, though the articles comprising this coverage were not stylized as strictly editorial, in at least half of them the authors injected their own opinions to frame the presentation of issues at hand. “The rioters’ discussions of race give us a glimpse of different lives, different perspectives, and different value systems—some of it cause for hope, even amid disorder, some cause for despair,” concluded one author (Muir and Adegoke, 2011).
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The opinion was subtle but present, and the crux of it was sympathetic to the plight of the rioters. Lengthy profiles of individual rioters, featured in at least two of the articles, further attempted to humanize them, and to dispel perceptions of them as purely opportunist. There were pieces in which the rioters shared their moral qualms with the destruction they caused, and others in which they explained the need that drove their looting: one rioter was quoted as saying “If I had a job I wouldn’t be here now, yeah? I’d be working” (Newburn, Lewis, Addley, Taylor, 2011). As Guardian coverage gradually shifted from asking what caused the riots to the related question of whether or not the rioters were wrong for their actions, the appeals to authority became apparent in the text. Appeal to common decency recurred often, with excerpts such as the one above (from the man without a job) implicitly drawing the sympathy of the reader. References to statistics and survey data were made as well, specifically to back up the articles’ more emotional or humanistic appeals: one example reads, “[r]ioters cited poverty and policing as the two most important causes of the riots, with 86% and 85% of respondents respectively saying the causes were ‘important’ or ‘very important’” (Prasad, 2011).
4. Analysis of Evidence While further research—into more verbatim plays and coverage beyond that of the Guardian—would strengthen the analysis derived from this evidence, the data can still give tentative answers to this paper’s initial hypothesis. The data shows that verbatim theatre and newspapers do face the same paradox between being a detached, observant force that facilitates open public discourse and a critical source that holds governing agencies to account. Each play and corresponding body of news articles contained a combination of objective and critical elements; no text examined in this study fell definitively on one side of this continuum,
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suggesting that the question of objectivity extends beyond the realm of newspapers to investigative work more broadly. The second part of this paper’s hypothesis posited that the manner in which this paradox plays out (i.e. how a piece conveys its objectivity or critical argument) varies with the nature of the medium. I suggested that argument is more likely to rely on arrangement of evidence in verbatim theatre, and on the insertion of the author’s voice in newspaper articles. The data collected from the three case studies does not disprove this assertion, but it shows the matter to be more complex.2 For the most part, the verbatim dramas met the requirements set forth in the hypothesis and methods for the study. All three pieces (though Deep Cut somewhat less than the others) featured multiple and opposing opinions on the issues at hand, thereby facilitating public forum (Ettema, 2007, p.156). (This follows logically, given the nature of the medium: conflicting opinions can endow a piece—and especially a performance—with a sense of action and purpose.) The plays’ impression of objectivity was compounded by the lack of additional, editorial comment from any of the writers; all play texts were derived entirely from transcriptions of published reports and testimony. Editorial argument came through most notably in the arrangement of these transcripts, with the writers often ending the pieces with statements that most accorded with a message for social or political reform. Anecdotes and reenactment of witness emotion were also common, prompting sympathy and alignment with that witness’s side of the story. Findings from the newspaper coverage were slightly more unexpected. The diversity of opinions presented varied notably by case study; articles following the Macpherson report gave 2
This conclusion first became clear to me when I set out the methods for this study, as they had to be derived inductively. It was confirmed after data collection.
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voice to various classes of government and the public, while those for Deepcut focused mostly on the government, and those for the riots, on the public. From this metric alone it is difficult to generalize how newspaper coverage services public forum. But that quandary is countered by the significant portion of articles in each case study that lack the editorial voice that was expected to predominate. In at least half of all examined articles the authors abstained from overtly imposing their thoughts. Rather, they focused on distilling the facts about the event or report in question so that readers could draw their own conclusions. On the other hand, it would be remiss to assume that the newspapers were devoid of editorial, “watchdog” comment. The other half of articles did in some way opine on social and political life, whether in the form of a traditional editorial column or through subtle insertions of commentary in an otherwise fact-based piece. Extended, often emotional anecdotes were excerpted in two of the three studies, notably in favor of one party’s opinion. A note must also be made with regard to the authority appeals described by Ettema and Glasser (1989), and their implications for this study. The data found that these appeals were made in each of the six texts, with appeals to common decency and formalized codes or guidelines among the most common. The appeals (and the value judgments they stood for), though subtle and often implicit, were important: they guided the critical, editorial bent of each piece. (Recalling, for example, the argument for more youth services articulated in The Riots and the corresponding Guardian coverage, it is clear that this opinion grew from an expectation that a human should help a fellow human, and that the government is duty-bound to oversee the welfare of its citizens.) From this evidence it is clear that the paradox of objectivity and argument, of providing public forum and serving as a government watchdog, is treated in similar and different ways by
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verbatim theatre and newspaper journalism. There is overlap in the use of emotion and authority appeal for argument. There is evidence that testimony in newspapers can be arranged to make a point, and that investigative newspaper coverage does not always require the author to insert his or her voice. Yet the two media still differ in a crucial, if more nuanced, way: their flexibility to use these respective strategies. Based on the evidence obtained in this study, it would seem that the theatre pieces can still more easily arrange testimony to create a focused narrative or discourse—one that can undermine or bolster the validity of the original sourced material (e.g. exposing the flaws of the Blake report). Similarly, the option of adding editorial comment is more available to newspaper journalists than to verbatim authors; for the playwright to insert his or her voice would undercut this theatre’s aim to “[tell] us how it is” (Slovo, 2011, p. 7).
5. Conclusion In parsing the objective and critical elements in verbatim theatre and newspapers, the broader point is to understand the social function of investigative work. Do we, as a society, deserve more objective, impartial reporting that prompts us to draw our own conclusions and engage in discourse with fellow citizens? Or is there merit to having an opinion offered to us, especially if it accords with what Ettema and Glasser (1989) describe as socially held notions of moral rightness? One of the main findings of this study—that the objective–critical paradox also exists in non-traditional investigation like political theatre—suggests that we need both, and that investigative work must offer balance these two ends of the democratic spectrum. The second finding of this study illustrates how the watchdog and public forum roles develop in each medium. There are similarities but also key differences, a result which necessarily begs the question: when is theatre the best option for investigative information and analysis, and when are the newspapers? To an extent, this can depend on context and public mood. In the U.K., for
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example, skepticism with newspaper journalism’s ability to “ask the relevant questions” has served as a rallying cry to head to the theatre (Norton-Taylor, 2011). But I would suggest that the two media can function together to inform the public—each taking advantage of its resources and flexibilities of form to provide the most thorough, incisive picture possible of the contemporary state.
28 References
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General Election 2010: The liberal moment has come. (2010, April 30). The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/the-liberal-moment-has come Graber, D. (2003). The Media and Democracy: Beyond Myths and Stereotypes. Annual Review of Political Science, 6(1), 139-160. Let this be his epitaph. (1999, February 24). The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/feb/25/lawrence.ukcrime21 Lewis, P. & Newburn, T. (2011, December 4). The Reading the Riots project: our methodology explained. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/05/ reading-the-riots-methodology-explained Lewis, P., Newburn, T., Taylor, M., & Ball, J. (2011, December 5) Rioters say anger with police fuelled summer unrest. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ uk/2011/dec/05/anger-police-fuelled-riots-study Muir, H. & Adegoke, Y. (2011, December 8). Were the riots about race? The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/08/were-the-riots-about-race Newburn, T., Lewis, P., Addley, E., & Taylor, M. (2011, December 5). David Cameron, the Queen, and the rioters’ sense of injustice. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/05/cameron-queen-injustice-english-rioters Norris, P. (2000). Chapter 2: Evaluating Media Performance. In A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies (22-35). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Norton-Taylor, R. (2006, March 29). Bullying systematic at Deepcut, says QC’s report. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/30/military.
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Norton-Taylor, R. (1999). The Colour of Justice: Based on the Transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: Oberon Books. Norton-Taylor, R. (2011, May 31). Verbatim theatre lets the truth speak for itself. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/may/31/verbatim theatre-truth-baha-mousa Prasad, R. (2011, December 4). English riots were ‘a sort of revenge’ against the police. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/05/riots-revenge against-police Ralph, P. (2008). Deep Cut. London: Oberon Books. Reaction to the Lawrence report. (1999, February 24). The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/feb/24/lawrence.ukcrime9 Slovo, G. (2011) The Riots. London: Oberon Books. Topping, A. & Bawdon, F. (2011, December 5). ‘It was like Christmas’: a consumerist feast amid the summer riots. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/ 2011/dec/05/summer-riots-consumerist-feast-looters Townsend, M. (2006, March 25). Deepcut officers blamed over ‘failure to protect.’ The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/26/ military.theobserver What is institutional racism? (1999, February 24). The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/feb/24/lawrence.ukcrime7?INTCMP=SRCH
