Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134

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Discourse, Context & Media

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Towards a multidimensional approach to journalistic stance.

Analyzing foreign media coverage of Belgium$
Bram Vertommen n, Astrid Vandendaele 1, Ellen Van Praet 1
Ghent University College, Faculty of Applied Language Studies, Groot-Brittanielaan 45, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Available online 27 July 2012 This paper argues for an expansion of the traditional notion of journalistic stance as dened by Martin
Keywords: and White (2005). Its main plea is that appraisal resources, metaphors or agency expressions in a
Journalistic stance newspaper article are not the only traces of a journalists line of vision: a journalists assessment as to
Appraisal theory whether particular information is worth mentioning in the article and whether or not the information
Linguistic ethnography will be covered in substantial detail are also be it less explicit and hence more difcult to pin down
Media discourse expressions of evaluation.
News production is in essence a delicate game of choice-making at various levels, not only between
including overt or implicit evaluative expressions in the text, but also between providing more or less
relevant information, and between giving a detailed or vague description of that information: choices
which are at all times governed and constrained by the specic socio-economic and professional context in
which the journalist operates. For that reason this paper argues that future research on journalistic stance
should try to expand the notion of evaluation to all discursive levels at which choice-making is at stake.
In order to support our claim, the paper presents a case study cross-comparing 48 news articles
reporting on one and the same news event: the resignation of the Belgian federal government in April 2010.
The articles were written by 16 different foreign correspondents attached to broadsheet newspapers from
four neighbouring countries of Belgium. The majority of the news articles are characterized by a low
frequency of explicit evaluative language (reporter voice). Relying on systematic cross-comparison of
appraisal resources and triangulation with ethnographic data, the paper uncovers manifestations of
journalistic stance across multiple levels of discourse in order to demonstrate how the intricate puzzle
of choice-making affects coverage of the news event.
& 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction coined by Martin and White (2005), has increasingly attracted

Referring to the varying resources for expressing patterns of
evaluative language in written text,2 journalistic stance, as it was
$
The data in this paper are collected under the authority of the HOF Research
Foundation, Ghent University College. The study outlined here forms part of the
research project Belgium in the news: a discursive analysis of the news production
process and is situated within the association research group ITMF (Interdiscipli-
nair Taal & Media Forum [Interdisciplinary Language & Media Forum]). See also:
Vandendaele, Vertommen & Van Praet, to appear; Van Praet, Vertommen,
Vandendaele & Van Hout, to appear.
n
Corresponding author. Present address: University of Antwerp, Rodestraat 14,
B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. Tel.: 32 3 265 43 15.
E-mail addresses: bram.vertommen@ua.ac.be (B. Vertommen),
Astrid.Vandendaele@UGent.be (A. Vandendaele), Ellen.VanPraet@UGent.be,
ellen.vanpraet@hogent.be (E. Van Praet).
1
Present address: Ghent University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, B-9000 Ghent,
Belgium. Tel.: 32 9 264 78 80, 32 9 224 97 38.
2
The last decade of the 20th century has seen the rise of systematic studies of
(written) media discourse. Flowing from that increasing academic interest in the
effects of newspaper articles on readership communities (Fairclough, 1995; van
Dijk, 1998; Richardson, 2007), an area of specic interest for divergent research
traditions has been the variety of linguistic resources through which journalists
interest from divergent research traditions.3 Journalistic stance
basically refers to how sets of evaluations relating to people,
objects or ideas enhance coherence in a text, explicitly or
implicitly unveiling particular lines of vision (Verschueren,
1999, 2012). Martin and Whites interpretation of the concept is
rooted in the systemic functional linguistic study of appraisal
(Martin and White, 2005, 2007; Iedema et al., 1994), which
focuses on lexico-grammatical items expressing evaluation and
emotions (so-called Mood resources (Halliday and Matthiessen,
(footnote continued)
can discursively encode (personal or intersubjectively shared) ideas, attitudes or
opinions about the topics and/or events they cover. Among the various notions
related to this particular issue, this paper will focus exclusively on the one
proposed by Martin and White (2005): journalistic stance.
3
From its rst mention onwards, focus on journalistic stance has gradually
shifted from linguistic data to a variety of semiotic resources (news images, etc.)
(Caple, 2008; Economou, 2008, 2011) and from a predominantly formal analysis of
discursive stance markers (Bednarek, 2006, 2009; White, 2006) to a complemen-
tary view on its rhetorical and ideological effects in specic political and/or
economic contexts (Thomson et al., 2008).

2211-6958/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2012.06.003
124 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134

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Fig. 1. Progress of foreign news coverage on Belgium, based on average number of articles about Belgian news events per month.

2004).4 Relying on such evaluative items, journalists typically invite
their readership to align (see also Cotters, 2010 notion of readership
community) by expressing (either personal or shared) viewpoints,
and continuously shifting the responsibility for those viewpoints
(averred versus mediated attribution, Hunston, 2000).
Bednarek (2006) justiably remarks that appraisal theory lacks a
separate parameter for the variable of importance. She links her own
interpretation of importance to concepts of newsworthiness and
relevance: assessments dealing with importance evaluate the world
(and discourse about it) according to the speakers judgment of its
status in terms of importance, relevance and signicance (Bednarek,
2006, p. 50). The parameter is also included in the evaluative
framework of Thompson and Hunston (2000), who add that evalua-
tive elements dealing with importance are often metalinguistic signs:
adverbs like obviously or importantly typically indicate which
part of the discourse has to be evaluated as signicant and guide the
interlocutor towards the focal point of the text.
Although recognizing the impact and signicance of the
parameter of importance for analyzing journalistic texts, the focus
in these studies lies on evaluations which are either explicitly or
implicitly revealed through attributive adjectives, discourse mar-
kers, prosody or other devices.
However, many evaluations dealing with importance are not
simply traceable by analyzing systemically observable lexico-gram-
matical features in the text. In order to fully grasp aspects of
relevance and importance (Sperber and Wilson, 1995, 2004), it does
not sufce to analyze a newspaper article in isolation.5 Instead, this
paper suggests expanding the investigation of aspects of relevance/
importance beyond the boundaries of one text/article.
(i) First, cross-textually juxtaposing the different representations of
one topic or news event in the coverage of different journalists,
we demonstrate how to gain insight both into the information a
4
In this paper, analytical focus has been restricted to attitudinal expressions
of judgement (evaluations dealing with peoples behavior and ethics) and
appreciation (evaluations dealing with aesthetics).
5
This argument is by no means new. Similar assertions have been put forth
already in the 19801990s by critical discourse analysts such as van Dijk
(1985a,b), Fairclough (1995) and others.
particular journalist does not refer to6 and into the relative level
of detail with which he/she describes people or concepts.
(ii) Second, complementing text analysis with an ethnographic
investigation of the underlying news production process
(NT&T, 2011), we present a more holistic approach to journal-
istic stance (Richardson, 2007; Verschueren, 2001; Blommaert,
2001, 2005; Erjavec, 2004; Philo, 2007) in which aspects of the
news production process are also taken into account. What
counts as the nal news product, is inevitably affected and
dened by, on the one hand, people [agents] and, on the other,
the cultural and institutional environment in which they oper-
ate [structure] (editorial guidelines, journalistic values and
standards (Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Bell, 1991; Harcup and
ONeill, 2001), cultural background, even technological issues
(Van Hout and Macgilchrist, 2010)). Consequently, in order to
potentially grasp the social meaning(s) of a newspaper article, it
is essential to complement a product-focused analysis of news
texts with an (ethnographic) investigation of the underlying
production process.
In order to support our plea for a twofold expansion of the
notion of journalistic stance, we resort to (i) a systematic cross-
comparison of evaluative linguistic elements in the articles and
(ii) a triangulation of these text-analytical observations with
interview data. The corpus compiled for the text analysis consists
of 48 news articles on one key event, the resignation of the
Belgian federal government in April 2010. The articles were
written by 16 different foreign correspondents attached to broad-
sheet newspapers from four neighbouring countries of Belgium
(United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands).
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains the process
of data collection and selection. Section 3 constitutes the analytical
part of this paper: it demonstrates foreign correspondents divergent
degree of detail (Section 3.1) in representing the governmental crisis
along with strikingly different perspectives and takes on the event
(Section 3.2). Finally, in Section 4, we present some concluding
remarks and avenues for further research.
6
See also van Dijks (1985a,b) analytical focus on omitted information when
examining the micro-structure of news texts. Fairclough (1995) breaks discourse
into presence, absence and presupposed. Present items are either explicit in the
background or foreground in text while absence means omitted information.
 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134 125

Table 1
Overview of the selected articles.

Title Label Journalist Newspaper Date

Belgian Prime Minister famous for resigning gets his hat-trick DC.1 David Charter The Times 23/4/2010
Fall of Belgium coalition threatens its Brussels chair role SP.1 Stanley Pignal Financial Times 23/4/2010
Belgium: Coalition breaks down over language dispute IT.1 Ian Traynor The Guardian 27/4/2010
En Belgique, la mediation de Jean-Luc Dehaene entre Flamands et JS.1 Jean-Pierre Stroobants Le Monde 22/4/2010
francophones tourne court
Un petit bout de Belgique met le pays au bord de limplosion; [y] JS.2 24/4/2010
Decodage; La Belgique est-elle mortelle? JS.3 27/4/2010
En Belgique, le roi accepte la demission du premier ministre JS.4 28/4/2010
Belgique; Flamand delit de scission; Analyse JQ.1 Jean Quatremer Liberation 23/4/2010
Yves Leterme, Flamand en agrant echec JQ.2 30/4/2010
En Belgique, une campagne qui demarre a blocs; Analyse JQ.3 30/4/2010
La solution Dehaene pour en nir avec le casse-tete belge; [y] JM.1 Jean-Jacques Mevel Le Figaro 20/4/2010
Le gouvernement belge chute pour la troisie me fois; [y] JM.2 23/4/2010
Le gouvernement belge gagne cinq jours de repit JM.3 24/4/2010
Albert II examine les options pour sauver son royaume; [y] JM.4 28/4/2010
La Belgique victime dune nouvelle crise politique YN.1 Yann-Antony Noghe s La Tribune 23/4/2010
Le roi tente deviter la fracture linguistique en Belgique YN.2 26/4/2010
La Belgique cherche un compromis pour la peripherie bruxelloise; [y] SM.1 Sebastien Maillard La Croix 21/4/2010
Le gouvernement belge tombe sur le conit communautaire; [y] SM.2 23/4/2010
La Belgique joue cette semaine son avenir politique; [y] SM.3 26/4/2010
La Belgique cherche une issue a limpasse; [y] SM.4 28/4/2010
Les partis amands belges jouent la montre; [y] SM.5 29/4/2010
Flamen sprengen Koaltion; Belgiens Regierung zerbricht [y] TK.1 Thorsten Knuf Frankfurter Rundschau 23/4/2010
Im Scheitern erfahren TK.2 27/4/2010
Konig sucht Premier; In Belgien zeichnet sich Neuwahl vor EU-Vorsitz ab TK.3 28/4/2010
Belgiens sehr spezielle Krise WB.1 Werner Balsen Berliner Zeitung 23/4/2010
Belgien vor einer neuen Zerreiprobe; [y] SB.1 Stefanie Bolzen Die Welt 23/4/2010
Belgiens Konig muss zwischen Pest und Cholera wahlen SB.2 28/4/2010
Belgiens Regierung zerbricht an Sprachenstreit CG.1 Cerstin Gammelin Suddeutsche Zeitung 23/4/2010
Die Regierung ist weg, der Streit bleibt CG.2 28/4/2010
BHV oder B-HV und kein Ende; [y] MS.1 Michael Stabenow Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 23/4/2010
Belgische Grenzen MS.2 24/4/2010
Nur scheitern konnen sie gemeinsam; [y] MS.3 28/4/2010
Het is een akkoord, of de chaos MP.1 Marc Peeperkorn De Volkskrant 22/4/2010
Diepe crisis in Belgie na val kabinet MP.2 23/4/2010
BHV verbrandt toekomst Belgie MP.3 23/4/2010
Byebye Belgium, of: heeft dit land nog zin? [y] MP.4 24/4/2010
Waal verkent chaos in Belgie; [y] MP.5 26/4/2010
Crisis maakt Belgie stuurloos MP.6 27/4/2010
Kabinet van Yves Leterme denitief op de klippen MP.7 27/4/2010
Belgie is virtueel failliet, de elite heeft gefaald; [y] MP.8 28/4/2010
Gdvd! smst Dehaene; BHV breekt Belgie weer op; [y] JVK.1 Jeroen van der Kris NRC Handelsblad 22/4/2010
Compromis raakt steeds verder uit zicht; [y] JVK.2 23/4/2010
De minst waarschijnlijke kandidaat; Didier Reynders, [y] JVK.3 26/4/2010
Gevraagd: vijf minuten moed; [y] JVK.4 27/4/2010
Koning Albert zoekt uitweg uit Belgische chaos; [y] GM.1 Gijs Moes Trouw 23/4/2010
Taalkwestie nu nog verder op scherp; [y] GM.2 23/4/2010
Realiteit Belgische crisis overtreft ctie; [y] GM.3 24/4/2010
Franstalige Belgen luiden de alarmbel; [y] GM.4 30/4/2010

2. Methodology and corpus design
2.1. Text analysis: the case of 22 April 2010: the resignation of
Leterme II in Belgium (Table 1)
The case study presented in this paper focuses on articles
covering one specic news event. On 22 April 2010, the Flemish
liberal party (Open Vld) left the current federal government
coalition in Belgium. This incident gave rise to the resignation
of the Leterme II government (on 26 April 2010) and ultimately
also to new elections (June 2010). The Belgian governmental crisis
in 2010 can be dened as a critical discourse moment (Chilton,
1987; Carvalho, 2008) that is, a key period characterized by a
signicantly high critical awareness in media and/or other
domains. If we look at all Belgium-related output of the corre-
spondents in our corpus, we notice that Belgium-related news
peaks in April 2010, i.e. the fall of Leterme II and June 2010, i.e.
when federal elections took place (see Fig. 1).
In the foreign press, the event was framed as an enduring
conict between the two biggest language communities of Bel-
gium: Dutch-speaking Flemings and Francophones. The point of
contention was a bilingual electoral and judicial district that
comprised the Brussels-Capital Region and the Flemish periphery
of Brussels. This district is called Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde (abbre-
viated as BHV).
In the text analysis, we rst discerned discourse topics (van
Dijk, 1977; Chafe, 1994) related to the fracture between Flemings
and Francophones: issues such as the reference and (political)
background of BHV, the geographical situating of BHV, the
mention of side-participants such as the Supreme Court, and so
on. For each topic, we collected and compared all propositions7
7
In this paper, a proposition refers to one single idea (information concerning
some situation(s), event(s) or state(s) of affairs, etc.) that is verbally expressed
(mostly by means of a clause) (see Lambrecht, 1994, pp. 5253).
126 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134
Table 2
Overview of the interviews.
Journalist Media
Stanley Pignal Financial Times
Vanessa Mock The Independent
Gijs Moes Trouw
Andy Carling & Cillian Donnelly New Europe
Jeroen van der Kris NRC Handelsblad
Michael Stabenow Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Robert Bloemen ANP
David Charter The Times
Rory Watson The Times
Marc Peeperkorn De Volkskrant
Stefanie Bolzen Die Welt
Jean-Pierre Stroobants Le Monde
explicitly mentioned in the articles. In that way, we tracked down
subtle detail differences among the articles. For example, with
respect to the reference of BHV, we found that most correspon-
dents do refer to BHV by name, that one British correspondent
(Charter) suggests the existence of an electoral district without
mentioning the name (redrawing constituency boundaries
(DC.1)) and that two other British correspondents (Pignal and
Traynor) are completely silent about it.
The compiled corpus mainly consists of newspaper articles
which can either be characterized as reporter voice or correspon-
dent voice texts. Overall, in the majority of the selected articles,
explicit linguistic expressions of authorial stance are reduced, and
if they occur, they are represented in an impersonalized way (see
(Bednarek, 2009) for a discussion about degrees of personaliza-
tion in evaluative language). These observations are in line with
Whites (1998) classication of political reports as hybrid genres,
allowing more freedom of evaluative expression than, amongst
others, crime reporting or economic news coverage.
2.2. Ethnographic analysis: the interview data (Table 2)
Ethnographic eld work consisted of face-to-face interviews
with 13 foreign correspondents8 attached to print media, in order
to gain better insight into their attitudes, value systems, concerns
and motivations.
With purpose built tools for classifying, sorting and arranging
information, NVivo 9 research software gave us the opportunity to
analyze the large amount of interview data, identify themes, and
code those themes accordingly under labels called nodes. Keep-
ing this papers focus on BHV in mind, we selected key items for
coding, such as Belgium, Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia, French
speaking, Dutch speaking, sources, etc.
It should be noted that NVivo allows researchers to construct a
hierarchy between nodes. These so-called coding trees are useful
tools for easy reference, as well as for analytical purposes. The
hierarchy of codes enabled us to glean insight into correspon-
dents attitudes towards the selected coded items. Moreover, we
could develop meaningful conclusions, based on (the coding of
recurrent items in) their answers.
The remainder of this paper, then, will demonstrate foreign
correspondents divergent degree of detail (Section 3.1) in repre-
senting the governmental crisis along with strikingly different
perspectives and takes on the event (Section 3.2). In order to do
8
Eight out of the 13 interviewed correspondents (Charter, Pignal, Stroobants,
Bolzen, Stabenow, Peeperkorn, van der Kris and Moes) wrote at least one article
covering the Belgian 2010 governmental crisis. The ve other journalists (Carling,
Donnelly, Mock, Bloemen and Watson) did not report on this news event, but their
interview statements concerning some of the topics in this paper (e.g., degree of
detail, source selection) were considered valuable contributions to the observa-
tions made in the ethnographic part of our analysis.
Code Location Date
BC_I1_SP_TVH Financial Times-desk (Hertogsstraat 39, 1000 Brussel) 9/3/10
BC_I2_VM_EVP Residence Palace (Wetstraat 155,1040 Brussel) 12/5/10
BC_I3_GM_AV&BV Berlaymont-building (Wetstraat 200, 1000 Brussel) 16/12/10
BC_I4_AC&CD_AV New Europe-desk (Tervurenlaan 96, 1040 Etterbeek) 5/1/11
BC_I5_JVDK_AV Private address 26/1/11
BC_I6_MS_AV&BV FAZ-desk (Belliardstraat 1971, 1040 Brussel) 27/1/11
BC_I7_RB_AV ANP-desk (ResidencePalace, Wetstraat 155, 1040 Brussel) 9/2/11
BC_I8_DC_AV Berlaymont-building (Wetstraat 200, 1000 Brussel) 16/2/11
BC_I9_RW_AV The Times-desk (Bld. Charlemagne 26, 1040 Brussel) 21/2/11
BC_I10_MP_AV Exki (Bld. Charlemagne 38, 1040 Brussel) 25/2/11
BC_I11_SB_AV Die Welt-desk (ResidencePalace, Wetstraat 155, 1040 Brussel 7/3/11
BC_I12_JS_AV Le Monde-desk (Avenue dAuderghem 2728, 1040 Brussel 16/3/11
so, we rst resort to a systematic cross-textual comparison of the
articles, before contextualizing the text observations by means of
interview data.
3. Analysis
3.1. Finding#1: the devil is in the details.
3.1.1. Text observations: cross-textual comparison
First and foremost, news articles substantially differ in the
degree of detail with which crucial concepts (e.g., Brussel-Halle-
Vilvoorde), political actors and parties (e.g., Alexander De Croo
and his Flemish liberal party, Open VLD) are represented.
Overall, the three British correspondents in the corpus (Charter,
Pignal and Traynor) cover the governmental crisis in a far less
detailed way than their colleagues. First, unlike all other journalists
in the corpus, none of the British correspondents mentionthe
moot point in the communal conict, BHV, by name (see Table 3a
and b). Charter formulates the whole issue as a row over redrawing
constituency boundaries (DC.1) and how to redraw electoral bound-
aries in the towns of Halle and Vilvoorde [y] (DC.1) and Traynor only
limits himself to a description of a linguistic dispute over voting in
Brussels (IT.1). Whereas these two correspondents still refer to a
conict related to an electoral district (e.g., constituency/electoral
boundaries, [y] over voting in Brussels), Pignal does not touch this
particular topic at all.
Second, apart from the most central functionaries in Belgian
politics (the (resigning) prime minister (Yves Leterme)), the king
(Albert II) and the former prime minister and president of the
European Union (Herman Van Rompuy, only DC.1 and SP.1), the
three British correspondents do not mention prime key gures in
the governmental crisis such as Jean-Luc Dehaene (the royal
mediator and former prime minister) or Alexander De Croo (the
recently appointed president of the Flemish liberals). In sharp
contrast, these protagonists are all mentioned by the majority of
the other correspondents (see Table 4a and b).
A similar pattern is found with respect to the representation of
political parties (see Table 5a and b): the British journalists do not
mention ofcial party names, whereas the other correspondents
especially in the case of the Flemish liberals (Open VLD), the party
which decided to leave the government coalition rather prefer
to use the concrete acronym. Pignal and Traynor only refer to the
Flemish liberal party (SP.1) and Flemish liberals (IT.1). Charter
even keeps silent about the political color of the party in question
and simply makes mention of a key coalition partner (DC.1)
walking out the current coalition. In addition to a less accurate
mention of key actors and concepts in the Belgian 2010 govern-
mental crisis, British correspondents were also found to give brief
background information about Flanders and (Francophone) Wal-
lonia. More concretely, they geographically and/or linguistically
 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134 127

Table 3
(a and b) The concept Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde. Key to symbols: (A) BHV is mentioned by name; (B) BHV is not mentioned by name (but there is some reference to an
electoral district); and (C) BHV is not mentioned by name (and there is no reference to an electoral district).

Table 4
(a and b) Reference to main political protagonists. Key to symbols: (A) King Albert II, (B) Alexander De Croo, (C) Jean-Luc Dehaene, (D) Yves Leterme, (E) Olivier Maingain,
and (F) Didier Reynders.

situate the two conicting regions of Belgium: Flanders as the [Belgium is divided in Dutch-speaking Flanders in the
northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium and (Francophone) north and in French-speaking Wallonia in the south.]
Wallonia as the southern part:
(3) Innenpolitik war in dem durch Spannungen zwischen
niederlandischsprachigen Flamen, die rund 60 Prozent der
(1) His [Herman Van Rompuy, BV] departure paved the way
Bevolkerung stellen, sowie Wallonen und ebenfalls
for the return of Mr Leterme, a centre-right politician from
mehrheitlich franzosischsprachigen Brusselern gepragten
the Dutch-speaking northern half of the country with a
Belgien nie leicht zu durchschauen. (MS.1)
record of antagonizing the French-speaking Walloons
[In Belgium, tormented by tensions between
living in Belgiums southern half. (SP.1)
Dutch-speaking Flemings who constitute about 60 per
cent of the populationand Walloons as well as largely
They share this apparent need for explicit contextualization
Francophone citizens of Brussels, it is not easy to gain a
with most of the German journalists, who also make room to
clear view of the internal politics.]
explain these two region names to their readership:

(2) Belgien ist in das niederlandischsprachige Flandern im French and Dutch journalists, on the other hand, apparently
Norden und in die franzosischsprachige Wallonie im assume this geographical and linguistic information to be part of
Suden geteilt. (TK.3) their readerships world knowledge.
128 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134

Table 5
(a and b) Reference to political parties: which parties are mentioned and how are they introduced? Key to symbols: party acronyms: (A)(L) and general party descriptions:
(A0 )(L0 ).
 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134
3.1.2. Ethnographic observations: interview data
A major concern of foreign correspondents when making
particular choices concerning Belgium as a news event, is the
relevance to the reader. By and large, we could state this is rather
low. As one correspondent put it bluntly:
(4) SB: Our readers knowledge of Belgium is zero. So I can
basically report on anything.9
As generally the reader is not aware of the specic goings-on
in Belgium, the foreign correspondent in Belgium is challenged to
make particular well thought-out choices in his readers interest.
Especially so since if the reader does not see a personal connec-
tion of any sort to the story the correspondent brings, he will not
be engaged (Cotter, 2010) and the story will lose its appeal to the
majority of the intended readership.
For example, when it comes to the political conicts in Belgium,
and the case of BHV in particular, correspondents nd it difcult to
engage readers. As a few of our correspondents stated:
(5) RW: Im sorry. The complexity of Belgian politics doesnt
interest people.
(6) SP: Its not interesting.
There is however a noticeable difference when it comes to the
degree of reader interest in Belgium, when we look at the Dutch
correspondents. They all state that, although the topics are often
complex, there is an innate interest in Belgian current affairs: the
Dutch like to keep up with the Joneses and look at Belgium as a
little brother whose plans and accomplishments are always inter-
esting, although often very different and far-removed from the
Dutch (political) scene. One correspondent testied how, according
to him, the Dutch reader (and even his editors) will usually prefer
nding out about Belgian news events, over EU coverage:
(7) GM: I have noticed with my editors and the people I talk
to that theres actually a lot of interest in Belgium and, to
be honest, I believe that based on what I hear and pick
up from reader feedback what I write about Belgium is
read more. That people truly nd it more interesting. True:
there are always those who are interested in Europe, but
often they are professionals, sometimes people that are in
one way or another civil servants involved in it,
politicians. [y] Whereas Belgium, and anything to do
with the country, is very interesting to a lot of readers, I
think. And I try to cover it fairly seriously.
Not only is the readers level of interest nigh non-existent, an
added dimension of difculty for the correspondent is the fact
that the reader often regards the political situation in Belgium as
incomprehensible.
(8) GM: When it comes to the language issues and politics,
people will naturally think: they cant get things
organised, and its incredible and incomprehensible.
Belgium has a complex structure indeed: it consists of one
central government and three regions. Each region has its own
government possessing as much power as the central government.
The Belgian Constitution recognizes three languages, divided over
9
All interviews have been conducted in English or translated to English. The
original transcripts can be obtained via the authors.
129
four linguistic regions (Willemyns, 2002; Sinardet, 2008): Dutch
(60 per cent of the population) in Flanders, French (40 per cent of
the population) in Wallonia, and German in the eastern areas on the
borders with Germany (74,000 speakers). The capital Brussels is
ofcially bilingual (DutchFrench). This further complicates the
correspondents task and choices, as he is forced to provide a
sufcient amount of background and insight to not only keep the
reader interested, but to allow him to grasp the complexity of the
topic. When it comes to the BHV case for instance, the often used
concept of Flanders immediately gives rise to confusion and
misunderstandings if the correspondent omits any explanation.
British correspondent Pignal considers incorporating additional
detail with such a concept as standard practice:
(9) SP: We would never describe Flanders without saying its
the northern part of Belgium, that speaks Dutch. [y] It
would nearly be a baseline. [y] You can look at what
weve written, but we would typically say Flanders, the
northern Belgium, Dutch speaking and rich.
Furthermore, apart from repeatedly explaining concepts, when-
ever a breakthrough occurs, the correspondent is obligated to recite
a restrictedversion of the latest state of affairs. Concerning the
BHV case, Pignal disclosed what that stripped-down rendition of the
most recent complications entailed:
(10) SP: When Leterme came in, well say He has to deal
with [y] an intractable political problem that has a
[inaudible] relation, [inaudible] relationship between
French and Dutch speakers. [y] But thats it. Its
probably a bit too [y] detailed for [y] for our readers.
Another challenge is the fact that the correspondents themselves
are not always entirely comfortable with the topic at hand; because
of their extremely diversied set of tasks, most of them are not able
to completely immerse themselves in the matter. Our correspon-
dents testied how they are time and time again confronted with
the need to provide enough background information, and how that
complicates their job as this knowledge is not something that is
attained easily. It remains problematic, even to the supposed
experts. One correspondent clearly set out how he, despite the
challenging nature of the topic, goes about tackling BHV:
(11) GM: About the ongoing matter of the BHV constituency
around Brussels. If I [y] decide to go into more detail,
then I would say: where French speakers, although living
in Flanders, are able to vote for French speaking
politicians. Sometimes, cause yeah, you have to vary at
times, I will write: BHV, constituency around Brussels,
which is actually one of the last, I will put it this way,
political subdivisions is of Belgium that is not right when
we consider the language factor. Something like that.
With respect to BHV and the Belgian political landscape, most
correspondents feel that, despite their efforts to explain, it is
extremely difcult to enhance both the readers interest in the
complex topic and their knowledge of the different parties and
concepts. Still, whenever a crucial development in the conict
takes place, the foreign correspondent in Brussels is obligated to
albeit brieymake mention of it. One correspondent put this
frustration into words when he said:
(12) GM: I will probably be asked again: Yeah, but what is
going on there, and what is it all about? You can
130 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134
basically explain over and over again on a daily basis,
I think and [y] whether anyone really remembers? Im
not sure. I think the reader at most remembers that there
is something going on with that constituency and with
language and they want to change all that, but whether it
really sinks in? Im not sure at all.
3.1.3. Observations
Summarizing, our twofold approach has enabled us to con-
textualize recurrent cross-textual differences in the degree of
detail with which crucial concepts, political actors and parties are
represented by the correspondents. With the aid of interview
data, we were able to show how the patterns we discovered
(surrounding the British correspondents less accurate mention of
key actors and concepts in the Belgian 2010 governmental crisis
and the inclusion of a brief geographical and/or linguistic back-
ground of the conicting regions Flanders and (Francophone)
Wallonia) were intricately related to correspondents concern
with the reader community; more specically with the readers
level of interest in the topic and their ability to comprehend the
complex matter. In addition, the correspondents own (un)fami-
liarity with the topic at hand also turned out a crucial factor in the
ultimate representation of the news event.
3.2. Finding#2: balancing Belgium
3.2.1. Text observations: selection
A second nding in the cross-textual analysis relates to how
differently French and Dutch correspondents approach aspects
related to the governmental crisis. This will be illustrated by
means of two cases: (4.2.1.1) the French focus on linguistic
minority rights versus the Dutch interest for the equality princi-
ple and (4.2.1.2) the performance of Vlaams Belang [Flemish
Interest] in the Chamber of Deputies.
3.2.1.1. Individual (language) rights versus equality principle. Many
of the differences in coverage between the French and Dutch
correspondents are traced back to divergent perspectives on what
is the crux of the BHV conict. In the French media, the main issue
is the imminent loss of linguistic and administrative rights for the
large Francophone minority in the BHV district:
(13) Au coeur de ce dossier, qui cristallise des decennies de
desaccords, il y a des droits de quelque 150 000
francophones de la peripherie de Bruxelles, [y] (JS.3)
[In essence, this case, which crystalizes decades of
disagreements, concerns the rights of about150 000
Francophones in the periphery of Brussels, [y]]
In the Dutch media, however, the point of departure is usually
the fact that Francophone BHV citizens have the opportunity to vote
for Francophone parties in Brussels (whereas Flemings do not have
similar facilities in Walloon districts with a large Dutch-speaking
minority). On 23 April 2010, Peeperkorn introduces BHV as follows:
(14) In BHV mogen Franstalige partijen op Vlaams
grondgebied stemmen winnen, Vlaamse partijen hebben
die mogelijkheid niet op Waals terrein. Het
Grondwettelijk Hof oordeelde in 2003 dat dit
discriminerend was. (MP.2)
[In BHV, Francophone parties are allowed to gather votes
on Flemish territory, Flemish parties do not have this
possibility on Walloon territory. The Constitutional Court
judged in 2003 that this was discriminatory.]
Both groups of correspondents start from the (imminent)
violation of a universally accepted legal principle. In the case of
the Francophone correspondents, the Flemish demand for a scis-
sion of BHV and for an exclusively monolinguistic policy in the
Halle-Vilvoorde district (collective rights) clashes with the
intended protection of individual (language) rights for minorities
as ratied in, amongst other things, the European Charter for
Regional and Minority Languages (Council of Europe). For the Dutch
journalists, by contrast, the privilege of Francophone parties to be
eligible in a Flemish district conicts with the equality principle.
Since one of the decisive factors for guaranteeing individual
language rights to a linguistic minority is its size (May, 2005),
French correspondents (and German journalists as well) strongly
focus on the numerically high number of Francophone citizens in
BHV. For that purpose, they often seem to employ the linguistic
strategy of quantication (Martin and White, 2005): in order to
pinpoint the size of the Francophone minority in the Brussels
periphery, numbers (plus de 100 000 francophones [more than
100 000 Francophones]) are imprecisely measured.
(15) Depuis les lustres, les negociations entre les deux
communautes achoppent sur le sort de plus de 100 000
francophones qui habitent la peripherie de Bruxelles, en
territoire amand. (JM.2)
[Since time immemorial, the negotiations between the
two communities have foundered on the fate of more
than 100 000 Francophones who live in the periphery of
Brussels, on Flemish territory.]
Dutch correspondents almost never make mention of the
Francophone minority in BHV, let alone of their rights. In most
cases, the facilities of Francophone parties, and not of the citizens,
are the pivot of these journalists description of BHV (see (5)).
Only Van der Kris briey and supercially deals with the linguis-
tic minority rights debate and represents it as one of the key
interests of FDF, a small Francophone Brussels party:
(16) Aan Franstalige kant is er een partij, de Federalistes
Democrats Francophones (FDF), die juist in BHV veel
stemmen haalt, omdat ze opkomt voor de belangen van
Franstaligen daar. (JVK.2)
[On the Francophone side, there is a party, the
Federalistes Democrats Francophones [Democratic
Francophone Federalists, BV] (FDF), which precisely in
BHV wins many votes, because it stands up for the
interests of the Francophones over there.]
Dutch correspondents, for their part, give more prominence
than their colleagues to the role of the Constitutional Court10 in
this particular news story. Both Peeperkorn and Van der Kris
report at least once that, according to the Constitutional Court,
BHV does not conform to the equality principle:
(17) Daarnaast ligt er een arrest van het Grondwettelijk Hof
uit 2003. Het Hof zegt dat BHV in strijd is met het
gelijkheidsbeginsel. Dat moet veranderen, anders zijn de
10
The Constitutional Court supervises whether constitutional principles (e.g.,
the equality principle and legal provisions concerning the protection of foreigners)
are complied with.
 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134
volgende landelijke verkiezingen niet rechtsgeldig.
(MP.4)
[In addition, there is a decree of the Constitutional Court
from 2003. The Court says that BHV is contrary to the
equality principle. That has to change, otherwise the
subsequent federal elections are not legally valid.]
(18) Bovendien zijn er eigenlijk geen nieuwe verkiezingen
mogelijk. Het Grondwettelijk Hof heeft gezegd dat die in
strijd zijn met de Belgische grondwet zolang er geen
oplossing is voor het kiesdistrict Brussel-Halle-
Vilvoorde. (JVK.1)
[Moreover, new elections are not possible, in fact. The
Constitutional Court said that these are contrary to the
Belgian constitution as long as there is no solution for the
electoral district Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde.]
3.2.1.2. The performance of Vlaams Belang in the Chamber of
Deputies. On 22 April 2010, after the announcement of the
government resignation proposal, some members of the extreme-
right party Vlaams Belang started to sing the unofcial Flemish
anthem, De Vlaamse Leeuw [The Flemish Lion], in an empty
Chamber of Deputies. Others held up banners. The Belgian media
coverage of this event was signicantly different on both sides of the
language border: the Flemish media reaction was rather laconic, the
Francophone Walloon media called it a public outrage.
The Dutch correspondents make a clear distinction between
this twofold opinion, whereas the French correspondents only
limit themselves to incorporating the Francophone point of view.
(19) Het gezang in de Kamer zorgde aan Vlaamse kant voor
schouderophalen. Ze verdrijven de verveling, zei
hoofdredacteur Peter Vandermeersch van De Standaard,
die bij politieke crises live commentaar levert op de VRT-
televisie. Maar aan Franstalige kant is de woede groot
over deze onaanvaardbare provocatie, die de wereld
over zal gaan, zoals Le Soir schrijft. (GM.3)
[On the Flemish side, the singing in the Chamber caused
a shrug. They are just passing time, said Peter
Vandermeersch, editor in chief of De Standaard, who
gives live commentary on the VRT-television during
political crises. But on the Francophone side there is a lot
of anger about this inacceptable provocation, that will go
round the world, as Le Soir writes.]
For Moes, the scene in the Chamber of Deputies seems to
primarily illustrate how different Flemish and Francophone public
opinion on one and the same event can be: the laconic reaction of
the Flemish journalists (zorgde aan Vlaamse kant voor schouder-
ophalen [was answered with a shrug on the Flemish side])
sharply contrasts with the anger of the Francophone correspon-
dents (Maar aan Franstalige kant is de woede groot [y] [But on
the Francophone side there is a lot of anger [y]]). This is a
heteroglossic description of the Vlaams Belang performance: two
possible reactions to the same event are juxtaposed.
Below, Stroobants describes the same event, albeit in a
remarkably different way:
(20) Lextreme droite xenophobe amande a dailleurs frappe
les esprits. Dans une sce ne totalement inedite, sous les
yeux meduses de journalistes belges et etrangers, une
trentaine de deputes et senateurs du Vlaams Belang ont
entonne dans lHemicycle le Vlaamse Leeuw (lion
131
amand), le chant favori du mouvement nationaliste
devenu egalement lhymne regional. (JS.2)
[The xenophobe Flemish extreme right movement hurt
feelings elsewhere. In a completely surrealistic scene in
the semicircle, with stunned Belgian and foreign
journalists, about thirty deputies and senators of Vlaams
Belang struck up the Vlaamse Leeuw (Flemish Lion),
the favourite song of the nationalist movement that has
become the regional anthem.]
For Stroobants, the performance of Vlaams Belang primarily
seems to illustrate how the communal conict sometimes
gets out of hand and how radical fractions try to reap prot of
the political deadlock. The outrageous character of their act is
primarily marked by an ironically loaded appreciation dealing
with impact and notability (but in a negative sense) (dans une
sce ne totalement inedite [in an entirely inedited scene]).
Moreover, it is also implied through some emotion or affect
expressions (frapper les esprits [to trample on someones feel-
ings], sous les yeux meduses [standing at gaze]). Interestingly, it
is not merely the Francophones who experience these negative
emotions of displeasure or amazement. In the rst expression,
frappe les esprits [hurt feelings], the emotion is presented as
generally perceived: there is no explicit emoter. In the second
one, sous les yeux meduses de journalistes belges et etrangers
[with stunned Belgian and foreign journalists], both Belgian and
international correspondents are said to be astonished. Conse-
quently, Stroobants does not only limit himself to the Franco-
phone reaction to the Vlaams Belang performance, he also
represents it as shared by all eyewitnesses, both Belgian and
international.
3.2.2. Ethnographic observations: sourcing practices; striking a balance
Coverage of politics in Belgium is not only complicated by the
complexity of the political situation, but also by the presence of
two public spheres, separated because of language (Dutch and
French). Media on both sides of the language border tend to have
a divergent perspective on news events in Belgium (Temmerman
and Sinardet, 2008).
From the interviews it became clear exactly how aware the
Brussels correspondents are of the possible bias sources from
either side of the language divide might entail. They all seem to
agree on how it is nearly impossible to paint a balanced picture of
Belgium, a country with two very distinct public (Francophone
and Flemish) media spheres. Remarkably, all correspondents,
without exception, seek to strike the right balance by consulting
sources from both sides, or so they say:
(21) MP: If not, [y] you are at risk of substandard
journalistic practices.
The interviews also show that to live up to this ideal,
correspondents, when consulting source material, always start
on one side of the language barrier, and complement their search
with information from the other side. Dutch correspondent
Peeperkorn describes this delicate tightrope exercise as follows:
(22) MP: I keep trying to walk the tightrope. [y] I and my
colleague [y] do make sure that we do not only
interview Flemings. We are also determined to speak to a
few Walloons. This is quite simply our duty.
In order to gain a balanced view, Peeperkorn starts from a Dutch-
speaking, Flemish frame and adds the French-speaking input later.
132 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134
The reverse is illustrated by British correspondent Watson.
Unlike Peeperkorn, he starts his search in a francophone frame-
work. He too, realizes that, by doing so, he is at risk of bringing a
unilateral perspective:
(23) RW: Obviously, Le Soir will basically give a francophone
perspective; youll need to try and balance that.
In order to strike that balance, Watson adds elements from
Dutch-speaking sources. He explains that he tries to give a
balanced view by interviewing Flemings, albeit in English:
(24) RW: When Belgium makes the news, you tend to get it
initially from the francophone press and then you have to
nd a balance. By speaking to Flemish people. Speaking
rather than reading. And speaking in English.
Similarly, UK correspondent Mock describes how her collea-
gues ght the same battle to strike a balance and, above all, how
they fail in this exercise by, in this case, consulting francophone
sources only. Her own selection of sources is mainly Flemish:
(25) VM: Except for my Dutch speaking colleagues and
maybe some of the German colleagues [y] probably
around ninety per cent, ninety-ve per cent of the
correspondents here who deign, who try and cover
Belgium [y] will not read Flemish news.
Mock claims that she, where possible, adds elements from
francophone sources to her Flemish-tinted reports. Once again,
we notice that a monolingual frame is used as a starting point,
after which a balance is created by adding elements from the
other side. This, according to Mock, is in contrast to the methods
applied by the other correspondents, most of whom mainly rely
on the francophone press, given that they do not speak Dutch.
(26) VM: They will be getting all their stuff from Le Soir and
[y] and from the French language media, so there is
absolutely no hope of them actually understanding what
this is about.
Summarizing, the difcult struggle to strike a balance in the
use of source material is clearly a recurrent theme in the inter-
views with the correspondents. Foreign correspondents in Brus-
sels are manifestly aware of the risk of a lack of balance when
using source material and try to avoid the pitfalls of dispropor-
tion. In fact, we were able to distinguish a distinct role, i.e. that of
the ideal correspondent reporting on Belgium. All of our corre-
spondents try and attain to that role: the ideal correspondent
reporting on Belgium relies equally on sources from either side of
the language barrier. And he is able to report in a completely
unbiased manner.
3.2.3. Observations
Owing to our tandem analysis we were able to provide the
necessary context to what we discovered after cross-textually
analyzing the textual output of the correspondents in our corpus:
the different approach of aspects related to the governmental
crisis we encountered in the articles written by specically the
French and Dutch correspondents was shown to go back to the
difcult balancing act they are confronted with when consulting
sources. Faced with a divided media landscape and their own
limitations when it comes to the knowledge of the languages
spoken in Belgium, the correspondents are at times reluctantly
forced to rely on sources from one side of the language barrier,
thus affecting the nal article.
4. Conclusion
In their characterization of journalistic stance, Martin and
White (2005) link clusters of evaluative positions towards people,
objects or concepts to particular rhetorical objectives and the
construction of authorial personae. Accordingly, analyzing jour-
nalistic stance in written newspaper articles can contribute to a
deeper understanding of the rhetorical effects that journalists try
to produce in their texts, as well as (personal or communally
shared) beliefs, feelings and conceptions about the articles
(sub)topics that (either explicitly or implicitly) shine through
the news products. In other words, journalistic stance unveils
aspects of the journalists line(s) of vision (Verschueren, 1999,
2012) on a news event.
We argued that, in order to grasp the relative rhetorical and
ideological signicance of newspaper articles in a more compre-
hensive way, the notion of stance as dened by Martin and White
does not sufce.
First, both researchers focus on (both inscribed and provoked)
evaluative elements which can be quite straightforwardly recov-
ered: appraisal resources (e.g., attributive adjectives), metaphors
or agency expressions. Nevertheless, we unveiled these are not
the only traces of a journalists line of vision: a journalists
assessment as to (i) whether particular information is worth
mentioning in the article and (ii) whether or not the information
will be covered in substantial detail are also be it less explicit
and hence more difcult to pin downexpressions of evaluation,
related to a journalists understanding of the news event in terms
of relevance.
Supporting our plea with a case study, we argued that journal-
ists choices become traceable when a given newspaper article is
cross-textually analyzedthat is, in relation with other articles on
the same news event: by comparing the output of several
journalists on one and the same critical discourse moment, it
is possible to get an idea of the journalists selection procedures as
well as the level of concreteness with which they depict relevant
political actors or concepts in their news products.
In our corpus of foreign news coverage on the Belgian
governmental crisis, we showed that a cross-textual study of
journalistic stance which additionally focuses on journalists
assessments of information value and specicity, uncovers pat-
terns of evaluative options which would be neglected if we would
have just based ourselves on appraisal theory or related studies of
evaluation through language. The cross-textual analysis unveils
that British correspondents signicantly differ from most French,
German and Dutch journalists in terms of specicity: they refer to
political actors, parties and concepts in a less accurate way than
their colleagues. Moreover, it shows the divergent line of vision
of the French and the Dutch correspondents on the Belgian
governmental crisis: the former group focuses on the imminent
loss of (linguistic) facilities for the Francophone minority in
Flanders (e.g., by emphasizing the numerical strength of this
community), the latter gives more weight to the fact that Flemish
citizens in Wallonia do not have the opportunity to vote for
Dutch-speaking parties (e.g., by giving prominence to the Belgian
Constitutional Court, and its judgment that BHV violates the
equality principle).
Second, to counteract the risk of being over-interpretative, we
complemented text analysis with interview-based evidence from
the journalists involved. The interview data were shown to
 B. Vertommen et al. / Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2012) 123134
complement the observations made in the text analytical part of
this paper: for example, the above-mentioned differences in
detail between the coverage of British (and, to a lesser extent,
most German) correspondents and their colleagues were framed
in the former groups explicit awareness of the limited relevance
and impact of Belgian politics for their intended readership (as
compared to the French and Dutch correspondents in particular),
to such a degree that they can write basically anything about
Belgium. Another factor which mainly accounts for the observed
difference between the (general) French and Dutch line of
vision on the governmental crisis, is the correspondents lan-
guage prociency and consequently their sourcing practices.
Although in the interviews French and Dutch correspondents
explicitly claim to equally rely on sources from both sides of the
Belgian language border when reporting on Belgium, the writings
of both groups of journalists implicitly indicate that they actually
use one set of sources (Francophone or Flemish, respectively) as
their main reference point, adding material from the other group
of sources afterwards so as to create the impression of balanced
news coverage.
In sum, a multidimensional approach to journalistic stance
demonstrates how news production is in essence a delicate game
of choice-making at various levels: between including overt or
implicit evaluative expression in the text, between providing
more or less relevant information, and between giving a detailed
or vague description of that information, choices which at all
times are governed and constrained by the specic professional
(and socio-economic) context in which the journalist operates.
For that reason we argue that future research on journalistic
stance should further expand the notion of evaluation to all
discursive levels in which choice-making takes a prominent
position. It should also continue to explore the link between text
observations and the human and institutional processes leading
up to the production of the text, coupling it to concrete socio-
economic and/or political contexts.11 Only in that way can we get
a more balanced view on the potential rhetorical effects and
ideological power of newspaper articles.
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to the four anonymous reviewers for their
valuable comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the
earlier manuscript. We have acted upon their advice as much as we
could, and we obviously take the responsibility for every mistake,
imbalance or inconsistency that is left in this article.
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