Active Voicing in COVID-19 New Reports

Abstract

The present study critically scrutinizes the practice of intertextual attribution in COVID-19 news reports. Based on a corpus of 135 news articles from 2020 to 2022 in The Korea Herald, it examines 1) the distribution of sources, 2) the way in which the reporters ideologically position the sources, and 3) the pragmatic effects of such attitudinal positioning. The findings reveal that the sourcing patterns are dynamic, initially relying on state authorities but subsequently shifting towards biomedical experts as the pandemic progresses. This shift toward biomedical experts also witnesses the journalist’s construing them as epistemically superior to other sources, particularly state authorities. Such linguistic manipulation in effect potentially misleads the reader and, at times, constitutes clear cases of intentional misrepresentation. It is argued that such discursive practices not only compromise public health but also indicate the press’s evasion of the responsibility to question and check the powerful in times of crises.