I don't enjoy admitting to being frequent watcher of Inside Edition, an entertainment news show on CBS. Granted, I do watch multiple news stations as well (ones that aren't focused on the latest developments on Lindsay Lohan's rehab stint), yet I somehow keep returning to watch the train-wreck that is Inside Edition.
I want to put emphasis on 'train-wreck', not just because Inside Edition is the show Bill O'Reilly notoriously had a meltdown on, but because rhetorical presentation plays a huge role in the delivery of segments—more so than many other news shows I've ever seen. And it occasionally goes from being simple rhetorical discourse into complete manipulation of the story, and the individuals involved in the story itself.
For example, I happened to catch a segment on the show about a 15-year-old girl who murdered an 8-year-old girl to see what it was like to kill. Just from hearing this, many people are already shocked or disturbed. You'd think that Inside Edition would stop there, but of course it doesn't. The show then describes the characterists between the two girls, painting them into almost black-and-white characters one would see in a movie rather than a real-life news story. Inside Edition showed home video and photos of the 15-year-old; one video depicted her grabbing an electric fence used to keep animals in range and encouraging others to do it. The photos were from her personal Facebook page, showing what looked like fake blood dribbling out of her mouth. The show even went as far to go in detail about her wardrobe, pointing out that she was wearing, God forbid, a The Nightmare Before Christmas sweater.
The description of the 8-year-old was more disturbing than that of the 15-year-old. When explaining the young girl's funeral, the show emphasized not just the coffin and the carriage pulling it, but that the coffin and the horse pulling the carriage were pure white.
The most upsetting part of this story was the narrator's emphasis on these little personal attributes of each girl. What they're doing is painting a stereotypical fiction that can be processed more easily by their audience. This was of course a senseless murder, something people have a hard time comprehending, yet adding the additional details about the 15-year-old's 'delinquent behavior and activities' gives audiences an artificial basis for the evil, or a false sense of blame. "For goodness sake, this girl shops at Hot Topic! She must have all the ingredients to become a psychopath!"
Whereas more professional news stations may stop at the facts (or at least refrain from describing wardrobe and colors of coffins), Inside Edition uses rhetoric to adjust the story and the way it's digested by the audience. As a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, I found the delivery of the story deeply disturbing. Whatever issues this girl had, I'm sure much of it wasn't because she watched a movie about Jack Skellington wanting to make Christmastime rather than Halloween. Also, signifying the 8-year-old's 'purity' by stating that white was part of her funeral hints at virginity. In the 19th century, if a young girl dies before she's married, a white bow would be placed on the casket signifying her virginal purity. Is this virginal falsity something we want to recycle in today's culture?
In conclusion, I often describe Inside Edition as 'Media Manipulation at its finest'; rhetoric is used to manipulate the delivery of the story, rather than letting the audience decide for themselves. Perhaps that's why I watch it–to ensure that I at least have the capacity to call out the show's ridiculous manipulations. At least that's what I tell myself.
—Lindsey V.
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