The rhetoric of objectivity in the newspaper coverage of a murder trial

This essay is based upon the conviction that American journalists of our century operate by behaviorist standards of “objectivity.” The partiality of these standards and their conflict with the entertainment functions of journalism lead to a prosecution bias in the reporting of criminal trials. A comparison of the transcript of the Koerner murder trial with newspaper coverage of that trial reveals a prosecution bias in pentadic focus, choice of ideographs, journalistic qualifiers, and audience preparation.