We all know what "news" is, or at least we think we do; and over the last few years we have come to learn more about "fake news" (see my blogpost on the genre label "Fake News" here) than most of us ever cared to. But another genre term lingers in the background. In discussions of news, we repeatedly hear ourselves or fellow debaters say sentences like, "but the real news is that..."
So, if we take this distinction to be meaningful what, then, is implied by it? If you look at the newsflow you will see "news". Defined loosely as "notable events that have happend within the last approximately 24 hours". Interestingly, the "happend" here may also mean that a previous, sometimes much older, event has come to light (think #metoo), or that an existing story has taken a new turn. Thus, one of the reasons (but only one) why a player in the media landscape may opt to not comment on a given story is that the comment updates the story, and gives it new life and a new turn through the news cycle; or probably two new turns as there is likely to be comments upon the comment.
But, and this is where the genre label "real news" comes in, underlying this stream there may be other factors at play, some much more fundamental than what is made evident in the news cycle.
To add an example, picked again, as in previous posts, from the UK Brexit debate. When Theresa May declared a few days ago that the UK will leave the customs union when Brexit kicks in. she may do so to appeases the hard Brexiters in her party. However, by consequence, she also declares for a hard border in Northern Ireland and Gibraltar. The only alternative is to demand that the EU should no longer even try to control its own outer border, since that would be for the benefit of the UK, but is otherwise a fairly strange demand. This, in turn, fits into a much longer narrative of both the manifold twist and turns, and the overarching structural questions at play in the Brexit process.
The border/customs union double-bind, as well as the inept handling of it, is brilliantly caricatured by SKZ Cartoons:
So, returning to the starting point of this post, the news may be May's declaration of her intention for the UK to leave the customs union. The real news, however, is that this declaration is undercut even before she makes it. This is, obviously, slightly exasperating. As long as the attention of the news services stays in the news, you'll get an endless flutter of turns and twists that leaves nobody the wiser and only contributes to confusion and - ultimately - a dejection with politics.
However, the problem remains: the underlying story, critically important as it is, stays the same, and it all springs from the badly underpinned assumptions of the decision to Brexit. However, the real news usually does not change enough in a 24 hour cycle to make it into the news cycle. Thus, it most be a recurrent attempt to get complexity somehow represented in the more simplistic genres of the news cycle.
Therefore, if you want the real news represented in the news, the former must be constantly updated and recontextualized to match the latter. This, however, is usually more than can be handled within the famework of a fast moving news cycle, or within the individual story. So, the story roars on, and all we can do is to try to insert the real news into the stream of the news at opportune moments. Here, for instance, you can see an attempt to introduce the real news into the news of the customs union/border example mentioned above.
Moving back again to the genre perspective. news is an established genre; real news is not. However, it still much used, as it gives form to a recurrent rhetorical move: The attempt to contextualize the news, to tell the underlying, more slow-moving, story that is of more importance, and of a wider reach, than most of the news stories that appear in the news cycle.
Like many other genre moves, this one is a battleground. A person keen on Brexit might say that the real news is the EUs recurrent attempt at keeping the UK from winning its sovereignty back. The guiding opinion would be different, but the genre move would remain.
Thus, as often before, genres are fields of action: we have the news, the real news, the struggle over what the real news is, and the recurrent attempt (not covered here) by different actors to make their real news appear in the news. No wonder this is confusing.
Oh, and if you want to see more of SKZ Cartoon's brilliant work on Brexit look here.
Update
Even years later the real news story remains well-nigh the same. Here is SKZ Cartoons in late August 2019 after a meeting between newly "elected" PM Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel.
NB: Like the previous post, this one was originally a twitter thread. You can see the thread here.
Update April 16th, 2018: Added link forward to blog post about fake news genre labels in the first paragraph of this blog post.
Updated again 22 august, 2019. Cartoon from SKZ Cartoons added. You can find more of the artist's work here.
