ABSTRACT
Historians and news professionals observe ‘events’ and formulate, construct and produce ‘copy’ from different vantage-points: they operate under different constraints of time and space. Both, however, have a similar premiss or concern — they wish, first, to establish an accurate record of what happened; they strive to elucidate the facts, ascertaining who or what did or said what to whom or to what, where and when; they may, subsequently, move on to examining how and why. Both, in short, are concerned with establishing a report or record, and constructing a text or account, that answers the questions that Quintilian, in ancient Rome, presented as the essential points to which an orator should address himself: ‘Quis, quid, uhi, quando, quibus auxiliis, quomodo, cur.’ 1 This set of questions, in many respects, seems more meaningful than the ‘holy of holies’ of the Lasswellian litany: ‘who says what in which channel to whom with what effect’: 2 the set of ‘Qs’, rather than the ‘5 Ws’, highlights the congruence of questions posed by (certain) historians and (many) journalists; they include the issue of presentation, the mode or manner — quomodo — of relating the message; and they stress the link between the modes of address of rhetoricians and of news and editorial style guides or manuals, across the ages. 3
