ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses television news reports, deals with an incident that took place in the West Bank village of Nahalin in April 1989 during the Palestinian uprising. The analysis of both the verbal and visual texts attempts to explicate "open" and "closed" presentations of the incident by referring to three dimensions: the rhetoric of balance, the rhetoric of facticity, and the rhetoric of neutrality. The chapter analyses comparatively the way the event was reported on television news in the ten major stations of five countries: It includes the British Broadcasting Corporation and Independent Television News in the United Kingdom; the first and second French channels; the first and second West German channels; the three major American commercial networks (ABC); and the news-producing Israeli channel. The ABC story is almost devoid of metaphors and mythological elements. It provides the Shamir visit to Washington as the context for the story, thus foregrounding timely news, avoiding the timeless poetic and mythological elements.
