Journalism Practice

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Nothing but the Facts?

Jan Boesman & Irene Costera Meijer

To cite this article: Jan Boesman & Irene Costera Meijer (2018) Nothing but the Facts?,
Journalism Practice, 12:8, 997-1007, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2018.1493947

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 NOTHING BUT THE FACTS?
Exploring the discursive space for storytelling
and truth-seeking in journalism

Jan Boesman and Irene Costera Meijer

This paper seeks to understand how journalists deal with storytelling and truth-seeking in their daily
news practice. While storytelling is usually studied through texts, we approached it from a practice
perspective, combining data from three ethnographic studies in which 36 beat reporters and 13
journalistic storytelling experts were extensively interviewed. Because of the emphasis journalists
place on “finding out the truth” in public discourses, it is tempting for academics to present
them as naive truth-seekers. However, by means of an interpretative repertoire analysis of their
“practice” discourses, we seek to enlarge the discursive space to talk about the supposed tension
between story and reality. Although departing from the idea that all news making is storytelling,
the interviewed journalists consider news making and storytelling as distinct—and sometimes
opposing—practices. These professional practices serve as the framework around which five story-
telling repertoires are organized.

KEYWORDS news making; storytelling; truth; journalistic practices; news ethnography; inter-
pretative repertoires

Storytelling in journalism is seen as a way to make news more meaningful for audi-
ences. At the same time, it is often presented as standing vis-à-vis journalists’ truth-seeking
mission. Maras (2013, 66, emphasis added), for instance, writes in his monograph on objec-
tivity: “One the one hand, reporters provide facts. On the other hand, they are teachers and
storytellers compelled to draw on frames to educate, persuade and entertain”. This paper
wants to go beyond the storytelling-versus-reality debate by exploring storytelling as jour-
nalistic practice (cf. Ahva 2017; Couldry 2004; Swidler 2001). It shifts the emphasis from the
study of texts and/or its effects (as is the case with the majority of storytelling research, e.g.
Emde, Klimmt, and Schluetz 2016; Yaros 2006) to the ethnographic study of people’s doings
and sayings (Couldry 2004). Although it’s unquestioned and “embodied” nature is at the
core of practices (Swidler 2001), we also feel at home with Ahva’s (2017, 1527) emphasis
on the reflexivity aspect of practice—“to avoid the idea that people would merely ‘act
out’ practices”. Therefore, we take journalists’ reflections about their practices as seriously
as their performances.
More specifically, this paper aims to provide more insight into the dilemma’s and
paradoxes journalists face when actually making and developing news stories. Through
an analysis of the interpretative repertoires used by news beat reporters and journalistic
storytelling experts, we seek to explore the discursive space within which journalists talk
Journalism Practice, 2018
Vol. 12, No. 8, 997–1007, https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2018.1493947
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and repro-
duction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
998 JAN BOESMAN AND IRENE COSTERA MEIJER

about how they are “storytelling the truth”. In this way, boundaries take shape about “what
counts as journalism, what is appropriate journalistic behaviour, and what is deviant”
(Carlson 2015, 2). As an integral aspect of this boundary struggle, this paper also looks at
how journalists relate to audiences in their repertoires.

Method
This paper combines data from three different studies, in which newsroom obser-
vations were combined with in-depth (reconstruction) interviews. In total, 130 interviews
were held with 49 journalists from Belgium and the Netherlands.1 The interviewed journal-
ists could be distinguished into news beat reporters (Studies 1 + 2) and “expert storytellers”,
i.e. journalists who have written storytelling handbooks and/or are awarded for their story-
telling (Study 3) (see Table 1 for an overview).
Notes were taken for all interviews and most of them were tape-recorded.2 The inter-
views were transcribed and coded in Atlas.ti and/or manually. The interview transcripts and
the field notes were not considered as individual statements, but were analysed in terms of
the distinct vocabularies that were explicitly and implicitly used (cf. Costera Meijer 2005).
More specifically, we made use of an “interpretative repertoire analysis” (Potter and Wet-
therell 1987). An interpretative repertoire is a recurrently used “lexicon or register of
terms and metaphors drawn upon to characterize and evaluate actions and events”
(Potter and Wettherell 1987, 138). Repertoires “do not merely describe a situation, they
also produce evaluations, position individuals and groups, and construct, rationalize and
naturalize ‘reality’” (Costera Meijer 2005, 28).

Findings
Based on previous research (Boesman and Costera Meijer 2018), we will depart from
the distinction journalists themselves made between two major practices: “storytelling” and
“news making”. This distinction will serve as the framework and point of departure to
discuss the repertoires.

Two Dominant Practices: News Making Versus Storytelling

The main distinction in our data did not run between story and reality but between
story and news. A Belgian newspaper storyteller summarized it as follows: “the more remote
you are from the news, the more important your style”. This reporter felt he acted more as a
storyteller when the facts he was reporting were not that “new” anymore—making it more
important how to cover them.
The concept of the “news peg” was used to draw a fundamental line between news
making and storytelling. Finding an occasion to write about a particular topic is seen as an
important sub practice of news making. For instance, the dismissal of a medical scientist
because he had tampered with data functioned as the news peg enabling four Belgian
beat reporters (from our first study) to write for several days about science fraud.
The assumed necessity of news pegs is an aspect of journalism frequently criticized
by academics, as it would obscure the why and how questions of news and the spotting of
longer term trends and processes (Bell 1995; Gans 2014; Schudson 1986). Interestingly, this
practice is also frequently denounced by journalists themselves, in particular by journalists
TABLE 1
Overview of studies

Region Average
N Gender (Belgium/ N interview N
Study Period (j.) (w/m) Dutch) (int.) (appr.) (newsrooms) Type of journalists Method
1 February–May 20 10/10 20/0 99 35 min 4 Newspaper beat reporters Semi-structured reconstruction
2013 (domestic news, politics, interviews + newsroom observations
2 November 16 6/10 6/10 19 1h 2 economics, foreign (for more details, see Boesman,
2013– affairs, science) d’Haenens, and Van Gorp 2016)
January
2014
3 January–June 13 4/9 6/7 12 1 h 30 min 9 (+freelancers) “Expert storytellers” (6 audiovisual; 5
2017 print; and 2 multimedia journalists)
In- depth expert
interviews
(see Bogner

NOTHING BUT THE FACTS?

and Menz
2009)

999
1000 JAN BOESMAN AND IRENE COSTERA MEIJER

who identify themselves with the practice of storytelling. They repeatedly claim that they
have “no nose for news” or “no news drive”. Moreover, some of them explain the success of
their stories by being “no news at all”. According to a Belgian newspaper storyteller, the
stories for which he received the most positive reader feedback “have NOTHING to do
with current events”. Another Belgian storyteller, writing for a serious magazine, calls
himself a “truant”, because he skipped the “news school”.
For instance, a bomb attack. That’s news. So, the ordinary journalist goes to the scene to
makes a reportage. This is what journalists do. They go to the scene and ask questions.
That’s news (…). And I do the opposite: I try to go to places where NO news happened.
For instance, my story about the peep shows. There is no news in it. It just intrigued
me. And yeah, then it turned out to be a great story.
Journalists who distance their work from “the news” describe themselves as “bad journal-
ists”. Actually, they dislike the term “journalist” and prefer to be called “reporter”, “narrator”,
or “documentary maker”. Their reluctance towards the term “journalist” can be explained by
their association of journalism with “hard news” based on current events, or with “investi-
gative journalism” that sets the agenda. For instance, a Dutch television storyteller refused
to be called a “war correspondent”, although he has been stationed several times into a
warzone. “I am not a bricklayer, but I just try to tell a million people a nice story every night”.

Five Storytelling Repertoires

The discursive framework bounded by the distinction between news making and
storytelling indicates the space to discuss (How) does storytelling play a role in the daily prac-
tices of journalists? While the first two presented repertoires are dominant among the news
beat reporters, the latter three are more frequently used by the expert storytellers.

“Don’t fool me” repertoire. “You don’t have to fool me (…) You don’t have to f*ck me,
because I’ve figured you out (…) You may tell me it is like that, but is it really?” With this
quote from a Dutch newspaper beat reporter, describing her relationship with sources,
we would like to introduce the “don’t fool me”—repertoire. Here storytelling stands diame-
trically opposed to journalism, as it is considered similar to lying or to fiction. This repertoire
was particularly used by the beat reporters, who often have to deal with well-prepared
sources. However, this repertoire surpasses the critical-monitorial watchdog function of
journalism (Hanitzsch and Vos 2018). Within the “don’t fool me”—repertoires, the
“stories” of ordinary people are also assertively treated. For instance, this is how a
Belgian newspaper storyteller said to have interrupted the father of an extremely gifted
child:
It is all interesting, but I don’t believe you (…) You can tell me here on the phone whatever
you want, but I don’t believe you. I want to see your son, I want to see his certificates, I
want to speak with him, I want to see him solving math exercises, if necessary.

In the “don’t fool me” repertoire, journalists are wary of government propaganda or “lies
from fantasists”. Using this repertoire, journalists do not only counter the “stories”
sources make up, but also emphasize that journalism is a professional practice where
autonomy is crucial. Journalists are not the story makers, they assess their veracity.
 NOTHING BUT THE FACTS? 1001

This repertoire emphasizes a clear boundary between “truth” and “story”, with on the
on the side “journalism” and on the other side other forms of communication (such as
public relations and social media). What ultimately sets journalism apart is its obligation
to the truth (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2001; Zelizer 2004). There is no place for the public
in this repertoire. The journalist sits in the cockpit and assesses all incoming information
from within his perspective.

“Facts not stories” Repertoire. Confronted with the term storytelling during an obser-
vation day in a newspaper newsroom, a Belgian beat reporter said: “I do not believe you
have to make ‘a story’ of everything. There are still the facts”. Just like in the former reper-
toire, storytelling is seen as the opposite of good journalism—being a journalist means not
being a storyteller. However, in this repertoire, storytelling is not a practice taking place
outside of journalism, but an internal practice employed by other journalists. One
Belgian beat reporter specified those others somewhat demeaning as “the poets of the
newsroom”.
In the “facts not stories” repertoire, journalists oppose journalistic storytelling
because it would violate the practice of truth telling. This professional repertoire mirrors
a dominant academic repertoire that depict journalists as naive truth-seekers who
believe in a “reality without scare quotes” (to quote Wright 2011) and who would be allergic
to the idea that they are “actually” framing reality (Boesman and Van Gorp 2016) and thus
“telling stories” (Bird and Dardenne 1988). While academics would reason that journalists
using this repertoire deny that storytelling plays a role in their daily practices, journalists
would emphasize the importance of professional norms of objective reporting (cf. Schud-
son and Anderson 2008). For instance, academics describe balanced reporting as a narra-
tive convention and thus as a form of storytelling. Journalists on the other hand would
describe balanced reporting as a verification strategy (Groot Kormelink and Costera
Meijer 2015). This repertoire reflects journalists’ “passion for truth”. Truth-seeking should
be the norm and not abandoned for the “nicer” story.
When journalists confess their faith in “pure facts” they actually dislike the practice of
jazzing them up. For instance, regarding the trial of a baby murderer, a Belgian beat repor-
ter of a quality newspaper denounces the storytelling practices of her colleagues of the
popular newspapers.
Our readers also want to know what’s going on (in this trial), but they do not want it “in
your face”. (I prefer) a very serene tone (…) I don’t use words such as “shock”, like they do.
(I think) You don’t have to blow it up. You can tell calmly: All right, he has murdered babies.
There’s been (enough) blood and tears. (…) You should count how many times (they) have
used the word “hallucinatory”. Come on. You have a man who has murdered four babies.
Come on, four babies. How many adjectives do you need to make it worse? It is so bad
already. It is terrible enough (…) We are not the victims (…) Our reader will judge for
himself.
This reporter believes that “the facts should speak for themselves”. The example illustrates
that the audience has a place in this repertoire. Audience members do not have to be con-
vinced by a well-told story. Provide them the facts, and they can decide autonomously what
to think of the events described. Not surprisingly, based on the god-term status of “facts”
within journalism (Zelizer 2004), this particular repertoire is used by all studied journalists.
1002 JAN BOESMAN AND IRENE COSTERA MEIJER

However, it seemed more important for the beat journalists, as the expert storytellers
complement it with the repertoires we will discuss below.
“Toolkit” repertoire. Unlike the previous repertoires, in the “toolkit” repertoire story-
telling is unequivocally embraced. Instead of opposing stories and facts, journalists con-
sider storytelling here as a tool to articulate the truth more truthfully. While the “facts
not stories” repertoire emphasizes that journalists just have to “provide the facts”, in the
“toolkit” repertoire it matters how these facts are covered. Journalists dare to call into ques-
tion accepted journalistic conventions. For instance, the five w’s. According to a Belgian
newspaper storyteller, “they are taught in journalism schools, but they are unfitting for a
pleasant read (because) they make your text extremely boring”. While the “don’t fool
me” repertoire focuses on journalists’ attitude towards sources, the “toolkit” repertoire is
more audience-oriented. A Belgian television storyteller:
Storytelling is just a technique to present the facts in a good way. It is certainly NOT story-
telling OR journalism (…). Reporting is about transmitting facts. And storytelling is …
adding a few elements to ensure that the viewer will remember better what was in the
news.
Storytelling is seen as a toolkit of techniques which can be used while preparing stories
(such as thinking in advance about baselines and characters) as in their presentation
(such as playing with colours and sounds) (see Verheyden, Rumes, and Fluit 2014). In this
repertoire, any journalist can become a good storyteller as soon as s/he acquires such a
toolkit (for instance, by reading a storytelling handbook or following a storytelling
course). This repertoire is therefore mainly used by expert storytellers who are consciously
engaged with storytelling techniques. The following quote, from a Belgian multimedia
storyteller, illustrates how the “toolkit” repertoire is often used to counter the “facts not
stories” repertoire:

Some journalists are afraid that storytelling will bring Hollywood in journalism. (In Holly-
wood) everything is devoted to storytelling. Even if a story is based on true facts, those
facts are transformed if they do not fit the story. And that is what a lot of people are
afraid of: that the facts in journalism will also be moulded into a form that fits within a
certain story structure. That is of course not the intention.

In this repertoire, the distinction does not run between stories and facts, but between
“storytelling to bring out the truth of the facts” and “bending the truth because it
hinders the story”. In this repertoire, the journalist facilitates the public. Journalists want
to make it as easy as possible for their audience to follow and understand their stories.
“Voice” repertoire. In the “voice” repertoire, journalists recognize that storytelling
plays a role in their daily practice, but they deny that they themselves are the storytellers.
Journalists draw from this repertoire to emphasize that they only give people a voice. In
this repertoire, journalists depart from the idea that they can only come up with good
stories when they remain “outside the story” and restrict themselves to recording and lis-
tening. They are rather storylisteners than storytellers (cf. O’Donnell 2009).
These are people who have a story ready, who just want … to tell it. (…) Actually it is no
merit of mine. (…) (I) am much more dependent on what is delivered to me. (…) When I
write out an interview, it’s hard to say: now, this is a story I’ve written. In fact, it is just a
reflection of a conversation. (…) The best interviews are the ones that you can write
 NOTHING BUT THE FACTS? 1003

down as a monologue, in which the interviewer doesn’t have to intervene with questions.
(Belgian newspaper storyteller)

Often viewers like the story because it is a fun TOPIC. But that doesn’t necessarily mean
that I’ve told the story well. You’ve got to be a terrible sucker of a television maker if
you don’t know how to make a nice story with these kind of guys. (Dutch television
storyteller)

On the surface, this repertoire seems to be a form of false modesty. However, it also fits in
with traditional journalistic values such as neutrality and impartiality. Journalists provide
people a platform and a forum to express their views. Following a documentary about a
refugee-friendly mayor in Italy, a Dutch television storyteller indicates that she prefers to
provide all space for “neglected perspectives” instead of holding strictly to the rules of
balanced reporting. She describes the latter as “lazy journalism” and “a frame that suggests
that you are able to tell everything”. When a Dutch newspaper storyteller interviewed
weapon-lovers in a remote village in the United States, he says he wants to “fully reflect
their reasoning”. When writing out the reportage, he does not want to “walk through the
story like a commentator and fool people with mean phrases”.
This repertoire is particularly present among the expert storytellers, who are more
often involved in human-interested stories, and largely absent among the beat reporters,
who mainly work with institutional sources. It may thus be considered as the antipode of
the “don’t fool me” repertoire, in which a “critical attitude” towards sources is proclaimed.
Exemplary for the “voice” repertoire is journalists’ dislike of what they call “the journalistic
interview”—which they associate with “roasting”, “grilling” or “hitting” people. According
to a Dutch television storyteller, such “cross-examinations” are diametrically opposed to
the practice of “telling stories”. A Belgian newspaper storyteller noticed he did not
have “interviews with sources” but rather “conversations with people”. In this repertoire,
journalists do not stand above the audience, but provide them a platform to tell their
story.

“Truthful not accurate” repertoire. “The naturalness is very, very important in storytell-
ing. That you don’t feel like you’re listening to an editing, but that you just hear … a regis-
tration. (…) The listener should almost forget that it is made”. According to this Belgian
radio storyteller, “the listener must feel directly addressed by the person s/he hears”. In con-
trast to the “voice” repertoire, where the reporter is merely an interpreter, this reporter is
indeed an intervening factor in preparing the story—by asking well-prepared questions.
He only cuts himself out of the story in the editing phase. Thus, the protagonists in his
story do not talk spontaneously, while the final story makes it appear they do. In this reper-
toire, the idea that a journalist steers the audience is no taboo, like it is in the “voice” and
“fact not stories” repertoires. Such steering is of course also possible by being present as
narrator. The following Dutch television storytellers, for instance, defend their use of a
voice-over:
(The viewer) has to be carried along (…) (This is possible with) a narrative voice, a voice
that tells you what you should see. The old-fashioned thought is that such a voice-over
is not done, that it is tasteless, because viewers should think for themselves. That the nar-
rative has to be as objective as possible. And a narrative voice, that’s a very steering tool.
1004 JAN BOESMAN AND IRENE COSTERA MEIJER

It is worth nothing that this repertoire was absent among the beat reporters, and exclu-
sively distilled from the conversations with the “storytelling experts”. Together with the
“toolkit” repertoire, storytelling is most clearly embraced here. However, in the “toolkit”
repertoire, storytelling is purely functional. It is a tool to ensure that audiences will better
remember or appreciate the facts. In the “truthful not accurate” repertoire, storytelling is
meant to immerse audiences in a story. It is not just about improving the transmission of
a story, but about getting the audience to live into the story. A good example are two
Dutch television storytellers who won several journalism awards with a docusoap about
poverty. However, their approach would probably upset many journalists, as they don’t
shy away from intervening in “reality”. For instance, regarding the use of music as storytell-
ing tool:
(Normally) music must always be functional (…) We said: No, we want to be immersive, we
need a LOT of music. The preconception about music in documentaries is that it is a taste-
less instrument to make you feel something. But we said: No, we are going to use music
like Hollywood.
Another example is the intervention into the real lives of the characters. When it looks like
one of the personages will have to sell her car, the journalists thought of this as a good
scene, and asked the woman if she could sell the car a bit earlier than planned.

If you think, as a filmmaker or as a journalist: Well, that would be a beautiful final scene,
then we have NO problem with it. (…) Because we also have a responsibility as storytellers.
And by telling cleverly, you sometimes tell the truth more than when you adhere in a well-
behaved way to what may or may not be allowed.
These award-winning storytellers arguably do what the “toolkit” users explicitly want to
avoid: fitting the facts into the mould of the story. The aim of the final scene is to bring
the truth about the debt industry closer to the viewer “because we also have a responsibil-
ity as storytellers”. For these journalists, factuality and truthfulness are not identical. In this
repertoire, journalists consider it justified to intervene in “reality” to come closer to the
truth.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this paper, we discussed how journalists deal with the tension between storytelling
and truth-seeking in journalism. Two main practices and five “repertoires” were distilled
from the data of three ethnographic studies in Belgium and the Netherlands, in which
two kinds of journalists were interviewed: beat newspaper reporters and general journalists
known for their storytelling approach (working for print and/or audiovisual media). The
repertoires show that journalists’ discourse about story and truth is more varied than
often assumed.
Greatly simplified, the practice of making news stories consists of two practices: being
able to “recognize the news” and to “make a story” out of it. However, the interviewed jour-
nalists consider “news making” and “storytelling” often as distinct, and sometimes oppos-
ing, practices. Around this opposition, five repertoires were presented. The “don’t fool me”
and “facts not stories” repertoires are dominant among the beat reporters who could be
associated with the practice of news making, while the “toolkit”, “voice” and “truthful not
accurate” repertoires were more clearly present among the expert storytellers who
 NOTHING BUT THE FACTS? 1005

identified themselves with the practice of storytelling. One might say that the practices of
beat reporters are more focused on protecting journalism’s boundaries while the practices
of the expert storytellers rather try to expand them (cf. Carlson 2015). From a boundary
work perspective, the reluctance of some expert storytellers towards the term “journalist”
can be interpreted as a boundary struggle—aimed at enlarging the discursive space to
practice journalism—rather than as a rejection of journalism in general.
In explaining the differences, time might be a factor. Because beat reporters work
with tighter deadlines, they rather rely on strict formats than experimenting with alterna-
tive storytelling techniques. Also, because beat reporters are specialized in a certain
domain, they are more likely to critically assess incoming information within their own
knowledge frames (“don’t fool me”). The “open mind” of the storytellers may thus also
be explained by a lack of specialization, since almost all of them were general journalists.
The tipping points in these two practices and five repertoires appear to be journalists’
relationship towards their audiences. All repertoires have a different relationship to audi-
ences: ignoring them or even showing aggressive behaviour towards them (don’t fool
me), letting them “think for themselves” (facts not stories), making it easier for them
(toolkit), making a space for them (voice), and immersing them (truthful not accurate).
Although some repertoires seem to stand opposed to each other (“don’t fool me”
versus “voice” and “facts not stories” versus “truthful not accurate”), many journalists
were able to switch between different repertoires, depending on the circumstances. Com-
manding a repertoire, being able to employ it in particular circumstances, rather than
coinciding with it—can thus also be interpreted as a form of professionalism. When inter-
viewing a well-prepared politician, the “don’t fool me” repertoire will probably be tapped
from more frequently than journalists’ “voice” repertoire. However, in other circumstances,
the “voice” repertoire may be more appropriate and effective to open up interviewees and
to encourage journalists to be more open to what interviewees are really saying—instead
of looking for facts and anecdotes to confirm a predetermined story line.
An important limit of the study is the absence of audiovisual beat reporters. While the
interviewed storytellers worked for diverse media outlets (see Table 1), the interviewed
beat reporters all worked for newspapers. Future research could include audiovisual beat
reporters to figure out if our repertoires really span the entire journalistic field.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as all journalists who
participated in this study.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

FUNDING
This article is part of the research project, “The New News Consumer: User-Based Inno-
vation to Meet Paradigmatic Change in News Use and Media Habits”, supported by The Nether-
lands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) [314-99-103] and 10 Dutch journalism
organizations (see http://www.news-use.com).
1006 JAN BOESMAN AND IRENE COSTERA MEIJER

NOTES
1. The higher number of interviews is explained by the fact that 23 journalists were inter-
viewed two or more times.
2. The interviews in Study 2 were not tape-recorded, because of confidentiality reasons.

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Jan Boesman (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Department of

Journalism, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV, Amsterdam,
Netherlands. E-mail: j.l.j.boesman@vu.nl
Irene Costera Meijer, Department of Journalism, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan
1105, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, Netherlands. E-mail: icostera.meijer@vu.nl