The Vindicators' Blog

The How and Why of Horseraces

Stories are about their characters.  In a Horserace story by the news media, the characters in the story are competitors and the primary dramatic question about the characters is "Who wins and who loses?" 

These stories about winning and losing include: sports stories, finance stories, most campaign-related or legislation-related stories and stories about legal disputes.

The nature of the competition in a Horserace - what's at issue between or among the characters in the story - is covered, but is not really important to the story.  The competition could be over anything - a sporting event, a legal case, a political campaign - but what is really being covered is the back and forth of the competition. 

When the stakes or the nature of the competition are discussed, the issues are placed in the mouths of the competitors.  And, in the pursuit of being "balanced," all sides are usually given equal time to express themselves about the competition.

Since a Horserace story is boiled down to issues of competition, most of the values and judgments about it are leached out of the story.  The only values implied in a story using a Horserace frame are:

• Winning is better than losing.
• Winning is true/correct.
• The competition should be fair.

With only these values to guide them, there is nothing to direct the audience which side to pick in the competition, aside from the statements of the competitors.  And this creates one of the primary problems with a Horserace story.  If you aren't already interested in the competition - in other words, if you aren't already a fan of one of the competitors - there isn't much of in the story to catch your interest or draw you in. 

Like a sports story, an outside event, like a championship game, can help draw in a larger audience.  But without such an outside event, the audience for a Horserace story is, for the most part, made up of the fans of the competitors.  This is as true for political stories, whose fans are partisans and political junkies, as it is for sports.

How and Why the Media Frames Its Stories

Why the media frames its stories:

• The media doesn't report facts; it reports stories.  Facts are only reported as part off stories.
• The media has limited time and space to tell its stories, so it is forced to compress them.
• The media focuses and filters it stories by using frames of reference for its stories.

How the media frames its stories:

• The media uses two basic frames for most of its stories: the Horserace Frame, and the Three Vs Frame.

•  The Horserace Frame reduces the story to a competition.  The nature of the conflict between the characters in the story is not important; the story focuses on who is winning and who is losing.  This is the basic frame the media uses for sports stories, many business stories, legal stories, and most civic and political stories.
• The Three Vs Frame is about the three characters - or groups of characters - in the story.  The three characters are:  a VICTIM who was harmed, a VILLAIN who allegedly harmed the victim, and a VINDICATOR who is acting on behalf of the victim.  This is the basic frame the media uses for crime stories, investigative stories, consumer stories, most editorials, and some civic and political stories.

• The frames the media uses imply judgments about their stories and suggest values that should be used when evaluating their stories' subjects.  While most members of the media try to report with accuracy and balance the coverage of their subjects, the frames they choose for their stories connote huge amounts of unspoken or unwritten information.  For example, in a Three Vs story, the audience knows which character has been defined as the VILLAIN and understands which side they are expected to be on.

Over the next few posts, I'll spend some more time going into the Horserace and the Three Vs and how they are crucial to having your story understood and reported by the media in the way you intended.