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THE GLOBAL NEWSROOM 209

Table 9.4 Story elements by selected national news services

Sakharov in the audience; (3) the approval of Gorbachev by his
celebrity audience; (4) Gorbachev’s criticism of the arms race and the
‘star wars’ program; and (5) uncertainties about the release of the
dissident Joseph Begun.
But while the choice of story elements may be ‘global’ (i.e. shared by
all), the American and British news stories present different, culturally
specific themes, using the same elements. This is reflected initially in
the order in which the different elements appear in the stories, as is seen
in Table 4.
The differences in the order of the elements in the American and the
British stories indicate that the ‘production of meaning’ in the news is a
complicated and multidimensional process, with no two agencies
agreeing completely with each other. However, underlying the
differential ordering is a considerable thematic unity within the
American stories on the one hand, and the British stories on the other.
Let’s turn to the American stories first.
There are a number of related themes running through the American
coverage of the event. The dominant leitmotif is skepticism, both about
Gorbachev’s motives and intentions and about the significance of the
‘Peace Conference’ as a whole. This is represented in a number of
ways. CBS’s story begins with a tabloid-like pun, suggesting that
Gorbachev is combining an ‘arms offensive’ with a ‘charm offensive’,
and pointing out immediately that ‘his latest move to be taken seriously
and sincerely by the west may have been blunted by his own KGB
secret police’. His deceit is implicit in that while he is all smiles, ‘his’
secret police continue their dirty work. Begun is introduced early as the
foil to Gorbachev. Following Dan Rather’s introduction, CBS’s