‘That Worries Me’: Affective and Rhetorical Framing in News Programming of The O’Reilly Factor

Abstract

It is a political impossibility for the public sphere to be a place of neutral affect. With news media as a tool for political communication and its existence in the public sphere, there is a contradiction between its ability to be objective and its use of emotional language. This study uses an interview between Bill O’Reilly and Donald Rumsfeld on The O’Reilly Factor to illustrate how affective rhetoric is used to reinforce the value of coercive interrogation. Drawing from a methodology of affective and rhetorical framing, the language used during the interview – both verbal and bodily – is analyzed for goals, techniques, and effectiveness. Relying upon O’Reilly’s partisan audience, The O’Reilly Factor frames coercive interrogation as necessary, without the use of adequate logic. To this end, this paper illustrates how the news media pre-mediate and reinforce a public that accepts coercive interrogation by justifying anxiety about national security.