Stories of Disenchantment: Supervised Chroming,the Press and Policy-Making

Abstract

This article examines how we can best understand the role of media activity in the policy-making process. The idea of policy-making as a rational, logical and objectively informed procedure is challenged, and attention is given to the mythic-narrative techniques used in the media to constitute social problems. This is done by way of a case study of Melbourne press reports on the ‘supervised chroming of children’ in early 2002. Based on the assumption that journalism functions first and foremost as a form of storytelling, I focus on two specific rhetorical techniques employed by media workers. I first draw on Cerulo's (1998) classifications of victim/perpetrator sequences before turning to the mythic elements of storytelling.