60

This article analyses the media coverage of human interest stories on televised news broadcasts. Constructed around a lack of explicit images of the event—a paradox in the world of television—human interest stories on the televised news present shared features that provide a generic form to a range of dramas. These forms are considered from a pathemic point of view, i.e. from their capacity to arouse an emotional response in the audience. The article reveals the existence of various rhetorical structures and figures that support the viewer’s identification and imagination. This grammar of human interest stories questions the professional ideology underlying the operation of a news broadcast, which consists of producing detailed and transparent information, thus reducing the critical distance between facts and the audience.