This paper compares two different types of news discourse regarding to “Seinan War” reported by Ryuhoku Narushima and Genichiro Fukuchi, journalists in early Meiji Era, and regards Fukuchi' s one as the birth of modern news discourse in Japan.
In a strict sense, the news discourse of Narushima is not a news discourse because he did not report the facts of the war. Narushima referred to a certain narrative method in order to report the event. This type of news discourse had been widely accepted in Japan until Fukuchi challenged it. By contrast with Narushima, Fukuchi persisted in reporting the facts as he saw them. He was able to achieve his news discourse by rejecting the narrative method. Fukuchi has therefore established modern news discourse in Japan.
Modern news discourse has, however, included a possibility of a paradox. Without a narration as a frame, how can we choose the facts to be reported? In other words, a whole event presupposes many fragmentary facts, but these facts cannot be chosen unless the picture of the whole event is understood first. This paradox can be (practically) avoided if we find a frame which gives us a sense and a meaning and unites many fragmentary facts. This frame function used in “fact-reporting” cannot be neutral but inevitably contains “an intention” of a reporter, such as a certain meaning (and a certain ideology).