First of all, the genre of this article can be easily defined. Since the article was only published on the New York Times website and its newspaper, this article must be a type of news report. Then, in the New York Times article "How Times Journalists Uncovered the Original Source of the President's Wealth," the Melina Delkic states "Overall, the effort was sprawling and multilayered, involving more than 100,000 pages of documents, both public and confidential." Also, the New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen claims on Twitter that "The New York Times should release a cost estimate for its investigation. ( This report ) Has to at least ( costed ) $1.5 million, And probably much more." Both of the evidence shows that this article is an investigative journalism, also know as watchdog reporting or accountability reporting. Different from current affairs reports, it is a type of news report that needs a lot of resources and time for the sake of exploring the truth behind a controversy, not just the event itself. The primary goal of this type of article is to expose the truth to the general public. Also, this type of article usually has a large amount of evidence, the style of writing is very objective. At the same time, articles often have compelling logic that concatenates all the evidence.
After knowing the genre and purpose of this article, it will be clear how to analyze the rhetoric of this article in detail. First, as mentioned above, investigative journalism usually has strong evidence in order to provide credibility. David's report is an excellent example of this. In the first few paragraphs of the article, readers already see some of the most practical evidence - numbers.
" … based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father's real estate empire ... transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances … The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.” (David)
These specific and accurate numbers can quickly provide readers with a high degree of credibility. Not only that, in the first few paragraphs, the author also used another powerful tool to show its credibility - quotation. In just a few paragraphs, the author quoted two statements from Trump which is Trump's lawyer Charles J. Harder and Trump's brother Robert Trump. These two references provide the reader with a complete picture of the event. All these evidence was presented at the beginning of the article, which is undoubtedly an excellent reliability booster for the reader. These shreds of evidence undoubtedly greatly enhance the credibility of this article, which belongs to the rhetoric of Logos.
In addition to the evidence, the objective attitude is also a major rhetoric in this article. In order to reflect the objectivity, in the whole article, the personal pronoun only appeared once. In other words, all 15,000 words in this report were base on fact, none of it is personal views. This kind of invisible author is a reliable tool for objectivity. However, at the same time, this also makes the author lose a powerful rhetorical device, that is, Pathos. Due to the inexistence of author, the reader cannot directly see what author's values are, or what kinds of feelings that the author have, which makes it very hard for readers to communicate with the author emotionally. Which means that this article chose objective, not persuasive, which I believe it is a correct choice. The article does not intend to tell the reader what point of view, but to provide facts, let the readers analyze the good and evil, which is a sign of respect for the readers.
All in all, this report is undoubtedly phenomenal. The various rhetorical devices used by David in the article are very typical. They are the best means of reporting facts and revealing the truth. Using these rhetorical techniques, readers can get the maximum degree of credibility and ensure absolute objectivity.
BBD
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