Performing the disaster genre? TV journalism, disruptive factors and community challenges in the reporting of the UK Grenfell Tower block fire

Abstract

News coverage of national disasters holds the potential to evoke unique moral sentiments and political reactions. Often, however, we learn that the common use of elite political actors’ consensual commentary by journalists serves to politically appropriate such events or render mute their potential. This paper explores a challenge to this observed authority skew in the performance of TV journalism (BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Channel 5) while covering the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower block fire. The analysed reporting shows that the presence of (i) disruptive geography (ii) disruptive expertise and (iii) disruptive commentary challenge the reproduction of a traditional ‘reporting template’ and its inscribed authority skew. Combined, such ‘disruptive factors’, it is reasoned, enable opportunities for challenger voices to appear in number, and therein direct criticisms of both neglect and inaction and even to reflect on the state, race and poverty and incite thereafter an elite political apology.