Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News - Doria

finite verb and the participant would together form the Theme, as discussed in
connection with yes/no interrogatives.
Halliday and Matthiessen devote one paragraph to the discussion of exophoric
ellipsis (2004: 100) which can be applied to three headlines in my data. Their
examples highlight spoken language situations via examples such as "Thirsty? ('are
you thirsty?')" (ibid.), and they point out that these types of constructions consist of
Rheme only. In relation to my data, headlines such as example (18) are common in
tabloids but also at times in newspapers, whereas both (19), My take, and (20),
Rareview, denote articles of two particular opinion series on CNN.
(18) EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role In 'Occupy'
Movement
(19) My take: Why Christians are embracing their LGBT neighbors
(20) Rareview: Bringing black voices to Occupy Wall Street
Disregarding what comes before the colon in examples (18) through (20) is done on
the basis that in all three the element before the colon is something which is
systematically used to distinguish certain types of articles, and thus it could be
claimed that they have little thematic value and consist of Rheme only. This logic is
similar to that expressed by Halliday and Matthiessen in the case of exophoric
ellipsis, and therefore my analysis here is supported.
Other headlines with a colon are more problematic as no existing literature could be
found discussing Theme analysis of minor clauses 10 followed by a colon. Transitivity
analysis is applied to help identify clause structure in these cases. Verbal processes,
or processes that "cover any kind of symbolic exchange of meaning" (Halliday and
Matthiessen 2004: 253), are easy to detect:
(21) Ginger White: Herman Cain 'would be a bad president'
(22) Court: California same-sex marriage fight can continue
10 Minor clauses have "no mood or transitivity structure" (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 100).
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