Towards atemporality in news reports

The way in which news reports place events within time can shift emphasis away from the temporal - events as they unfold; towards the atemporal - the invariant structures underlying events.

Greater atemporality in the reporting of an event helps us view the event within the context of its past-present-future. A news report can promote an atemporal view of unfolding events by using (more) absolute dating - either the date and time stamped on the report or mentioned in the report; or a named date such as Wednesday (past or future depending on tense or other cues); or (independent of cues) a fully absolute dating such as Tuesday, 2011-5-24.

Consider the new Guardian policy on time reference:

• Omit time references such as last night, yesterday, today, tonight and tomorrow from guardian.co.uk stories. Examples: ... will happen on Wednesday (rather than tomorrow); ... happened on Monday (rather than yesterday).
  
• More use of the present tense - the government is facing a deepening crisis. And present perfect tense - the crisis engulfing the government has intensified. As against - the crisis engulfing the government intensified tonight
  

Refer:

• Yes, we do know what day it is (but we probably won't say so) | David Marsh | Guardian | 2011-2-18
  
• Perpetual perfect present - journalism strategies for an atemporal world | Paul Raven | Futurismic | 2011-2-18
  

Or consider the way that Wikipedia presents the news.

The Wikipedia front page (2011-5-24) displays a headline in the present tense: Democratic Rally, led by Nicos Anastasiades (pictured), win a plurality after an election in Cyprus.
This headline links (via the word election) to the article Cypriot legislative election, 2011, which discusses the event in the past tense, with an absolute dating: A legislative election to the 59-member Vouli ton Antiprosópon was held in Cyprus on 22 May 2011.

That is, the election is treated as an event in history, which may have happened yesterday or 500 years ago.

My comment to Raven's article (posted there), pursues this idea of atemporality:

For history geeks and/or Wikipedia readers, what happened yesterday has the same status as what happened 500 years ago. What matters is how events sit within a context; exhibit a pattern; reveal an underlying structure. The main difference between the distant past and the near present is that the latter is easier to investigate, and (to those close to the action, anyway) a bit more coming-at-ya. On the other hand, the recurring patterns, and the invariant structures governing the way events unfold (history repeats), are just as, if not more coming-at-ya than the events themselves. If it's raining hard, I'll duck under cover - but this is not an isolated event, it's part of an ongoing negotiated relationship between me and the (more invariant, atemporal, perpetual) structures governing/exhibited by the way in which rain occurs; can be detected; affects things; can be avoided.