Successfully framing a news story is sometimes impossible. In this textual
analysis of the New York Times's coverage of the investigation of the crash
of TWA Flight 800, I compared the failed efforts of reporters to produce a
news frame to those of their official sources, federal forensic investigat
ors. By interpreting the reporters' and sources' conflicting uses of empiri
cal logic, I identified an ideological conflict within the bounds of modern
ity that makes journalism's connection to postmodernity more understandable
. I considered the importance of temporality and the control of time to the
definition of modernist ideology. By contrast, Jameson's (1991) postmodern
theory makes it possible to understand the postmodern implications of the
potential frames that do not become part of the official story.