Three typical television news reports broadcast on the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" in early 1987 were analyzed (1) to test the validity of the assumption that news reports of this type are persuasive and therefore can be classified as rhetoric and (2) to gain insights into the message structure of the reports. The three reports analysed were: a business report on the rise of the stock market, a news story about how President Reagan's budget proposals affected his anti-drug program, and a news story about evangelist Oral Roberts' revelation that he would die if he could not raise several million dollars. The analyses, using neo-Aristotelian criteria, revealed the reports to be tightly packaged persuasive arguments, each defining oppositional issues, setting out logical deductive arguments, and supporting those arguments with reasoned and emotional evidence. In addition, each report defined an audience more specific than the mass audience usually assumed for network television news, then encouraged that audience to accept the persuader's view by the use of value-laden statements and by certain credibility enhancing techniques. The findings suggest that viewers should become more aware of the argumentative structure of news and the presentational formats in which that structure is presented. (Transcripts of the three news reports are appended.) (FL)