The use of rhetorical voice in literature and news reporting is examined and its implications for classroom study of literature are discussed. Analysis is based on Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the novel and the definition of "voice" as an identifiable social role or position that a character enacts, and "ventriloquation" as the introduction of the author's voice. The theory of voice and ventriloquation is outlined and then applied to the speech of classroom literature teachers and news broadcasters. It is proposed that the theory can also be used to uncover implicit moral messages in these two forms of discourse. Five textual devices used to represent voices and evaluate them are identified and discussed: reference and predication; metapragmatic descriptors; quotation; evaluative indexicals, or tokens of particular language registers; and epistemic modalization, or comparison of epistemological status of the narrating and narrated events. Examples are drawn from literary works, teacher talk in a ninth-grade English literature class, and segments of television news broadcasts. Potential application of this approach to remove (or accept responsibility for) bias in reporting, teaching English-as-a-Second-Language, and improving communication in general are noted. (MSE)