NEWS IDEOLOGY OF SUHARTO’S FALL EVENT IN “AFTER SUHARTO” IN NEWSWEEK AND “END OF AN ERA” ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE
NEWS IDEOLOGY OF SUHARTO’S FALL EVENT
IN “AFTER SUHARTO” IN NEWSWEEK
AND “END OF AN ERA” ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
Student Number: 044214102
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
NEWS IDEOLOGY OF SUHARTO’S FALL EVENT
IN “AFTER SUHARTO” IN NEWSWEEK
AND “END OF AN ERA” ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
Student Number: 044214102
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile, Spreads its curious opinion To a million merciful and sneering men, While families cuddle the joys of the fireside When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.
A newspaper is a court Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market Where wisdom sells its freedom And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game Where his error scores the player victory While another's skill wins death.
A newspaper is a symbol; It is feckless life's chronicle, A collection of loud tales Concentrating eternal stupidities, That in remote ages lived unhaltered, Roaming through a fenceless world.
A poem by Stephen crane
g{|á à{xá|á |á wxw|vtàxw àÉ ẫç uxẩÉảxw Ủtưxđàá? ytẫ|ẩç
tÇw yÜ|xÇwá‹
TÇw àÉ tÄÄ à{x ÑxÉÑÄx ã{É Üxtw à{|á‹
STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY
I honestly declared that this thesis, which I have written, does not contain the work or parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the references, as a scientific paper should.
Yogyakarta, September 21, 2010 The Writer
Student Number: 044214102
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN
PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma: Nama : Meita Estiningsih Nomor Mahasiswa : 044214102 Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
NEWS IDEOLOGY OF SUHARTO’S FALL EVENT
IN “AFTER SUHARTO” IN NEWSWEEK
AND “END OF AN ERA” ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE
Beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalty kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis. Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Yogyakarta, 21 September 2010 Yang menyatakan
(MEITA ESTININGSIH)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all I would like to thank God Almighty for helping me and guiding me during the process of the thesis, and for answering my prayers in His way.
I would like to thank my parents and my family for supporting me all these past six years. Without them, I could not afford to finish my study. I dedicate this thesis to them. My best gratitude is especially for aunty Tarti and uncle Pudjioto for supporting my study finance.
In addition, I would like to thank my advisor Adventina Putranti, S.S., M. Hum. and my co-advisor Anna Fitriati, S.Pd., M.Hum. for their patient in guiding me and giving me some useful and clever advice for this thesis. I thank for their guidance, advices, and time that they gave to finish this study.
I also thank Tempo Jakarta, Indonesian Visual Art Archive, Kolese St. Ignatius, and Sanata Dharma University library for the references of this study. I also thank Yoshi Fajar Kresnomurti of IVAA as my informal advisor and Prandika Yudhistira as my personal motivator and for giving me such care and love. In addition, I thank Keke for lending me a digital dictionary.
I thank my friends at English Letters department, Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University, Christian University of Duta Wacana, Aksara IVAA, Dhyastra boarding house and Beo 20, and my friends of Mitra Perpus Sadhar, also Gayam 16 for loving me and giving such courage, attention, and care.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................... i APPROVAL PAGE ......................................................................................... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE .................................................................................... iii MOTTO PAGE ................................................................................................ iv DEDICATION PAGE ...................................................................................... v LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA
ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS ......................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................. viii LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND TABLES ........................................................... x ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... xi ABSTRAK ....................................................................................................... xii
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
................................................................. 1 A. Background of the Study ................................................................... 1 B.
Problem Formulations ....................................................................... 6 C. Objectives of the Study ..................................................................... 7 D.
Definition of Terms ........................................................................... 7
CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW
................................................ 9 A. Review of Related Studies ................................................................ 9 B.
Review of Related Theories .............................................................. 12 1.
News as Discourse ...................................................................... 12 2. Critical Discourse Analysis (Critical Linguistics Approach)...... 13 3. Representation ............................................................................. 27 4. Ideology ...................................................................................... 29 C. Theoretical Framework ..................................................................... 30
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ............................................................. 32
A. Object of the Study ........................................................................... 32 B. Approach of the Study ...................................................................... 33 C. Method of the Study .......................................................................... 34CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS .......................................................................... 36
A. The Analysis on the Vocabularies’ Meaning Related to the Contextof the Fall of Suharto in the Article of “After Suharto” in
NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME...................................... 37 1.
The Analysis on the Vocabularies in “After Suharto” Article .... 39 2. The Analysis on the Vocabularies in “end of an Era” Article .... 74
B.
Representation of the Fall of Suharto Event in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” ................................................................................. 102 1.
The Representation of the Fall of Suharto Event in “After Suharto ........................................................................................ “ 102 2. The Representation of the Fall of Suharto Event in “End of an
Era” ............................................................................................. 105 C. News ideology Constructed through the Representation of the Fall of Suharto Event in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” ................ 110
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION
..................................................................... 121
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.......................................................................................... 126
APPENDICES
................................................................................................ 130 Appendix 1 .............................................................................................. 130 Appendix 2 .............................................................................................. 157
LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND TABLES Diagram 1
. The Example of Vocabularies Taxonomical Structures .................... 21
Diagram 2 . The Diagram of the Representation Process in “After Suharto” ....... 111
Diagram 3. The Diagram of the Representation Process in “End of an Era” ....... 115
Table 1 . The Example of Vocabulary Choices ...................................................... 22
Table 2. The Comparison Table of the Fall of Suharto Representation between “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” article .......................................................... 108
ABSTRACT
MEITA ESTININGSIH (2010). News Ideology of Suharto’s Fall Event in “After
Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” Article in TIME Magazine.
Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University.News magazine is a kind of written communication. Written communication is also one of kinds of verbal discourse, which indeed deals with language. News is the representation of the world in language; it represents the events through languages, which does not merely reflect the world neutrally. Thus, different expressions of language carry different ideology, which is different ideas, or belief. Referring to this, I focused on newsweeklies that have been well known internationally, which are TIME and
NEWSWEEK
to study the ideology of the fall of Suharto event. I chose articles in both magazines that became the headline as well as cover story, “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”.
In this thesis, I analyzed three problem formulations. First, it is to analyze the meaning of the vocabularies related to the context of the fall of Suharto event in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine. The second one is to analyze the representation of the fall of Suharto event through the meaning of the vocabularies in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”. The third is to identify the ideology constructed through the representation in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”.
In order to analyze the problems above, I used Critical Discourse Analysis as the approach to understand the news components. Critical Discourse Analysis is interdisciplinary theory, which could be linked to other theories, which are representation and ideology.
The analysis has three main points. First, the analysis on the vocabulary meaning related to the fall of Suharto in the article of “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”. I found 57 vocabularies in “After Suharto” and vocabularies in “End of an Era” related to Suharto’s fall event. Those vocabularies are classified into three main classifications in each of article. “After Suharto” has one vocabulary in key concept of the fall of Suharto, 12 vocabularies in the general process of the fall of Suharto, and 44 vocabularies in the surrounding events during the fall of Suharto classification. “End of an Era” has one vocabulary in key concept of the fall of Suharto, 26 vocabularies in the general process of the fall of Suharto, and 41 vocabularies in the surrounding events during the fall of Suharto classification. The second one is the analysis on the representation of the vocabularies in each of classifications. The vocabularies in each classification of both articles represent the fall of Suharto event including the actors and the events surrounded it. Third, the result of the analysis is that I found five points of ideology in the news of the fall of Suharto in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” article through the representations of the vocabularies. First, both of articles have social class ideology. Second, both of them perceived the fall of Suharto event in the point of view of economy. Third, the article of “After Suharto” brings the idea of the attitudes of power relation between the military and students. Fourth, “End of an Era” brings the idea of liberalism. Fifth, “After Suharto” constructs the common sense that the overthrow is typically perceived as revolution with its components: demonstration, People Power, military and riot.
ABSTRAK
MEITA ESTININGSIH (2010). News Ideology of Suharto’s Fall Event in “After
Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” Article in TIME Magazine.
Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma.Majalah berita merupakan salah satu bentuk komunikasi tertulis. Komunikasi tertulis itu juga salah satu dari bentuk wacana verbal yang pastinya berhubungan dengan bahasa. Berita merupakan representasi dari realita di dunia yang merepresentasikan peristiwa-peristiwa dalam bahasa yang tidak direfleksikan secara natural. Maka dari itu, ekspresi-ekspresi bahasa dalam berita membentuk ideologi tertentu, ide-ide tertentu atau kepercayan-kepercayaan tertentu. Mengacu pada hal tersebut, saya memfokuskan studi ini pada majalah berita mingguan yang ternama secara internasional, TIME dan NEWSWEEK untuk menganalisis ideologi dalam berita lengsernya Suharto. Saya memilih artikel yang menjadi berita utama maupun berita sampul, “After Suharto” dan “End of an Era”.
Dalam studi ini, saya menganalisis tiga rumusan masalah. Yang pertama, menganalisis makna dari pilihan kosakata yang berhubungan dengan berita lengsernya Suharto di artikel “After Suharto” di majalah NEWSWEEK dan “End of an Era” di majalah
TIME
. Kedua, menganalisis representasi dari berita lengsernya Suharto melalui makna pilihan kosakata-kosakata. Ketiga, mengidentifikasi ideologi yang terkonstruksi melalui representasi dari berita lengsernya Suharto di artikel “After Suharto” dan “End of an Era”.
Untuk menganalisis rumusan masalah tersebut, saya menggunakan Analisis Wacana Kritis sebagai pendekatan untuk memahami komponen-komponen berita. Analisis Wacana Kritis merupakan teori interdisipliner yang juga mengandung teori ideologi dan representasi.
Ada tiga poin utama dalam analisis ini. Yang pertama, makna kontekstual dari pilihan kosakata-kosakata yang berhubungan dengan peristiwa lengsernya Suharto di artikel “After Suharto” dan “End of an Era”. Saya menemukan 57 kosakata di “After Suharto” dan 68 kosakata di “End of an Era”. Pilihan kosakata-kosakata tersebut saya klasifikasikan menjadi tiga klasifikasi utama pada setiap artikel. Di artikel “After Suharto” terdapat satu kosakata di klasifikasi konsep utama, 12 kosakata di klasifikasi proses umum lengsernya Suharto, dan 44 kosakata di klasifikasi peristiwa-peristiwa terkait selama lengsernya Suharto. Di artikel “End of an Era” terdapat satu kosakata di klasifikasi konsep utama peristiwa lengsernya Suharto, 26 kosakata di klasifikasi proses umum lengsernya Suharto, dan 41 kosakata di klasifikasi peristiwa-peristiwa terkait selama lengsernya Suharto. Yang kedua, analisis representasi dari pilihan kosakata-kosakata dalam setiap klasifikasi. Kosakata-kosakata dalam setiap klasifikasi di kedua artikel merepresentasikan peristiwa lengsernya Suharto termasuk aktor-aktor dan peristiwa-peristiwa yang terkait. Yang ketiga, identifikasi ideologi dari representasi kosakata-kosata dalam artikel “After Suharto” dan “End of an Era”. Ada lima poin ideologi dalam berita lengsernya Suharto di kedua artikel tersebut. Pertama, pada kedua artikel terdapat ideologi kelas sosial. Kedua, kedua artikel mempersepsikan penyebab lengsernya Suharto cenderung ke masalah ekonomi. Ketiga, dalam “After Suharto” terdapat ideologi relasi kekuasaan, antara militer dan mahasiswa. Keempat, dalam artikel “End of an Era” terdapat ideologi liberalisme. Kelima, dalam artikel “After Suharto” terdapat nalar awam bahwa peristiwa lengsernya Suharto itu selalu dipersepsikan dengan sebuah proses revolusi yang berhubungan dengan
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study Language is the most prominent and crucial medium for human
communication. ‘People use language in order to communicate ideas or beliefs (or emotion), and they do so as a part of more social events’, for instance to have a conversation with friends in a specific situation, a phone call, a lesson in a classroom, a job interview, during visit a doctor, or when writing and reading news report. A communicative event in specific social context is one of characterizations of discourse (van Dijk, 1997: 2). Sara Mills gave further explanation of the definition of discourse by quoting Geoffrey Leech and Michael Short’s definition.
Discourse is linguistic communication seen as a transaction between speaker and hearer, as an interpersonal activity whose form is determined by its social purpose. Text is linguistic communication (either spoken or written) seen simply as a message coded in its auditory or visual medium (2001: 4). Therefore, the communicative event is not only through the talking
(spoken language) which includes the speaker and hearer, but also through writing (written language) or text. This is related to the general notion of discourse, which is language use is limited not only on the spoken or ‘talk’ but also written or ‘text’. Thus, it is ‘useful to include also written text in the concept of discourse’ in the conversation in talking, there are speaker and receiver, in text there are author and reader. Text, in this case, is a product of written communication or written discourse. Therefore, there are enough similarities between spoken and written language use, communication, and interaction (van Dijk, 1997: 3).
Referring to this, therefore, news is considered as a text, a product of written discourse.
News is an important and actual event report that attracts public attention, published through printed media, such as newspaper, magazine, tabloid or through electronic media, such as television, radio, internet, etc. However, in this case, I focus only on the printed media, especially newsweekly magazine. Newsweekly magazine’s content is usually about the actual reports in a week that is compiled in one news report in a magazine. However, since the up-to-date news usually has already been reported or published in daily newspaper, so in order to keep its timeliness, the headline in magazine is completed with detailed narrative opinions, and added with accurate data of people or event in news (biographical data, table, and graphic) and sometimes written in investigative narration. Therefore, the writing style of news report in magazine is different with newspapers. Newspapers is written in straight news, and has 5W+1H pattern (what, who, when, where, why, and how) whereas the news writing in magazine is feature.
The character of feature writing style is free style writing like writing a narrative story, it has plots and completely free from the 5W+1H pattern. Herbert J. Gans in his Deciding What’s news: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News,
…they combine dramatic narrative with dramatic still pictures, the latter taking up at least a third of the total news page (or "newshole"), and sometimes there are several pages of pictures (2004: 4). This feature writing style also includes cover story writing, which is also the headline, reports the cover illustration in a magazine.
Every news whether it is written in daily newspapers, newsmagazine, or other news media, has news values. The news media select events to be reported through complex process in which to fulfill the criteria of newsworthiness whether it is worth to be published or not. The criteria consist of six attributes, which are conflict (struggles featuring people, governments, or social and natural forces), impact (the number of people affected and how much they are affected), proximity (geographic or demographic closeness to the reader, listener, or viewer), timeliness (the more recent, the more newsworthy), prominence (how widely known a person or event is on the local, regional or national and international levels), and novelty (unique or bizarre people and events) (Sterling, 2009: 1002). These criteria are considered as the news values. Therefore, news does not just merely report the events and it is impossible has newsworthiness naturally. This notion is explained further by Stuart Hall, which is quoted by Roger Fowler in his
Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press
The media do not simply and transparently report events, which are ‘naturally’ newsworthy in themselves. ‘News’ is the end-product of a complex process which begins with a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially constructed set of categories (1996: 12).
In this case, news in magazine is one of forms of written communication. There is the information transmits from the speaker, that is the journalist, to the receiver, the reader. Therefore, the news article in magazine has the verbal photographs, graphics, tables, etc. Referring to the general notion of discourse concept that contains the communicative event, news article is indeed as one of the product of a text or written discourse. Thus, news is a discourse, which ‘far from neutrally reflecting social reality and empirical facts’ or simply it is ’the social construction of reality’ (Fowler, 1996: 2). The non-neutrality of news is because the language use like the choice of words, lexical structure, or the sentence or clause structure in the news are not neutral too. Thus, news is a representation of the world in language in the sense of construction, which is not a value-free reflection of ‘facts’ (Fowler, 1996: 4). It refers to the notion that language is not neutral, but a highly constructive mediator (Fowler, 1996: 1).
Thus, the representation in the news through the language is a constructive thing.
The non-neutrality of language could be seen from the journalists’ view or thought, belief, social background or what it is called ideology. The ideology is constructed through how the author describes the reality of the event using the language use in a text or writing. As a text, news has the tendency of ideology from the representation of the language created in the news writing. Thus, ideology in a text itself is constructed through the representation of the language structure meanings.
From that point of view, it could be concluded that different expressions may carry ideological distinctions (and thus different in representation) (Fowler, 1996: 4). It depends on the users of the language who have different background and beliefs one to another. Different expression of the language use in the news news-magazine in reporting a crucial political situation in Indonesia. It is because the foreign journalist has different political background, ideas, beliefs, social, and nation to many Indonesians. Related to this, I chose newsweekly magazines,
TIME
and NEWSWEEK as the representation of the American biggest news magazines and as the data for this study. I purposely chose the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine, which reported about the fall of Suharto in 1998 and they were published on June 1, 1998.
Since headline is the prominent issue in news, I prefer to analyze it rather than any other news articles. As I mentioned before, that the style of the news report written in magazine is in the form of feature or article, so the headline here is also written in feature writing style. I chose the 1998 Indonesian political issue and narrowed down the topic into the fall of President Suharto. Because of the topic became the headline as well as cover story in both TIME and NEWSWEEK magazine, it is for sure that the issue/ topic is actual and fulfill the news value and newsworthy criteria that I have mentioned previously.
The fall of Suharto is an extraordinary political event because Suharto resigned before his term end. As Ibnu Hamad stated in his Konstruksi Realitas
Politik dalam Media Massa: Sebuah Studi Critical Discourse Analysis terhadap
Berita-Berita PolitikPolitical issues always attract the attention of mass media as the news source…especially if that political issue is more than the usual thing or extraordinary case, such as presidency replacement in the middle of his term and the parliament dissolution (my translation) (2004: 1). In addition, the fall of Suharto is one of the historical facts in Indonesia since it was the time of reformation when the new era in Indonesian politics began after Suharto’s fall.
The crisis, May riots, and the reformation of political system and presidency transition in Indonesia are the news values, which are worth to publish as news in media. Moreover, different political background, nation, culture, or belief of a journalist or reporter will cause different choice of words, structure, and meaning in the news report. Thus, the ideology that carries is also different from one to another feature in different magazine. Referring to that, this study is trying to seek the news ideologies brought in the article of “After Suharto” in
NEWSWEEK
and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine in understanding the fall of Suharto event in Indonesia, through its representation on the language use, which I focus on the use of vocabularies choices in both articles. Since vocabularies choices are part of the discourse elements, they could cover all of the larger elements like syntax in the level of clause or semantics unit coherence in the level of paragraph, like macrostructures or superstructures, so the analysis focus on vocabularies will be much efficient. In addition, the vocabularies are the integral part to analyze the ideology of a discourse.
According to the focus of the study that I have mentioned in the background of study, the problem formulations are as follows:
1. What is the meaning of the vocabularies in the context of the fall of Suharto in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine? 2. How is the fall of Suharto represented in both articles, “After Suharto” and
“End of an Era” through the contextual meaning of vocabularies? 3. What are the ideologies of both articles constructed through its representation? C.
Objectives of the Study
In this part, I will explain the objectives of the study based on the problem formulations stated above in order to make them clearer. This study has three objectives. First, I try to find out the contextual meaning of the vocabularies in the article entitled “End of an Era” in TIME and “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK magazine. Second, I will identify the representation of the fall of Suharto in both articles through the contextual meaning of the vocabularies. Then, third, I would like to identify the ideology of both articles that reveals from the representation of the event, the fall of Suharto. Thus, from those objectives, it will be easier to answer each of the questions stated in problem formulation.
D. Definition of Terms
In order to avoid the ambiguity and misunderstanding, I give the definition of terms that are stated in the title also in problem formulations of this study. I will give brief and clear explanations to the terms stated. Ideology here refers to the third definition stated by Raymond Williams, which is ‘the general process of the refers to the view of Fowler that it is the ideas, beliefs, values, theories, ideology of the news content (1996: 1).
According to Mappatoto, an article is the complete nonfiction story/narration in the mass media that it is not in the form of straight news, which has no fix length. In addition, it is written dynamically as the expression of creativity, which sometimes has the touch of subjectivity of the writer toward the events, situation, and life aspects with emphasizing on the human interest in order to achieve its aims, which are giving information, entertaining, educating, and convincing (1999: 5).
Vocabulary is ‘a set of lexemes, including single word, compound words, and idioms’ (Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 580). There is a sense-relations within system that makes vocabulary of any languages as a ‘structured system, rather than an abstract list’ (Fowler, 1996: 82). Sense ‘defines meaning as a relationship between words rather than between words and the world’ (Fowler, 1996: 81).
According to Stuart Hall, representation means ‘using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully to other people’ (2003: 15). In this study, representation refers to how a person, groups or ideas or certain opinion is described or expressed in the news (Eriyanto, 2009: 113). Representation, in the mass media and discourse is a constructive practice, which events, ideas, persons, and certain groups are not communicated neutrally in their natural structure, as it is (Fowler, 1996: 25). especially on the news discourse or press or media analysis. Since TIME and
NEWSWEEK
magazines are the best-known news magazine all over the world, several scholars also specified their study on news discourse on these news magazines. From time to time, TIME and NEWSWEEK became the popular study among the literary analysts or linguists. In addition, as a well-known media with its news-writing style, various topics of study on TIME and NEWSWEEK had been worked, including the study that had been done by Herbert J. Gans, Deciding
What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and
Time . Gans worked on the comparative study on CBS evening News, NBC
Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. His study focused on the domestic news on how the media covered the Cold War and Cuban missile crisis, and affected the audience, also ‘how that audience, in turn, affected the decisions that were being made in Washington’ (2004: xxi).
On newsweeklies, he ‘concentrated on the national news section called Nation at TIME and National Affairs at NEWSWEEK’ (2004: 4). Moreover, both newsweeklies were compared to CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News that United States. Gans chose these two news programs on CBS and NBC for a minute or two minutes news to compare them with the columns in both news magazines but still at the same section, which was domestic news. He did not only work on or study on the national news or national programs but also how the journalists of each news organizations reported, and wrote it, especially on how they reproduced the ideology and values appeared in their writings and reporting about America as a nation and society.
He used content analysis to analyze what news journalists had selected over time. In addition, there was assumption that the news contained a picture of the nation and society but the journalists seemed not aware of such presence. Thus, it brought to the analytical study not critical. For the content analysis, the methodology he used was largely qualitative and supplemented by quantitative data. For the qualitative was a set of hypotheses based on over years of watching television news and reading news magazines. The hypotheses was supplemented with the quantitative data that he chose a six-month sample of stories appearing in alternate months during 1967, 1971, and 1975. Thus, the result of Gans’ study tends to be sociology study on observing how the American culture portrayed through the domestic news section on newsweeklies magazines, TIME and
NEWSWEEK also news programs on CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News.
Another study on news discourse or media study is a study by local scholar, Eriyanto with his Kompas dan Suara Pembaruan Minus Konflik SARA.
His study concentrated on how Kompas, Republika, Post Kota and Suara
1999, whether they emerged the religious and racial factors or not. They are national daily newspapers published all across the archipelago, and have the background of religious ideology. Eriyanto wanted to seek the tendency of each newspaper’s point of view on reporting or writing the religious and racial conflict in Maluku on December 26, 1999.
He did his analysis by Critical Discourse Analysis, so that he did not merely descriptively analyze and compare the four newspapers but he also criticized them. He used all the elements of CDA, which are text and social analysis to observe the four newspapers. For the text analysis, he analyzed the language use within the four newspapers, and for the social analysis, he analyzed the four newspapers’ ideology and related it to the situation of religious and racial conflict in Maluku. For the supplementation, he used quantitative data to observe and seek the frequency of the case and religious group description, news point of view, event labeling with vocabularies.
Therefore, the results are Republika had the point of view from the Islam group but Kompas and Suara Pembaruan did not choose to use religious point of view, both even used government or military point of view. Republika and Pos Kota described the event, Maluku case as religious conflict, whereas Kompas and
Suara Pembaruan did not have such description, and even they had no clear
tendency in describing that case. In addition, Republika chose the vocabulary of ‘pembantaian’ (slaughtering) to describe the conflict whereas Kompas and Suara
Pembaruan chose to use the vocabulary of ‘konflik’ or ‘pertikaian’ or ‘bentrok’
Both studies done by Herbert J. Gans and Eriyanto are the media studies, but Eriyanto tends to critize rather than to describe like Gans. Eriyanto tried to seek the tendency of religious ideology and the event labeling whereas Gans merely to observe and analyze how American portrayed through the domestic news and its journalists also audiences. The paradigm of the analysis in Eriyanto’s is critical whereas Gans’ is positivistic. Like both of the scholars had done, I also used printed news as data for the study concentrating on articles or features in newsweeklies magazines. However, unlike Eriyanto who used all the CDA’s elements in his study, I only focused on the text elements, as my field is linguistic study. In addition, my study also to observe and seek the ideology of the news through the representation of the event, which is the fall of Suharto in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine.
B. Review of Related Theories 1. News as Discourse
I had explained in previous chapter about discourse in brief that discourse is a form of communicative event. Discourse uses the language as the medium, to communicate people’s ideas or belief, emotion, which is as a part of certain social event. There are many kinds of discourses such as speeches, scientific discourse, or stories in novels. This part is to describe the difference of news story to other types of discourses. ‘News in the press is a specific kind of mass media discourse’ (van Dijk, 1988: 1). The notion of news media has three concepts referring to the
(TV or radio) program type in which news items are presented, third, a news item or news report, i.e., a text or discourse on radio, on TV or in the newspaper, in which new information is given about recent events (van Dijk, 1988: 4). It is similar to what van Dijk had studied; I also use the third concept of news in this study.
I emphasize on the news as an informative discourse, that it is constructed through the social shared. Thus, news is a kind of discourse, which is ‘a social product and a social practice’, so the meaning of event in the news is socially constructed (Fowler, 1996: 8). News is a representation of the world in language, which the language is not neutral in representing the world but it is refracting, structuring medium. Anything that is said or written about the world (in the news) is articulated from a particular ideological position (Fowler, 1996: 10).
Since this study deals with news discourse which criticizes the language use as its element, I used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the theory to analyze the text, the article of “End of An Era” in TIME and in NEWSWEEK “After Suharto”. Critical Discourse Analysis ‘regards language as social practice and takes consideration of the context of language use to be crucial’ (Wodak, 2006: 1). In other words, CDA sees discourse, which is language use in writing and speaking as a form of social practice, and analyzes language use as a part of the social process and structure. Therefore, CDA aims to ‘investigate critically language use (or in discourse)’ (Wodak, 2006: 2). Critical Discourse Analysis examines the language use in order to see the inequality power in society, thus, could reveal the ideological practice in a discourse.
Overall, there are several concepts or notions of CDA that CDA examines discourse in the concept of action, context, power, history and ideology.
a.
Action Discourse is understood as an action. This associates the discourse as the interaction form. Discourse could not be treated as a closed and internal analysis.
People talk, write, and use the language to interact and communicate with other people. According to that statement, discourse is seen as purposive activity to persuade, debate, argue, etc. and second, discourse is uttered consciously and controllably (Eriyanto, 2009: 8).
b.
Context
Critical Discourse Analysis considers the discourse context. Context is background, situation, event, and condition. Discourse, here, is produced, understood, and analyzed on the particular context. Fowler further explained that ‘the significance of discourse derives only from an interaction between language structure and the context in which it is used’ (1996: 90). Eriyanto quoted Guy Cook’s statement that there are three central things in discourse, which are text, context, and discourse. Text is all form of languages, which is not only words printed in a paper but also all kinds of expressions, speeches, music, pictures, sound effects, images. Context puts all the situations and the things beyond the where the text is produced, intended functions. Discourse, then, is understood as a text also context, to describe text and context all together in a communication process. However, not all of the contexts are put in the analysis, but it only puts the relevant and significant contexts to the text production and interpretation (Eriyanto, 2009: 8-10). Thus, discourse analyst must be very well informed, and must learn by experience how to bring the relevant knowledge to the process of interpretation (Fowler, 1996: 90).
c.
Power Critical Discourse Analysis considers every discourse, either text or conversations are not as a neutral or natural entity. In discourse basically, there is a power opposition. This concept of power is important to see the people who have the control or be controlled in discourse (Eriyanto, 2009: 11-12).
d.
History One of integral ways to understanding texts is by placing them in specific historical context. The result will appear why discourse develops or is developed in certain way or why certain language is used instead of the others (Eriyanto, 2009: 10-11).
e.
Ideology
Ideology is the integral part of Critical Discourse Analysis. This is because texts, conversations, or others are the ideological practices or as the reflection of particular ideology. The classical theories of ideology state that ideology is constructed by the dominant group in order to reproduce and legitimate their present domination as God-given, natural, benign, inevitable or to otherwise persuade the dominated groups to simply take such social relation for granted’ (van Dijk, 1997: 25). Implicitly, the dominant groups’ ideology will be effective if it is based on the reality that the dominated groups are considered it as a truth and something natural. Eriyanto quoted van Dijk’s statement that this phenomenon is called a “false consciousness”, how the dominant groups manipulated ideology to the dominated groups through propaganda or media control. Discourse analyst must see the context on how the ideology of the groups have role to construct the discourse. For instance, in the news text could be analyzed that whether the text is the representation of somebody’s ideology, like whether he/she is a feminist, anti- feminist, capitalist, socialist, etc. (2009: 13-14).
In addition, there are several approaches of CDA as its development from time to time by many scholars, which are critical linguistics, French discourse analysis, socio cognitive, socio-cultural change, and discourse social approach. However, I used critical linguistics approach in this study. Roger Fowler in his
Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press explained that
critical linguistics seeks, by studying the minute details of linguistic structure in the light of the social and historical situation of the text, to display consciousness the patterns of belief and value which are encoded in the language—and which are below the threshold of notice for anyone who accepts the discourse as ‘natural’ (1996: 67). To put it simply, critical linguistics means an ‘enquiry into the relations between signs, meanings and the social and historical conditions which govern the semiotic structure of discourse using particular kind of linguistics analysis’ (Fowler, 1996: certain linguistics construction, but it has to relate them to context in a special way. The critical linguist must have contextual knowledge and relate it to the linguistic structure to interpret the meaning in a discourse. The contextualizing is a matter of knowledge, experience, and intuition. Furthermore, ‘critical interpretation requires historical knowledge and sensitivity’ (Fowler, 1996: 68). Critical linguistics takes the view that any aspect of linguistic structure, whether syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, phonological can carry ideological significance.