Racism in the news : A critical discourse analysis of news reporting
in two prominent Australian newspapers
Peter, T(2000) conducted a study to probe for ideological construction of racism imbricated within the structure of newspaper reporting. The research focused on news reports relating to a Vietnamese gang (5T) in Australia whose violent, drug-dealing activities received publicity in two Sydney-based newspapers: The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph. The analysis of these reports adheres to the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and is undertaken in two very distinct stages. The first, a general characterization of the newspaper discourse, revealed evidence of a systematic stereotyping of “others” (Asians) as well as stereotyping of the ethnic community by the “white” majority. This is followed by a comparative analysis of two reports, which reveals evidence of racist ideology manifested in an asymmetrical power discourse between the (ethnic) law-breakers and the (white) law-enforcers. The results showed that in presenting headlines and news content related to the police, the newspapers will choose to use vocabulary and sentence structures that are positive and associated with the ideology of the powers of the police (i.e. "Got you ... police hit back in the heroin war", "Two gunned down in heroin gang war". While the news regarding the 5T gang focuses on using words that highlight crime and mayhem, such as "Street gang's culture of murder".
This study presents evidence that there is indeed ideological construction of racism imbricated within the structure of newspapers reports relating to the aforementioned Vietnamese gang in Australia. However, there are some limitations.
1. The researcher used data drawn from only a few newspapers that are very pro-police. Usually in such a study, data should be gathered from myriad and eclectic news sources such as in Hongladarom(1996) have used two texts by a comparative study of discourse in ways that differ both in the newspapers and television.
2. In this study, the researcher seems to purposely disregard linguistic that is germane to the study. The study should focus on linguistic, pragmatics and semantics. In addition, the research could be more comprehensive when discussing the various components of news and social context. Because it is useful to the study of racism in media discourse.
3. To analyze the data, the researcher has divided the analysis into two sections: a general characterization of the newspaper discourse, and a comparative analysis of two texts. However, the researcher did not analyze in the inter-text, which is extremely important in the presentation of the ideology behind the news reporting; that there is a relationship between text and the socio-cultural.
The strengths of this study lies in its methodology. It proves that certain key words (i.e. them, crime, etc.) when used to describe the Vietnamese gangs resonate with Australians and cause them to think negatively about the gangs. Portrait of an Asian man in the eyes of most people means a bad person. Although this research was conducted in Australia, it doesn’t take in account Asian minorities residing in Europe or America as in the work of van Dijk(1984) was discussed and examples of research, most of which refers to a group of white people in Europe. Another key advantage of this study is that the results were clearly illustrated with illustration figures and conclusion was made based on the results in the study.
References
Hongladarom,K.(1996).Competing discourse on hilltribes: media representation of ethnic
minorities in Thailand.Silpakorn,20(3),11-47.
Peter,T.(2000).“Racism in the news : A critical discourse analysis of news reporting in two
Australian newspapers” Discourse and Society,11(1),7-49.
van Dijk,T.A.(1984).Prejudice in discourse. Amsterdam : John Benjamins..
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