Research: “Manipulation in Philippine News Reporting: Real or Imagined?”

This paper was written for the Global Investigative Journalism Conference held in Lillehammer, Norway, in October 2015 as part of the academic track. http://www.gijn.org

Manipulation in Philippine News Reporting: Real or Imagined?

By Eden Regala Flores

Abstract

This study examines the presence of manipulation in news reporting in the three leading online English broadsheets in the Philippines through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis. It attempts to describe, using the conceptual categories proposed by Teun van Dijk (1989/2006), how the macrostructure or the schematic structure of news reports can contribute to the attainment of manipulation in news discourse. The data of the study consists of 75 news reports on the alleged cheating during the 2004 presidential elections involving the President and an unidentified Commission on Elections officer, which first surfaced on June 6 and reported until June 20, 2005.

It is hypothesized that the sequencing of these categories helps promote or perpetuate a particular value, belief, or ideology that both the journalists and readers implicitly use in the production and understanding of news. In view of the above findings, there is a need to look at how lessons on reading newspapers are taught in the classrooms. It may also be helpful to impress upon the learners that news reports, like any accounts of any events, are the reporters’ interpretations or versions of the events and situations that would require close and critical reading.

Manipulation in Philippine News Reporting: Real or Imagined?

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background

One interesting area of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is linguistic analysis which seeks to systematically detect and articulate how values and ideologies are represented in text (see for example Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Fowler, Hodge, Kress, & Trew, 1979; Fairclough, 1989; van Leeuwen, 1996; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; van Dijk, 1997; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999). Anchored on the premise that words are/cannot be neutral in the way they represent the world (see Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984, in Wooffitt, 2005; Kress, 1993; Fiske, 1994, in McGregor, 2003; Flowerdew, 1999), CDA challenges language analysts to move from seeing language as abstract to seeing words as having meaning in a particular historical, social, and political condition. Even more significant, words (written or oral) are used to convey a broad sense of meanings and the meaning language users convey with those words is identified by their immediate sociocultural conditions. Drawing heavily on the works of Foucault (1972), Habermas (1976), and Bourdieu (1977), CDA tries to bridge the theoretical and methodological divide between social theory studies that neglect the analysis of the linguistic features of texts and those which focus upon the language of texts but tend not to approach  them with social theoretical issues (Fairclough, 2003). The objective of CDA is “to show how discourse is shaped by relations of power and ideologies, and the constructive effects discourse has upon social identities, social relations, and systems of knowledge and belief” (Fairclough, 1992b, cited in Price, 1999, p. 581). In doing so, CDA aims to ultimately effect changes in discourse practices that will result in greater social equality, justice, and emancipation from oppressive hegemony (Fairclough, 1989; van Dijk, 1997; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, cited in van Dijk, 1997).

It comes as no surprise then that CDA turns to media texts or “hard news as staple for analysis” (O’Halloran, 2007, p. 1), given the cultural meaning they produce involving different groups of people engaged in multifaceted issues under diverse and distinct circumstances and how these significations contribute to the shaping of popular knowledge or beliefs about them and the world. (This does not mean, however, that hard news are the only preoccupations of critical discourse analysts.)

Fairclough (1995) claims that media, in general, and news reports, in particular, have the power to make things happen. He argues, for example, that Tony Blair became the next Labour leader because “most of the British media had already chosen him as the successor long before the official election opened” (p. 1). Likewise, Fairclough (1995) opines that Forza Italia’s control of media—“he owns three television channels, a national newspaper, and the biggest publishing company” (p. 1) in Italy—won him the general election in Italy.

However, it can also be argued that news reports have the power to abort things from happening. For instance, the kidnapping of Jun Lozada, one of the whistleblowers in the ZTE-NBN scam involving some Philippine government officials and a group of Chinese investors, was thwarted because Lozada’s wife pleaded with the media reporters to “make” noise as to his whereabouts. Ferdinand Marcos’ attempt to prove that he was still in power proved inutile when the rebels and the executives of the government-controlled television networks agreed to shut down their systems in the middle of his speech at the height of People Power 1.

This power of media to make things happen or abort them, according to Fairclough (1995), depends on how “particular ways people and ideas are (re)presented in media” (p. 2). How did the news reports represent the relevance of aborting the kidnapping of Jun Lozada, for example? What ideological implications are there if this kidnapping is stopped? Reporters would like their readers to believe that the kidnapping must be prevented because the presence of the whistleblower in the Senate hearing would piece together fragmented accounts of and/or supply withheld information of other witnesses to resolve an existing issue. And this is important if the people want to know the truth behind the allegations. What these news reports, in effect, communicate is the value people or readers place on truth as a foundation of good governance.

Fairclough (1995) asserts that the signifying power of the media “is largely a matter of how language is used” (p. 2)  because media can (1) (re)present things in particular ways, (2) effect changes in leadership or laws, (3) shape the mindset of people to take a particular course of action, (4) decide on who is to be seen on TV or heard over the radio and who or what is to be written and read about in newspapers, and (5) promote knowledge, values or social relations. He adds that language analysis, particularly the linguistic and discoursal nature of the power of the media, is a good starting point to understand how media use language to perpetuate a particular ideology or value and how they effect contemporary sociocultural changes (see also van Dijk, 1997; Toolan, 1997; Teo, 2000). Dellinger (1995) opines that although a structuralist or formalist approach to studying media language has the advantage of opening up many new areas for analysis and criticism, questions about structuralist assumptions, such as deterministic structures and categories and meanings attached to words and methods remain unsatisfactorily answered (Dellinger, 1995). What is needed, according to Wodak (1989, cited in Dellinger, 1995), to fully understand and appreciate the role of media as well as its language, is to look at how language is produced as well as how it is received within its natural speech situations of social relevance. And this, she opines, is made possible by using the critical discourse analysis lens.

Interestingly, Friedrich Ungerer (2000) claims that

All text must seduce their audience if they want to put across their message successfully.  They must tempt them into reading, or if the texts are oral or audiovisual, into listening or watching, and into accepting the message.  For media texts this seductive quality is particularly important because, though their prospective audience is often unlimited, attention is never assured and if gained at all is difficult to maintain.  No wonder that media texts are permeated with strategies designed to win the audience and keep it interested and impressed (p. vii).

He further asserts that this seductive element of media texts is a precondition of manipulation which needs a close scrutiny from critical discourse analysts (p. vii). This is an observation concurred in by van Dijk (2006) when he states that “there are a number of crucial notions in Critical Discourse Analysis that require special attention because they imply discursive power abuse. Manipulation is one of these notions” (p. 359).

Manipulation, as defined by van Dijk (2006), is a communicative and interactional practice in which a manipulator exercises control over other people, usually against their will or against their best interest. Its illegitimacy lies in the fact that it “(re)produces, or may reproduce, inequality” which is “in the best interest of powerful groups and speakers, and hurts the interest of less powerful groups and speakers” (van Dijk, 2006, p. 364). Illegitimate manipulation is distinguished from legitimate manipulation (persuasion) where there is no coercion or use of (physical, mental, or otherwise) force and where interlocutors are free to believe or act as they please, depending on whether or not they accept the arguments of the persuader (van Dijk, 2006).

1.2. Research Aims/Questions

That news reports may be contributory to the promotion of social constructs which may promulgate manipulation (see for example van Dijk, 1991, 1993; Fairclough, 1995; Stamou, 2001; Teo, 2000)  is an interesting notion this paper would like to explore or investigate. It aims to establish the connection between manipulation and language and demonstrate how the discourse of the three leading newspapers in the country can be used as an instrument to exert ideological manipulation on alleged presidential electoral rigging.

Along this line, the perceived notion that news reports perpetuating a particular ideology often go unnoticed or unchallenged needs to be addressed and scrutinized using  a principled account of how news reports as a form of discourse, can be manipulative.

This paper also attempts to show how theoretical and methodological insights from critical discourse analysis and manipulation theory can be applied to public communication, specifically news reports, about controversial electoral issues. This paper aims to make a contribution to the understanding of manipulation in news reports, focusing on ways in which it is attained or realized. The author subjected to critical discourse analysis the coverage of the three leading online English newspapers in the Philippines on the alleged cheating during the 2004 presidential elections involving some government officials. Central to this paper is the use of macrostructures in representing social actors and events in the said three broadsheets.  In particular, this paper endeavors to provide answers to the following questions:

1. What constitute the macrostructures of online English news reports in the Philippines in terms of conceptual categories such as Headline, Lead, History, Previous Event, Main Event, Consequences, (Verbal) Reactions, Evaluation, and Expectation?
2. How are these macrostructures realized in terms of sequencing of events?

2. Analytic Approach in Analyzing News Reports

van Dijk’s (2006) proposed analytic approach explicitly links discourse, cognition, and society:

Manipulation is a social phenomenon – especially because it involves interaction and power abuse between groups and social actors – a cognitive phenomenon, because manipulation always implies the manipulation of the minds of participants, and a discursive–semiotic phenomenon, because manipulation is being exercised through text, talk and visual messages (p. 261).

Manipulation, as used throughout this paper, is “a communicative and interactional practice” (van Dijk, 2006, p. 360) which occurs when the news reporters represent or reconstruct news or events in a restricted way to intentionally mislead a reader for the writer’s (or someone else’s) benefit (Huckin, 2002). This representation or reconstruction of events in a restricted way, is what Huckin calls framing – a socially based, abstract, high-level knowledge structure that organizes certain information about the world into a coherent whole. It is “a general, standardized, predefined structure (in the sense that it already belongs to the receiver’s knowledge of the world) which allows re-cognition and guides perception” (Donati, 1992, cited in Huckin, 2002, p. 354). In effect, framing enables the reporters to mention certain relevant topics and subtopics which suit or support their purposes or their own mental constructs of the events or news story and to ignore other pieces of information which do not. In the same vein, framing enables the readers to view or read these news stories from a particular perspective. In so doing, both the writer and the reader are in effect setting the context so as to invoke a certain context model, that is, give the text representation a certain ‘slant’ or a particular way of reporting or reading the news item. Hence, non-critical readers, Huckin (2002) claims, may then use the (linguistic and discoursal) cues to activate a context model that accords reasonably well with that of the reporters. He further claims that when readers simply attend to and only consider the pieces of information explicitly provided by the reporters and ignore those that are only implicit or even disguised, then manipulation is in order because a more critical or resistant reader may take the process to a deeper level by invoking a different context model for the given topic (Scholes, 1985, cited in Huckin, 2002). When readers do not respond to or accept these explicit linguistic and discoursal cues, as accurate representations of news events, then manipulation fails.  In other words, manipulation, as opposed to legitimate persuasion where readers or listeners believe or accept the arguments of the writer or speaker as sound and rational, occurs when reporters represent social events to promote or perpetuate a restricted or a particular way of interpreting them through the use of both explicit and implicit linguistic and/or discoursal devices or cues.

2.1. Schematic Structure of News Reports

Corollary to the use of these manipulative prototypes is the schematic structuring, or superstructure, of the news reports which, van Dijk (1989) believes, may serve as an indicator of manipulation or domination in news reporting. He assumes that news reports, just like any other events (e.g., simple get-together to the highly politicized ouster of the Speaker of the House of Representatives), have a fixed, conventional schema, consisting of conceptual categories that are typical for news discourse. Each conceptual category corresponds to a specific sequence of propositions or sentences of the text. The order of conceptual categories, as it is specified by the rules, therefore also determines the overall meaning of the respective sequences or episodes. In other words, the highest levels of the schematic structure are given first, and the lower levels follow. However, some rules, van Dijk (1985) opines, “have a much more optional nature, being no more than ‘preferences’, which may vary from culture to culture, newspaper to newspaper, journalist to journalist…making the formal rules become variable or even expedient strategies” (p. 89). This means that a writer and/or his editor may place conceptual categories that normally come toward the end of the news in an earlier position if both (writer and editor) deem it relevant or important. This variability of sequencing of conceptual categories is what van Dijk (1985) calls transformations of a canonical scheme. These transformations, subject to the writer’s judgment calls, can very well be vehicles of manipulation (van Dijk, 2006).

This superstructure or scheme is formed by the following conceptual categories (van Dijk, 2006):

1. Headline (H) and Lead (L): express the semantic macrostructure or the most important information and/or overall meaning of the text. The Headline is the first category, the one that opens the discourse. Both the Headline and the Lead function as a Summary and are the most obvious categories of the news discourse. They may be used as expedient signals to make effective guesses about the theme or topic of the news. However, the Lead, in many newspapers, is optional.
2. History (HI): deals with nonrecent past history of actual situations and their events. It cannot be main events in news that have appeared recently.  Semantically, it denotes events that embrace years, not days or weeks.
3. Previous Event (PE): is often used to remind the reader of what has happened before (reported earlier in the same newspaper).  It could be a specific event that precedes the Main Events and that can be taken as a cause in direct condition.
4. Main Event (ME): the central, obligatory category of this ‘body’ of the news report, and organizes the information about the prominent, recent event that gave rise to the news reports in the first place. It is the actual or main news events.
5. Consequences (CON): give causal coherence to news events by discussing real or possible effects. They also organize all events that are described as being caused by the Main Event.
6. (Verbal) Reaction (VR): refers to the citations of the interviewed people presented inside the discourse (though the selection of speakers and of quotations need not be objective). It is signaled by names and roles of news participants and by direct or indirect quotes of verbal utterances and usually comes after the ME and CON categories. It allows journalists to formulate opinions that are not necessarily their own, but which nevertheless are objective because they have actually been stated.
7. Commentary (COM): gives comments or other information about the main events, however, its presence is not mandatory. It is further divided into two major subcategories:
   • Evaluation (EV): gives the opinions of the journalist about the actual news events
   • Expectation (EX): gives or contains possible political or other consequences of the actual events and situations at the end of the news. It may predict or speculate future events.

The following figure represents the schematic structure of news discourse:

Fig. 1: A representation of the schematic structure of news report

_____________________        

Note: From News as Discourse (p. 55), T. A. van Dijk, (1988), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Copyright 1988 by the Lawrence Erlbaum

van Dijk (1988) argues that the proposed schema for news reports (see Fig. 1) is “theoretical in the sense that all conceptual categories are mentioned, although it is obvious that many news texts only have some of these conceptual categories” (p. 56).   He considers Headline and Main Event categories as obligatory (that is, all news reports must have or contain these) to the minimally well-formed news discourse, with Previous Event, History, Verbal Reaction, Evaluation, Expectation, as categories to be optional (that is, news reports may or may not have or contain these). He also adds that some categories may be recursive (repeated several times). This expansion and elaboration of Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) narrative structure suggest that most social events represented in news reports revolve around a main event (van Dijk, 1988, p. 49). However, it was noted that not all reports will begin with the Main Event (see, for example, Brookes, 1995; Ungerer, 2000; Stamou, 2001). For example, when one newspaper highlights the consequences of the removal from office of the House Speaker, whereas another newspaper uses as its headline and lead story the circumstances surrounding his ouster, these editorial choices signal to the readers the most important piece of information in the news report. Thus, this writer’s (or his editor’s) choice or decision as to what to highlight/de-emphasize (or, altogether, to exclude) or where to place/position (or to fore/background) details like social agents or events in his report, may indicate or suggest to a reader a particular way of reading or processing these pieces of information. The sequencing or ordering of these conceptual categories as well as the use of efficient manipulative prototypes through deliberate choices of what lexical items or linguistic features to employ may be indicative of a writer’s intent to influence or control the reader’s mental model of the news report’s representation of people and events.

van Dijk (1995) believes that this power to influence is not restricted to their audiences “but also involves the role of the media within the broader framework of the social, cultural, political, or economic power structures of society” (p. 9). Thus, he deems it necessary that “a detailed attention to the structures and strategies of such discourses and to the ways these relate to institutional arrangements, on the one hand, and to the audience, on the other hand” (p. 10) be done or explored.

It is this power and role of media that bear an impact on the whole gamut of society’s structures that affect changes in its citizens’ beliefs and values because as media represent people and things (in particular ways) in relation to other people and things, at any given time and place and under any circumstances, choices have to be made.  Fairclough (1995) claims that, “partly these choices are a matter of vocabulary and/or partly a matter of grammar” (p. 109).

A news reporter’s lexical choice, for example, to use ‘kidnapped’ instead of ‘protected’ when reporting what the police/military men who met the whistleblower allegedly did upon his arrival at the airport forces readers to read the event in a restricted or definite way. That is, when readers see the word ‘kidnapped’ in the news they interpret it as a move (by somebody/a group, or the government itself) to prevent the whistleblower from testifying before the Senate Committee investigating the scam, whereas a journalist’s use of ‘protected’ may influence the reader to see or interpret the news from the police’s perspective (articulated by the Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government) who adamantly denied the use of ‘kidnapped’ term and stood pat on its statement that the policemen were there to provide ‘protection’ as requested by the whistleblower himself.

It may be safe to say then that any decisions in news reporting made by the journalist or his editor are indicative of ideological leanings which may impact the ways events and news actors are represented in news reports.

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1. Data

The news reports that served as corpus for this paper were taken from three online English broadsheets in the Philippines: Inquirer.Net (Inq.net), Manila Bulletin Online (MBO), and Philstar.com (PS). Furthermore, the choice was based on the fact that these are the three leading online English newspapers in the Philippines in terms of readership and circulation as borne out by findings of surveys conducted the whole year of 2007 (Nielsen Media Index Study, 2008).

Given the impact, scope, and relevance of the presidential elections held in May 2004 on the history of the Philippines, and the fact that this event had caught the attention of various sectors from various fields, thus enriching the kind of news reportage of this event, the author investigated the cheating allegedly committed by one of the candidates in cahoots with some high ranking government officials. Specifically, only national or headline news that covered the 2004 Elections scandals were used as data for this paper. This means that editorials, feature stories, columns, and the like were excluded. Furthermore, only the online reportage of the said scandals was investigated, thus excluding the news reports in print forms and TV and radio broadcasts of the said representations. Although it covered the said scandals, this paper further limited it to the time when allegations concerning the rigged elections results first surfaced, which approximately was from June 6, 2005 through June 20, 2005.

3.2. Data Gathering Procedure

The author accessed and downloaded the said data from the archives section of the three daily online newspapers, Inq7.net, MB Online, and Philstar.com. This did not pose any difficulty because each newspaper has compiled these news reports into certain categories: dates, newspaper sections, and/or topics/themes. These articles were also chronologically arranged and facilitated by the hyperlinks feature of the site, which means that these news reports had been previously classified and/or categorized by the news staff. The author adhered to all terms and conditions set by each company regarding downloading and usage of the archived data.

Data was sorted out to eliminate redundant posting or updates of the said news, or in some cases, where they were grouped or compiled with all the news for the day, inclusive of the news reports in Filipino and other regional languages. A systematic sorting procedure was drawn to select only those news reports that directly reported about the scandals; thus, blogs, opinions, or commentaries were eliminated or were not included as sample data.

Given the bulk (in terms of  number) of the sample data to be analyzed and the focus on discoursal construction of manipulation, particularly on the schematic structure and use of manipulative prototypes in news reports, sorting and eliminating of corpus selected for analysis were further restricted to the selection of headline stories of the said events. Thus, it is possible that within a day across the time period specified above, this event was reported thrice in the same paper.

Each news report from each online website was arranged chronologically and coded accordingly. For example, the first news report from Inq7.net was coded as INQ01, the first news report from the Philstar.com was labeled as PHI01, and so on.

Seventy-five news reports made up the corpus (that is, 25 news reports per newspaper). Table 1 shows the breakdown of the sample indicating the number of news reports and the newspaper networks from which they were downloaded.

Table I: Total Number of News Reports in the Corpus 

To determine which news items would be included in the corpus, the author divided the actual size per newspaper (e.g., Inq7.net N=199) by the desired sample size (N=25). The corresponding result yielded per newspaper (e.g., 199/25=7.96, rounded up to 8), means that every eighth news report would be part of the corpus. The two other newspapers were subjected to the same procedure and yielded the following results: 100/25=4 for Manila Bulletin and 141/25=6 for Philippine Star. These identified news reports were then labeled anew as Inq01, PS01, and MB01, accordingly.

As for the distribution of the data between the two inter-coders, the author distributed the news reports per newspaper to the two inter-coders in such a way that the data would be spread evenly among the inter-coders.

3.3. Coding and Analysis of Data

For the purpose of this paper, the news reports were coded and analyzed in terms of their superstructure.

Following the lead of van Leeuwen (1996), the coding of the text was on a sentence-level. A sentence is a complex clause consisting of at least a subject and a predicate or a single proposition (Fairclough, 1995). In the case of constructions where there are embedded clauses, the author did not break them down into simple clauses because she looked more closely at their macrosemantic functions rather than their grammatical classes or categories. (The author also followed the grammatical devices employed by the editor of the news report in determining where a complete syntactic unit ends or begins (e.g., uses of terminal punctuation marks and capitalization).

3.4. Inter-coding and Inter-rater Reliability

The author sought the assistance of two inter-coders in coding the data. One is a holder of a doctorate degree in language education from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. The other is a Ph. D. candidate in the field of applied linguistics from De La Salle University. Both went through the orientation, training, and practice facilitated by the author prior to their actual coding process of the sample news items. The author gave each inter-coder 50 per cent of the data (that is, Coder 1= 38; Coder 2= 37), while she coded all texts under study. Where discrepancies occurred, inter-coders (1) discussed them, (2) looked at the data once more, and (3) agreed as to the correct and appropriate way of labeling or tagging the item in question, guided by the set of definitions/descriptors found in the prescribed rubric (see Schematic Structure of News Reports, p. 27ff.) for a detailed discussion of obligatory and optional features of news reports). In view of this procedure, the coding was not subjected to reliability test/computation anymore because agreement between inter-coders was 100 percent reached at the end. However, the author noted the number of instances where initial discrepancies occurred which totaled less than 40 instances out of 2003 (0.0197 percent), thus rendering the inter-coding and evaluation highly reliable.

It may be worth mentioning here that occurrences of discrepancies in tagging or coding were mainly brought about by nuances in understanding the descriptors and definitions (and sometimes overlapping characteristics) of labels which were easily addressed when the inter-coders and the author went over the contested items or parts of the data.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

 Although not all discourse types follow rigidly a fixed conventional structure, most of them can be defined and classified in terms of a rule-based schema. Popular examples of these discourse types include everyday conversations, stories, court procedure and rulings, classroom interactions, letters, theses and dissertations, among others. News reports are generally known to follow a specific schema in which details or information can be inserted and ordered to express the most important and relevant news and the events of the day. Bell (1991) attempted to explain how news schema is similar in pattern to a narrative schema. Although many scholars have argued for and against the validity and soundness of his analysis, it is not within the scope of this paper to discuss these arguments. The point being made is that news discourse just like any other discourse types may have a set of news categories or conceptual categories which facilitate production as well as comprehension of news reports (van Dijk, 1988).

A close examination of the three leading online newspapers from June 6 to 20, 2005 (a total of 15 issues; 75 news stories) reveals that the conceptual categories such as Headline (H), Verbal Reactions (VR), Previous Events (PE), Evaluation (EV), Main Event (ME), Consequences (CON), Expectation (EX), History (HI), and Lead (L) constitute the news reports under study. Of the nine categories, H and ME are the only two obligatory features of news reports and the rest are optional categories as noted too by van Dijk (1988).

Figure 3 indicates the comparative frequency distribution of these categories in terms of instances or occurrences across the three newspapers, while Figure 4 shows the composite frequency and percentage distribution found in all 75 news reports examined.

References to both figures are done in the analysis and discussion of these occurrences.

Fig. 3: Frequency distribution of the conceptual categories found per online newspaper in descending order, N=1832 paragraphs

Fig. 4: Frequency and percentage distribution of the conceptual categories found in 75 news reports in three online English broadsheets in the Philippines in descending order, N= 1832 paragraphs

4.1. Verbal Reaction as a Conceptual Category

Figure 4 indicates that on the average, despite its non-obligatory presence, there is a propensity for the use of Verbal Reaction — both direct and indirect — (1133 out of 1832 or almost 62 percent) across all three broadsheets which are interspersed into the structure of the news discourse. Occurrences of this category numbered 368 out of 626 (almost 60 percent) times in Inq.net; 578 out of 868 (68 per cent) in philstar.com; and 187 out of 338 (almost 55 percent) in MBO. VR category allows writers to report the comments and reactions of important participants or political leaders towards the main news events (van Dijk, 1988). Paragraphs 5 to 9 from Extract 3 (“President rejects House request for tape comment”, Inq.net, June 17, 2005) illustrate what constitutes or counts as a VR category:

Extract 3

1. Bunye also said Ms Arroyo would not go to the planned inquiry of five House committees into the controversial tape if summoned.
2. “While we respect the process, the presence of the President will not be called for. It is a fair assumption to make [that the President would not go to Congress on whatever issue],” he told reporters.
3. But Senate President Franklin Drilon said keeping silent on the tape suggesting election fraud would work against Ms Arroyo.
4. “Difficult as it is, the President must confront this issue. There are no two ways about it,” Drilon, chair of the pro-administration Liberal Party, told reporters. “She is in the best position to address this issue. No one else can.”
5. He also said the President should not allow the controversy to linger: “She must address this issue, otherwise, other sectors will keep on taking the initiative away from her. She must take the lead and grab the bull by the horns.”
6. Drilon said the administration bloc in the Senate remained in full support of the President, but added that he would prefer a direct statement from her on the serious allegation.
7. “I myself would be interested in the truth,” he said.

Bunye’s announcements that the President would not go to Congress on whatever issue (paragraphs 1 and 2) drew verbal utterances from Senate President Drilon (paragraphs 3 to 7) who was directly quoted as saying that there was no other way for the President but to confront the issue because no one else could address it except her (paragraph 4) and that her inability to respond to the controversy might be taken advantage of by other sectors (p 5). Drilon’s interest in knowing the truth was likewise quoted (paragraph 7). Note that the writer of the news included reported speech of Drilon (paragraphs 3 and 6) which served as summaries of his direct speech.

Further exemplifications of this category are seen in Extract 4 from the news report, “Palace releases 2 CDs of ‘bugged’ phone call of President” (2005) where Representative Crispin Beltran was quoted in relation to how damaging the tape would be if found to be authentic (paragraph 1). He was likewise quoted as saying that most Filipinos believe President Arroyo cheated in the last election (paragraph 2). A series of verbal reactions ensued creating a domino effect: Congressman Aquino’s insinuation that the Vice-President might have a hand in this controversy was a verbal reaction to Beltran’s assessment (blow a hole through the roof of this already weakened administration) of the damage the tape might have. The verbal response of the Vice-President (paragraphs 5 and 6) was likewise included in the news item.

Extract 4

1. Anakpawis party-list Representative Crispin Belran said that if found to be authentic, the tape could “blow a hole through the roof of this already weakened administration.”
2. He said that “up to this day, a huge majority of Filipinos are still convinced that President Arroyo is not the real victor of the May 2004 polls.”
3. Makati Representative Agapito “Butz” Aquino jumped into the fray.
4. “If the tape is really damaging, who would benefit from that? The President could be impeached and it is the Vice President who will replace her,” Aquino said, referring to Noli de Castro. “I hope he is not a part of this or is not taking orders from somebody.”
5. “Nakakatawa naman iyan (That’s hilarious)!” said De Castro. He said while the Vice President could be a natural suspect in this case, he was not interested in sowing intrigue in the Palace.
6. “I’ll just wait for 2010 and all those with presidential ambitions should wait for 2010,” De Castro said.

The heavy usage of Verbal Reaction category in all three newspapers may be attributed to the widespread belief that quotes from newsmakers or actors involved in the news events effectively lend news reports accuracy, credibility, and truth as noted also by Tuchman (1978, cited in Teo, 2000). Noteworthy is the fact that all three newspapers profess objectivity, fairness, accuracy, and truth as their mission or principle in news reporting as explicitly expressed across their front pages and posted in their respective homepages/websites, for example, Inq.net’s balanced, fearless news and philstar.com’s the truth shall prevail.

However, van Dijk (1988) argues that “the selection of the speakers and of quotations need not be objective” (p. 56). This is an observation shared by Scannell (1992, cited in Teo, 2000) when he argues that quotes from prominent and powerful people, considered as “legitimized sources of information result in a predominantly established view of the world, in which lay people are only entitled to their experience but not their opinions” (p.18). In other words, those who are often quoted, presumably enjoying a certain degree of hierarchy and reliability, may shape the way readers receive the news report and their way of understanding it. And more often than not, ordinary people are seldom quoted for apparent reasons. (A detailed discussion/exemplification of the extensive use of quotations and/or Verbal Reaction in online English news reporting in the Philippines will be discussed later.)

4.2. Previous Event as a Conceptual Category

Moving on to the next optional feature or conceptual category of news reporting), the PE category came in second in terms of frequency of occurrences (233 out of 1832 instances, or 12.72 percent) across all three newspapers. The data revealed a minor difference among the three online broadsheets with regard to their reporters’ usage or inclusion of this category: philstar.com (14.83 percent, or 121 instances out of 868); Inq.net (11.82 percent, or 74 out of 527); and MBO (13.15 percent, or 38 out of 338).  It may be argued that the reporters may have included this category in their reportage of current news events to remind readers of what happened before and what was previously reported earlier in the same paper. These pieces of information may serve as models or reminders that enable readers to accept or reject new information supplied by the reporters or emphasized by the news actors. A very good example to illustrate this claim would be the news that appeared in Inq.net on June 18, 2005, “PNP links Estrada mistress to ‘Garci’ tape” (see Extract 5 below):

Extract 5

1. THE PHILIPPINE National Police yesterday linked a mistress of ousted President Joseph Estrada to the controversial tape rocking the Arroyo administration, and suggested that the scandal was a well-planned scheme.
2. PNP Director General Arturo Lomibao quoted the affidavit of TSgt. Vidal Doble, the intelligence officer said to be the source of the tape, as saying that ex-starlet Laarni Enriquez provided the P2 million paid to Doble by lawyer Samuel Ong two months before the latter announced that he had the “mother of all tapes” allegedly containing incriminating phone conversations between President Macapagal-Arroyo and ex-Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.
   …………………
3. Quoting the affidavit, Lomibao said Doble had categorically declared that contrary to Ong’s statement, he was not the source of the “mother of all tapes.”
4. Ong, a former deputy director of the National Bureau of Investigation, said in a press conference on June 10 that he had in his possession tapes showing that Ms Arroyo cheated her way to power. He then sought sanctuary at the San Carlos Seminary in Makati.
5. Lomibao said this was how, according to his affidavit, Doble ended up with Ong at the San Carlos Seminary:
6. In April, or around two months before Ong’s press conference, the former NBI official offered Doble P2 million in exchange for stating that it was he who gave the tapes to Ong.
7. Doble was shown the money inside a room at the Imperial Hotel, spread on a bed along with photos of members of his family.
8. Ong said all Doble had to do was read a prepared statement-to be recorded on video-that would “authenticate” the tapes that Ong was holding.
9. Doble refused, but was later forced to agree. He accepted the cash and read the prepared statement on video.

The Previous Event where Samuel Ong claimed he had the mother of all tapes that would prove GMA cheated her way to power (paragraph 4) was embedded in the current news story where PNP Director General Lomibao linked a mistress (Laarni) of the ousted President Estrada and other personalities to the controversial tape based on the affidavit of intelligence officer Vidal Doble, the alleged source of the tapes Ong presented to the media (paragraphs 1 and 2). The said affidavit, according to Lomibao, narrated in detail how Ong bribed (using Laarni’s P2M) and threatened Doble in exchange for his authentication of the controversial tapes and it also contained Doble’s categorical denial that he was the source of the mother of all tapes (paragraphs 6-9).

The inclusion of the PE in this report may serve as a backgrounder for those who may have failed to read the said news report or as a basis for accepting or rejecting the new information (read the scandal involving Ms Arroyo was a well-planned scheme, paragraph 1) that Lomibao was offering. Furthermore, the inclusion of a PE category in this current news report may also restrict or control the readers’ reception of the said news. The readers may, for instance, note the reference to Ong’s previous declaration that he had the mother of all tapes which were given to him by an unnamed ISAFP agent (“Mother of all tapes surfaces,” 2005).  The reference to Vidal Doble in the current news report as an intelligence officer demystified the unnamed ISAFP agent in the previous news story (paragraph 2). In effect, the readers may now connect the previous event with the current one and may now begin to formulate a mental model that will aid in interpreting the new events/developments.  And most likely, they will accept Lomibao’s suggestion that the scandal was a well-planned scheme as valid and reasonable, given the detailed narration of Ong’s bribery and threat in Doble’s most quoted affidavit. Furthermore, when readers are reminded that Laarni also prefigured in the Oakwood mutiny staged in the past (which was also conveniently reported/inserted in the current news item),  they may accept Lomibao’s claim that indeed, Laarni may have a hand (despite her vigorous denial) in the latest controversy surrounding the presidency.

It was noted that in all three broadsheets, PE as additional pieces of information or details serve three purposes: provide background knowledge for the current news reports, serve as basis for accepting or rejecting new information or knowledge offered by the latest news developments, and restrict or control the readers’ perception of new events.

Likewise, despite their negligible presence in news reporting (van Dijk, 1988), the conceptual categories EV, CON, EX, HI, and L occurred routinely (in varying number) across 75 online English news reports in the Philippines. Each category is further discussed below.

4.3. Evaluation as a Conceptual Category

Evaluation (EV) as a category was noted to have been minimally utilized in all three newspapers (71 out of 1832, or 3.88 percent) with the reporters from the philstar.com as frequent users – 31 instances or 3.57 percent – compared to 30 or 4.79 percent of occurrences in Inq.net news reports and 10 cases or 2.96 percent from the MBO news reports. However, despite its minimal appearance in the news reports examined here, the presence of the reporters’ evaluative opinions is observed in the following news item posted in Inq.net on June 11, 2005  (see Extract 6 below) about Samuel Ong (looking woozy), who had been sleepless over the (bizarre) tales, and their comments about the site (a swank Makati club) of the news conference where he called on Ms Arroyo to resign, as well as their assessment (but only several hundred showed up,” “some 200 opposition supporters cheered and chanted…) of the impact of the opposition politicians’ appeal for supporters to mass at the said venue (italics mine). Notice also the reporters’ personal opinion of how Ong was led to the vehicle (whisked away) which may signify haste and/or urgency.

Extract 6

1. Samuel Ong appeared at an evening news conference at a swank Makati club called by the opposition. It coincided with the announcement by Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Efren Abu over lunch with reporters that the military intelligence arm, ISAFP, is under investigation in connection with the wiretapping allegations.
2. Looking woozy and saying he had been sleepless the last five days since the bizarre tales of the tapes emerged, Ong said he came out because he felt his life was in danger and thought he should let the people know they were robbed in the last elections. He called on Ms Arroyo to resign.
3. “I am calling on Susan Roces because this tape would show that her husband was cheated,” Ong said, referring to the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. who lost to Ms Arroyo. Opposition politicians broadcast appeals before the news conference for supporters to mass at the Makati club, but only several hundred showed up by nightfall.
4. After answering a few questions, Ong was whisked away by opposition politicians in a dark green van. As his vehicle drove out of Metroclub’s gates, some 200 opposition supporters cheered and chanted a call for Ms Arroyo to resign.

4.4. Expectation as a Conceptual Category

Likewise, the conceptual category EX enables the journalists or newspapers themselves to (in/directly) report their (or the readers’ perceived) expectations regarding “possible political or other consequences of the actual events and situations” (van Dijk, 1988, p. 56). In the examined data, it was observed that philstar.com, among the three broadsheets, employed EX the most with eight instances (0.92 percent) recorded. The MBO came in second with five occurrences (1.48 percent), while Inq.net included details that reported possible consequences four times only in its reports (0.64 percent). To illustrate what constitutes this category, take, for example, this writer’s reportage of what he or the readers may or may not expect to transpire regarding the Senate’s inability to undertake an inquiry into the alleged wiretapped conversation between GMA and a Commission on Election official while pursuing a current hearing on the controversial “jueteng” scandal (Extract 7 from MBO, June 16, 2005). Likewise, expectations were implicitly raised with the report that “other witnesses and resource speakers had also been invited in relation to the said Senate committee hearing:

Extract 7

1. The Senate will resume its committee hearing on the controversial “jueteng” scandal on June 24 but cannot undertake an inquiry into the alleged wiretapped conversation between President Arroyo and a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official during the current adjournment because there has been no referral to any committee before Congress adjourned last June 9, Senate officials said yesterday.
2. The Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs chaired by Sen. Manuel Villar and the Senate games, sports and amusement committee chaired by Sen. Lito Lapid are expected to hear the testimony of the fifth witness of Pangasinan Archbishop Oscar Cruz during their third simultaneous hearing.
3. Other witnesses and resource speakers had also been invited.

4.5. History as a Conceptual Category

Other categories like History provide background information or events that happened in the remote past but related to the actual news and may find their place in the reporting of a more recent event. The data yielded an insignificant over-all usage of this category (25 occurrences or 1.36 percent) with philstar.com having the highest usage (N=13, or 1.50 percent) compared to six instances in both Inq.net and MBO news reports at 0.96 and 1.78 percentages, respectively. In reporting the possible involvement of Joseph Estrada and Panfilo Lacson in the alleged wiretapped conversation between the President and a Commission on Election official (see Extracts 8 and 9 from “Erap on tape: Don’t look at us”, 2005), the news reporter supplied information and/or events that transpired several years back but were related to the current news events. Background information, like Paguia’s suspension by the Supreme Court in 2001 to support Estrada’s claim that Paguia was not his lawyer because of the suspension, was given. Furthermore, the reporter supplied additional information about Lacson who was also eyed as a possible source of the wiretapped tape.  He included previous news reports that Lacson was once linked to illegal wiretapping activities. It may be worth reiterating here the difference between HI and PE as conceptual categories. While both are events that occurred in the past, HI, unlike PE, semantically denotes events that embraced years, not just days or weeks as seen in the examples.

Extract 8

1. Estrada expressed disgust at being linked anew to reported attempts to destabilize the government, simply because Paguia had once been his lawyer.
2. Paguia was suspended by the Supreme Court when he questioned the propriety of the participation by several SC justices, led by Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., in what he claimed to be Estrada’s unconstitutional removal from office in January 2001.
3. “So how can (Paguia) be my lawyer when he’s already suspended?” Estrada said. “They are panicking at the Palace. But she should look in her own backyard because there is no one in the opposition who has the capability and the sophisticated equipment, which are also very expensive.”

Extract 9

1. It is not the first time Lacson has been linked to illegal wiretapping activities.
2. When he was PNP chief, then Senior Superintendent Eduardo Matillano, chief of Task Force Amihan, conducted a raid on a building at the height of the 1998 elections.
3. Several telephone units with gadgets allegedly used to record telephone conversations as well as tapes were seized during the raid, along with several high-powered firearms. Matillano filed a wiretapping case against Lacson but this was subsequently dismissed.

4.6. Lead and Main Event as Conceptual Categories

Remarkably, despite its non-obligatory presence in news discourse (van Dijk, 1988), it was observed that Lead is a constant category in all 75 news reports and across three online dailies examined here. Leads, by definition, summarize and express the major topic of the news. All three broadsheets provided their readers gist or summaries of their main news events. It may be safe to conjecture at this point that Lead as a category may be a regular feature in online English news reports in the Philippines. Furthermore, noteworthy is the finding that in terms of its position, Lead follows Headline, and as van Dijk (1988) argues, together they precede the rest of the news item. Thus, the first paragraph (see Extract 10 below, from MBO, June 6, 2005) is an example of a Lead because it specifies the semantic macrostructure of the news: GMA’s vow to fight destabilizers. As opposed to Lead, Main Event category is an obligatory part of the news report that organizes and describes the information about the actual or main news event. Paragraphs 2 and 3 exemplify the ME category where further description and/or specifications of the events/details found in the Lead were given: Agent (GMA), Occasion (press conference), Place (Malacañang Palace), Goal (to fight destabilizers). The ME category further expressed other details such as, Patient (destabilizers or a small group of opposition), their Goal (to release a recorded conversation she had with an election official), their Motivation (undermine GMA’s ability to govern and to destroy her), which may be omitted or missing in the Lead.

Extract 10

1. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday vowed to fight persistent attempts by some quarters to discredit and destabilize her administration as she ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to look into the alleged wiretapping of her telephone conversations.
2. The President made the avowal after she was informed that “a small group of the opposition” was behind a move to release an alleged recording of a phone conversation between her and an unidentified election official about manipulating the result of last year’s elections.
3. “There are segments of the opposition who want to undermine my ability to govern and they even want to destroy me. (But) I will not let them, and I will concentrate in my governance,” she said in a press conference at Malacañang Palace.

4.7. Headline and Main Event as Conceptual Categories

Note, however, that the conceptual categories Headline and Main Event are not included in the two figures (Figures 3 and 4) because of their mandatory presence in news reports (van Dijk, 1988). In other words, all three online English broadsheets in the Philippines under analysis contained these categories (that is, Headline and Main Event) as obligatory categories. Strictly speaking, a news report must contain a Headline and a Main Event in a minimally well-formed news discourse. The other categories as previously discussed are optional or may not be required in news texts. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that Manila Bulletin Online was the only newspaper that made use of deck or multiple headlines (8 out of 25 news reports) as a style in layouting while the other two limited theirs to a single line headline type. For exemplification/comparison purposes, Headlines of four different dates/news reports from the three broadsheets are reproduced below:

Table III: A sample of Headline lay-out across three online broadsheets

Given the function of a Headline, which is to express the highest and most important information about the news event, multiple or deck headlines employed by Manila Bulletin Online reporters may serve their purpose in fulfilling this function. And this (use of deck headlines) makes sense when analysis of how each newspaper structures its news reports is done. Table 4 shows that Manila Bulletin Online incorporated in its news items not only one Main Event but two or three main events (6 and 3 instances, respectively) compared to Inq7.net which included three times in its reports a second Main Event and no inclusion of a third ME. The same thing can be said of the structure of Philstar.com news reports (second Main Event=5 instances and third ME=0). The use of the deck or multiple headlines denotes signification of the number of main events included or reported in one single news report. That is, if we go by the dictum that reporters subscribe to (one Headline should express one main topic/event), the presence or use of three Headlines would mean three important topics or events contained in one news item.

Table IV: Frequency distribution of Headlines and Main Event categories across three online English news reports in the Philippines

In sum, the composition or schematic structure of the 75 news items posted in the three leading online English newspapers in the Philippines is characterized by the presence of the following conceptual categories:  Headline, Lead-cum-Main Event, Verbal Reaction, Previous Event, Evaluation, Consequence, Expectation, History, and Lead.  Instances where a single news item reported a second (N=14 instances) and a third (N=3 instances) Main Event within the story were also noted or observed.

4.8. SEQUENCING OF CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES IN ONLINE ENGLISH NEWS REPORTS IN THE PHILIPPINES

4.8.1. General Sequence of the Conceptual Categories Found in Online English News Reports in the Philippines

Figure 5 represents the percentage distribution of the top five frequently used conceptual categories across 75 news reports. This means that, in general, a news report found across three online English broadsheets in the Philippines would contain the following conceptual categories: Verbal Reaction, Main Event, Previous Event, Evaluation, and Lead.

Fig. 5: Percentage distribution of Lead, Main Event, Previous Event, Evaluation, and Verbal Reaction in a typical online English news reports in the Philippines, N=1333 paragraphs

Noteworthy is the fact that paragraph 1 of the 75 news articles investigated here expressed the Lead, with paragraph 2 describing the Main Event, and the rest of the news reports (that is, from paragraph 3 through 24) contain the Verbal Reaction category. In other words, on the average, 22 out of 24 paragraphs, or 90 percent of the contents of the news (true across three newspapers) are devoted to or allocated for the verbal utterances of various sources of information.

In addition, Table 5 below shows the number of the conceptual categories found in all 75 news reports posted in the three online broadsheets examined here.

Table V: Frequency distribution of conceptual categories found in news reports per online newspaper, N=1816 paragraphs

As Table 5 shows, all categories are utilized across all 75 news reports in all three newspapers except for the Expectation category. This may be so because Expectation category allows reporters to comment or to predict or speculate future events,  which may run contrary to their networks’ mission (that is, accurate and objective reportage).

Note, too, that these categories, as argued by van Dijk (1988), are recursive in character; thus, they appear repeatedly across the news item. Consider, for instance, the number of times ME, VR, PE, and EV occurred in 25 news reports per newspaper. All three papers are observed to utilize these categories repeatedly in their news reports. In the same vein, presence and/or absence of some categories may vary from one news network to another. News reports from philstar.com recorded 13 instances of reporting HI compared to seven for Inq.net and five for MBO. Likewise, inclusion of CON in the news text seemed to be utilized more by the Inq.net reporters as against three by the philstar.com and six by the MBO reporters

Thus, the observed pattern of conceptual categories found in the three leading Philippine English broadsheets is shown in Figure 6 below.

Fig. 6: A representation of the observed schematic structure of online English news reports in the Philippines

This schematic structure of online English news reports in the Philippine can best be illustrated by the following texts taken from the sample data. Text 1 is from the Inquirer.net, Text 2 is from the Manila Bulletin, and Text 3 is from philstar.com. All three texts were posted on June 6, 2005 in their respective networks and presented here in their entirety (Tables 6 to 8) as well as in their schematic representation for fuller analysis and discussion (Figures 7 to  9).

Interestingly, there is an observed contrast among the three texts with regard to the use or employment of the other conceptual categories. In view of this observation, discussion for each news text is deemed important and relevant and, thus provided.

Table VI: Macrostructure analysis of Text 1

Tale of the tape part of destabilization — Bunye
(HEADLINE)

1. “I’m really surprised why this report was just being mentioned now,” Gonzales said. He noted that apparently the opposition was taking advantage of the low performance rating of the President, as well as the ongoing jueteng (VR)
2. He said it was easier to come up with a fake tape than to intercept a cellular phone call. This requires sophisticated equipment not available in the country, he added. (VR)
3. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said he heard a report about this taped conversation after the May 2004 election but doubted its authenticity. (VR)
4. He said the opposition would make it look like the tape had come from US government sources in order to make its story more believable. (ME)
5. Over RMN radio, Bunye said he expected that the opposition would disclose the tape and its contents either yesterday or today. He said the tape would be used as evidence of the opposition in its claim that the 2004 election won by Ms Arroyo had been rigged. (ME)
6. “We are not surprised at the depths of despair that the opposition can reach, considering the failed jueteng caper against the First Family,” Bunye said, referring to testimony in last week’s Senate hearing on the illegal numbers racket controversy. (ME)
7. The Palace official also said he did not think any US official was involved in an attempt to destabilize a friendly government. (ME)
8. He said the allegation of election fraud was a “pure concoction.” (ME)
9. Bunye did not name the official of the Comelec or provide any other details. He said he did not have a copy of the tape. (ME)
10. “The same reports proffer a wild story that the tape came from US government sources, thereby suggesting some kind of official US involvement in the plot to oust the President,” he said. (ME)
11. THE OPPOSITION is set to release as part of an attempt to destabilize the administration an audio tape — reportedly provided by the US government — purportedly containing a conversation between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and an unnamed election official in which they talked about rigging the May 2004 election, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said yesterday. (L)Depths of despair
12. Opposition lawmakers denied Bunye’s claim which was made in a press statement and radio interviews.(VR)
13. “If we had such a tape, I would have exposed it a long time ago,” said Senator Sergio Osmeña III. (VR)
14. The US Embassy in Manila also denied knowledge of the tape, or of the alleged opposition efforts to undermine the government. (VR)
15. “Intelligence reports reaching the Palace point to another desperate plot of some segments of the opposition to smear and destabilize the administration via a purported taped conversation between the President and a certain Comelec [Commission on Elections] commissioner plotting election fraud,” Bunye said. (ME)Government panicking
16. Opposition Senator Panfilo Lacson said he heard about the supposed tape two months ago but could not confirm the story. (VR)
17. “If we get more details from Bunye, we will make a more apt reply,” said Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. (VR)
18. House Minority Leader Francis Escudero laughed off Bunye’s claim, saying the administration was “panicking” and was “beginning to imagine things.” (VR)
19. “This confirms what we have been saying that any destabilization this government is experiencing, real or perceived, is self-inflicted,” Escudero said. (VR)

 Note. From “Tale of the tape part of destabilization,” by C. O. Avendaño, 2005, June 6, , Inquirer.net. Headlines. Copyright 2005 by Inquirer.net.

A typical news report contains a series of events, consequences, and reactions reported in a top-down manner. That is, the most important and relevant pieces of information are given first (via Headline and Lead categories), followed by the less important and relevant details. In the sample text (Text 1) provided, The Headline and Lead categories, as prescribed by rules, open the discourse and express or give, in a straightforward manner, the summary of the main topics of the news report, which is “New attempt from the opposition to destabilize the administration.” Note that both Headline and Lead, given their summarizing functions, are reduced parts or features of the Main Events category.

Paragraphs 2 to 4 are good examples of a Verbal Reaction category because they report or cite the reactions (denial) as well as the direct quotations (If we had such a tape, I would have exposed it a long time ago.) of the important participants (opposition lawmakers, US Embassy, and Senator Sergio Osmeña III) involved in the actual news events. Paragraphs 13 to 15 are further examples of Verbal Reaction category, this time, citing other prominent political leaders who may have direct interest/concern in the events (in this case, Norberto Gonzales being a National Security Adviser who is supposedly responsible for overseeing the  country’s safety).

Paragraphs 5 to 12 are typical Main Event sections. They report or describe what the actual main news events are. They specify the Agents (Intelligence Reports, Bunye, purported audio tape), Participants (some segments of the opposition, US government sources, President GMA, a certain Comelec commissioner), Time (yesterday), Place (over RMN radio), and a further Goal set by the opposition (to smear and destabilize the administration). Paragraphs 8 to 10 may be taken as a Verbal Reaction of an important participant, but such declarations and utterances are a normal component of the usual press conferences or releases and, therefore, simply parts of the Main Event category, summarized in the Headline and Lead, as previously discussed.

Note that this news article has no separate, final Comment, History and Previous Event, and Expectation sections (except perhaps for Bunye’s declaration that the opposition is expected to use the tape as evidence to perpetuate its claim that President Arroyo won the 2004 elections via fraud. But this, as previously explained or argued, rightly belongs to the Main Event category because it is part of the components, results, among others, of typical press conferences given or granted by the Office of the Press Secretary.) The absence of these categories could be attributed to the fact that this is the first time this news was reported, thus, no previous events could be given. As for the Evaluation category, which allows reporters to express their own opinions about the news, it could be due to the (Inquirer.net) network’s mission to deliver objective, fair, and balanced reporting, which may have been the deciding factor with regard to its absence.

Table VII: Macrostructure analysis of Text 2

GMA to fight destabilizers
US Embassy denies it is source of controversial tape
Opposition blamed anew by Malacañang
(HEADLINE)

1. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday vowed to fight persistent attempts by some quarters to discredit and de-stabilize her administration as she ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to look into the alleged wiretapping of her telephone conversations. (L)
2. The President made the avowal after she was informed that “a small group of the opposition” was behind a move to release an alleged recording of a phone conversation between her and an unidentified election official about manipulating the result of last year’s elections.(ME)
3. “There are segments of the opposition who want to undermine my ability to govern and they even want to destroy me. (But) I will not let them, and I will concentrate in my governance,” she said in a press conference at Malacañang Palace. (VR)
4. Meanwhile, Mrs. Arroyo met over lunch with about 50 members of the Liberal Party (LP) led by its president, Senate President Franklin M. Drilon, who, Malacañang said, signified their “full and unconditional” support to her administration amidst reports of new destabilization plots. (CON)
5. Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye expressed outrage over the wiretapping of the President’s telephone conversation while denying allegations that Mrs. Arroyo instructed an election official to rig election results. (VR)
6. “We would like to assure the Filipino public that this plot will, like all other similarly desperate plots that the opposition has hatched, fail to derail the Arroyo government’s ongoing political and development agenda,” he said. (VR)
7. “We further assure the country and the world that the plotters will be brought to justice,” he said, adding that this “most devious and desperate” plot to destabilize the government would backfire on the President’s detractors. (VR)
8. The alleged recorded conversation between Mrs. Arroyo and a Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner whom Bunye did not identify was reportedly supplied to the opposition by sources in the United States (US) government. (PE)
9. The US Embassy has denied supplying any recording of the President’s conversation to the opposition. (VR)
10. In a separate press briefing, Bunye presented two compact discs (CDs). He said one had a recording of the President’s conversation with a political leader and the other a “fabricated” conversation with an unidentified election official. (ME 2)
11. “While we cannot at this time confirm the authenticity of either version, we can today confirm, by virtue of these findings, another opposition plot to destabilize the administration of President Arroyo,” he said. (ME 2)
12. “This latest plot involves the illegal bugging of a conversation, and the subsequent electronic doctoring, alteration, and revision of that conversation so as to introduce elements that were not really there,” he said. (VR)
13. Bunye said the President has asked the NBI to investigate and run after those groups or individuals behind the wire-tapping of her phone calls, a violation punishable under Republic Act (RA) 4200, or the Anti-Wiretapping Act. (CON)
14. “We’d like to find out who are doing this. Those who are behind this will have to answer before the law,” he said, adding that the two CDs of the “original” and “fabricated” conversations of the President will be turned over to the NBI for further investigation.(VR)

Note. From “GMA to fight destabilizers, US Embassy denies it is source of controversial tape, Opposition blamed anew by Malacañang,” by F. J. Maglalang, and D. Cagahastian, 2005 June 6. Manila Bulletin Online, Main News. Copyright 2005 by the Manila Bulletin Online.

What distinguish Text 2 from Text 1 are the insertions of some categories, such as Consequences and Previous Events that furnish readers with specific information pertaining to the opposition’s new attempts to destabilize the government.

Paragraphs 4 and 13 are illustrations of a Consequence category because they report the events (LP meeting with the President over lunch to express their “full and unconditional” support to her administration and the NBI to investigate and run after those groups or individuals behind the wire-tapping of her phone calls, respectively) caused by the Main Event (reports of new destabilization plots via a purported taped conversation plotting election fraud).

Finally, the Previous Event category is also utilized in this news item as it provides information about a previous report/event where the alleged recorded conversation between Mrs. Arroyo and a Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner was reportedly supplied to the opposition by sources in the United States (US) government (paragraph 8).

In sharp contrast to Text 1, the macrostructural composition of Text 2 includes the various conceptual categories in news writing.  Note though that the category History is not employed in both texts. By definition, History as a conceptual category in news reports denotes events that embrace years, not days or weeks, of actual situations and their events; thus, the writers, not seeing any nonrecent past history or events pertinent or relevant to the actual, main news saw no need to use it.

Analysis for Text 3 now follows:

Table VIII: Macrostructure analysis of Text 3

Palace bares new plot to oust GMA  (HEADLINE)

1. Malacañang bared yesterday another “desperate” plot by the opposition in spreading a purported taped conversation between President Arroyo and an election official discus-sing plans on how to cheat in the May 10, 2004 elections.(L/ME)
2. Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye virtually jumped the gun on what he called “incorrigible destabilizers,” by claiming the opposition is set to reveal within the week the contents of the taped conversation which supposedly  came from US government sources.(EV)
3. Bunye said the opposition was “so desperate” that they have timed the release of the taped conversation after their attack against Mrs. Arroyo linking members of her family and administration officials to jueteng payoffs started to die down. (VR)
4. Bunye cited intelligence reports revealing a group manufactured the conversation between Mrs. Arroyo and a certain Commission on Elections (Comelec) official in plotting election fraud. (VR)
5. He said the group has started distributing copies of the purported conversation on tape and compact disc. (VR)
6. “The same report proffers a wild story that the tape came from US government sources, thereby suggesting some kind of official US involvement in the plot to oust the President,” Bunye said. (VR)
7. He said a senior US Embassy official had denied any participation by the US government or any group that would attempt to destabilize a friendly government. (VR)
8. Bunye disclosed the US official told him Saturday that he heard the story about a month ago but thought it had died down. (VR)
9. “Obviously, this news story about election fraud is a pure concoction,” Bunye said. (VR)
10. “But, we are no longer surprised at the depths of despair that some opposition members can reach considering the failed jueteng caper against the First Family,” he said. (VR)
11. Even before the Senate inquiry over the allegations of jueteng payoffs began, the stock market had reacted adversely in anticipation of another bombshell against the administration, he said.(VR)
12. “But after Boy (Wilfredo) Mayor went about his shotgun testimony, implicating several legislators with-out proof, the market quickly recovered. The Boy Mayor testimony turned to be ampaw (hollow) and the market saw through the charade,” Bunye said. (VR)
13. Mayor testified before the Senate and claimed presidential son and Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo had been on the take. (PE)
14. Mayor also claimed some lawmakers from the Bicol Region and Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Arturo Lomibao are receiving monthly pay-offs from the illegal numbers game. (PE)
15. Unfortunately, Bunye said even if these allegations were obviously the concoction of persons motivated only by self-interest, “our chismis (rumor)-driven culture laps it up as gospel truth.” (VR)
16. “This takes away precious time and attention better spent on solving the many problems that con-front us,” Bunye said.(VR)
17. “Some people, rather than being part of the solution, are a big part of the problem. Due to purely selfish reasons, these incorrigible de-stabilizers want the President to fail,” he said. (VR)
18. Bunye pointed out the plotters have been claiming that the tape came from sources in the US government in an attempt to gain credibility for their “evidence” of elect-oral fraud. (VR)
19. He said the identities of the supposed plotters will be revealed next week when they come out in the open to call for a press conference over the supposed electoral fraud. (VR)
20. “And since their jueteng attack did not click that much, they want to pass this tape as something supplied by the US to put some credence on their new gimmick,” Bunye said.(VR)
21. Bunye claimed the plotters will use another tactic by claiming the US government supplied the tape to get even with the Arroyo administration for its deals with the Chinese government. (VR)
22. “They think this will explain such (destructive) attitude of the US government to-wards the President. That will be their scenario and that’s why we have to be careful not be misled by the facts they will present,” he warned. (VR)Paranoia
23. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, on the other hand, also expressed concern over the latest de-stabilization efforts.(VR)
24. “The AFP is concerned over intelligence reports that there are continuing efforts among certain sectors to destabilize our democratic sys-tem, using all means fair and foul to discredit political leadership,” AFP chief Gen. Efren Abu said in a statement. (VR)
25. Abu claimed some groups are trying “to incite members of the uniformed services to engage in mutinous acts and encourage the people to withdraw their allegiance from the duly constituted government. (VR)
26. “In the face of these reports, I wish to affirm the unconditional loyalty (of) the AFP to the Commander-in-Chief, to the flag and to the Constitution,” Abu said. (VR)
27. He warned the AFP will strike down “without hesitation all clandestine efforts” to undermine the military and break the chain of command. (VR)
28. Abu said any seditious act that threatens the stability of the government will be dealt with accordingly by the military. (VR)
29. An opposition law-maker, however, countered it was Malacañang that was creating destabilization by claiming the supposed taped conversation of Mrs. Arroyo and a Comelec official. (VR)
30. “I have heard about this alleged taped conversation, but no one knows if it really exists. The Palace is paranoid and is blaming the opposition prematurely. It is creating its own problems,” Sorsogon Rep. Francis Escudero said. (VR)
31. Escudero said it is the Arroyo administration that is destabilizing itself “by being afraid of shadows. (VR)
32. “This rumor — I say it is just a rumor as of now — reflects the insecurities of Mrs. Arroyo about her supposed victory in the 2004 presidential election,” he said. (VR)
33. Escudero was the former election campaign spokesman for opposition president-ial candidate Fernando Poe Jr. (HI)
34. The late Poe was beaten by Mrs. Arroyo by over a million votes in one of the most bitterly contested electoral contests in the country’s political history. (HI)
35. The Supreme Court dismissed Poe’s elect-oral protest against Mrs. Arroyo following his death last Dec-ember. (HI)

Note. From “Palace bares new plot to oust GMA,” by A. Calica, 2005 June 6, philstar.com, Headlines. Copyright 2005 by philstar.com.

By claiming that Bunye virtually jumped the gun on what he called incorrigible destabilizers,” the writer of Text 3 in paragraph 2 makes use of Evaluation category where her personal evaluation of or opinion about Bunye’s timing in announcing the opposition’s plan is made known. While the events are still reported, they are inserted with her voice and judgment which distinguishes it from objective reporting of events. Furthermore, the Evaluation category is distinct from the Verbal Reaction category where reactions and in/direct quotes of significant or prominent participants or other political figures about the main news are reported or given.

What follows next, as far as Text 3 is concerned, is a series of VRs and MEs, interwoven into the structure of the text with the insertions of PEs (see paragraphs 13 and 14).

Interestingly, Text 3 inserted a History category in its reportage, a category not found in the other two news items. Paragraphs 33 to 35 exemplify what this category is when they reported events and information that took place several years before the occurrence of the main news. The plausible explanation as to its insertion in this Text and  its absence in the other two texts could be that the writer furnishes her readers with specific information pertaining to the role of Escudero (former election campaign spokesman for the opposition presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr.), of which the average newspaper reader is presumably unaware or has forgotten. Or, the writer may be justifying her choice of heavily quoting the said political figure.

In conclusion, the preceding macrostructural analysis of the three texts reveals the typical structural pattern or sequence of the conceptual categories in the news reports under investigation here. As previously mentioned, a typical online English news report in the Philippines would contain a Headline, Lead, Main Event (spread across the text), a series of Verbal Reaction, and Previous Event.  Intermittently, Evaluation, Consequence, and History would be employed.

Moreover, as revealed by the examined data, most of the categories of the news schema proposed by van Dijk (1988) are indeed present and can be identified rather easily. What follows therefore is a broad characterization of the news discourse with a special attention given to the Headline and Verbal Reaction categories that have the potential to harbor ideological meaning (van Dijk, 1988; Teo, 2000). Besides that, despite the presence and evidence of the various conceptual categories of the news schema found in the data under investigation here, it is significant to reiterate that schematically speaking, the optional Verbal Reaction category is frequently used and most often repeated across a news item which requires a more detailed discussion here.

4.9. General Characterization of Online English news reports in the Philippines

4.9.1. Newspaper Headlines

One of the obligatory categories of news reporting is the presence and “use of the headline to express, in a highly concise form, the gist of the news event and to orient the reader to process the text in a pre-determined direction” (Teo, 2000, p. 13). It is a widely acceptable notion that headlines summarize what the whole report is about (see Tuchman, 1978; Cohen & Young, 1981; van Dijk, 1988; Bell, 1991), so much so that a reader needs only to glance at the headline to have a fairly accurate idea of what the rest of the news article contains. This function and position of the headline is in adherence to the commonly referred to ‘inverted pyramid’ structure of news reporting, where readers expect to read the most important information at the top or beginning and in descending importance the rest of the details of the news. Functionally speaking, headlines “form a cognitive macro-structure that serves as an important strategic cue to control the way readers process and make sense of the report” (Teo, 2000, p. 14). Part of this involves the creation of a mental model that is needed to contextualize the meaning of the text. A case in point is the construction of headlines in all three newspapers posted on June 6, 2005 (see Table 9): Tale of the tape part of destabilization; Palace bares new plot to oust GMA; and Opposition blamed anew by Malacañang, where the existence or the story behind the existence of the tape is instantaneously associated with destabilization or moves to oust the President, and who else will be responsible for that—no other than those who oppose her. This mental model created or initiated by the reports, in the succeeding days via headlines construction includes the major actors: Estrada lawyer; ex-NBI official; Rez Cortez; and Estrada mistress purportedly responsible for the destabilization (Cf. Inq.net, June 8, 10, 11, and 18 in Table 9). Thus, the words destabilization, ouster, and Opposition in the headline are meaningful only if set against this ‘background knowledge’ that the news reports presume readers to have. Likewise, the headlines expressing the immediate response of Malacañang to the situation, Palace vows to unmask…; Electronic sweep of Palace premises ordered by GMA; ISAFP chief axed…; and Military spies face probe… (Cf.  June 7, 8, 9, and 10 across the three papers, Table 9) condition the readers that the Palace is in control of the situation and will not allow another plot to destabilize or oust the President. The headlines US standing by Arroyo; League of Cities backing GMA; Military chain of command remains intact (June 11, 2005); and Church won’t join calls for GMA ouster (June 13, 2005) report the reactions of other significant actors concerning this controversy lending support or legitimizing GMA’s presidency. Note also that although dissenting voices are reported, for example, Opposition: Palace nervous over taped conversation (MBO, June 7, 2005); Erap on tape: Don’t look at us (phistar.com, June 8, 2005); Arroyo cheated in the 2004 election, says ex-NBI official (June 10, 2005), among others, they are equally discredited and dislodged by the summative reports that seem to instill fear among readers: JDV: Next few days difficult for nation and Peso tumbles on rising political turmoil (philstar.com, June 10, 2005 and June 11, 2005, respectively) and the unconstitutionally, hence futility of the House probe  (Cf. June 16, 17, 19, and 20, 2005 headlines of the three papers).

The preceding discussion regarding the way headlines are constructed as summaries of the series of events concerning the alleged 2004 election fraud involving the President and an election commissioner presupposes that the opposition is behind the wiretapping incident. Based on the data under analysis here, it may be safe to conjecture that what is of significance here is how the writers have made the destabilization and ouster plots via wiretapping mode not only a defining but inherent objective of the opposition (considered illegal, thereby unconstitutional) by embedding the presupposition that the opposition is a troublesome group of people, deterring the economic reforms that the government is bent on pursuing.  In so doing, even if the propositions (Tale of the tape part of destabilization and Opposition blamed anew by Malacañang) are negated (Don’t look at us and No destabilization—Opposition) or questioned (Who could have tapped GMA’s phone conversation?), the presupposition that the opposition does not contribute to the political and economic stability of the country remains intact. Corollary to this, another embedded presupposition present in headlines is the government’s successful effort to thwart the destabilization plot by highlighting the support extended to the President by various groups (e.g., the Church, US Embassy in Manila, (Senate and House Speakers) Drilon and de Venecia, among others), the recantation of the alleged spy and the probe/arrest directed towards the source of the controversial tape, and the consistent use of the name Estrada, his lawyer, his mistress, and his son. The way the headlines are constructed therefore may suggest that the writers are interested only in looking at who attempted to destabilize the government rather than examining the issue of how the conversation was tapped and which government institution could have done it (given the sophistication and cost of the machinery/equipment to wiretap the conversation of the highest office in the land). Aside from these issues, the reportage about the moral ascendancy of the President was neglected, if not ignored. This preference inevitably colors the readers’ perception of the election fraud, inclusive of its perpetrators, consequences/implications. Thus, the subsequent references to destabilization, its illegality and unconstitutionality, as well as its negative economic impact that recur throughout the reports only serve to reinforce the reporters’ choices/preferences on what to highlight or report as the most important and relevant piece of information at the level of Headline category. In this respect, it may be safe to assume then that the macrostructure made manifest in headlines encapsulate an ideology that sways the reader to one particular reading, thereby subjugating all other possible interpretations of the news story. The outcome of the events would definitely be different or altered had the reporters considered, nay, pursued the angle or perspective that the wiretapping activity could have actually been initiated and brought to completion by the very own people of GMA (for whatever reasons they might have) and not by the oppositionists. There were actually insinuations to this effect which were reported on various occasions. For instance, a high-ranking PNP official, speaking on condition of anonymity, remarked that the equipment may actually be readily available (philstar.com, June 8, 2005), negating National Security Adviser Gonzales’ declaration that sophisticated equipment required for wiretapping is not available in the country (Inq.net, June 6, 2005). In another news item, AFP deputy chief-of-staff for intelligence Tirso Danga’s denial that ISAFP had the capability to conduct electronic surveillance and wiretapping operations was met with adverse reactions from some quarters in the military who admitted electronic surveillance—are but routine functions and duties of ISAFP and an open admission by a high-ranking military officer that ISAFP has the bugging equipment, including a P40-million cellular telephone intercept device acquired just before the May elections last year (philstar.com, June 13, 2005). Likewise, Estrada claimed that in his short stint in the Palace he allocated the PNP a budget of P75 M to purchase ‘very sophisticated’ wiretapping equipment (philstar.com, June 8, 2005). The point is, had the reporters pursued this angle and not capitalized nor highlighted official announcements from the Office of the President (which put the blame on the Opposition) in their headlines, things would have been different. Typically, then, news reporting not only provides information for readers to interpret but often comes packaged with the interpretation as well (Teo, 2000). As shown and discussed before, topical hierarchies or the top-down ordering of information in news reporting may also influence the structure of the mental model the readers build of an event they read about in the paper. It is this mental model that is the basis for the ways readers use the information they read in the Press. Suffice it to say, when reporters express in its highest position, therefore, most relevant – an information that highlights the purpose and consequences behind the moves to oust the leader of the land via illegal and unconstitutional means – they suggest that readers follow and subscribe to this way of thinking because it entails reason and hence, rationality of thought, words, and actions.

Table IX: News Headlines under analysis

It must be mentioned here that in a news discourse where space is of primary concern, the way headlines are phrased or worded has to contend with the limited space and specific function they have to meet and serve. Given these limitations, the writer and his editor therefore must craft the headlines in such a way that they maximize the space and purpose they occupy and serve. Words must be chosen carefully and constructed to represent or signify the newspapers’ ideological values and attitudes, and analyzing these lexical choices and syntactic structures of newspaper headlines may allow the analyst a peek into the underlying ideological meaning behind each newspaper’s reportage of events. (Detailed discussion of the linguistic features (which is part of the microstructural analysis of the news reports will follow right after the discussion of the macrostructure of the news.)

A quick look at the headlines (see Table 9) points to a mental model created by the news reports of the attempts by the destabilizers (read administration critics) to cause division and trouble in the political and economic spheres of the land. However, the headlines also suggest that the readers must not heed the opposition’s calls because the position of the Church, (former President) Cory, some prominent political figures, and the impact on the country’s economy yield more influence and carry more weight than the power of the House of Representatives, Estrada, Jinggoy, Pimentel, and the like. Besides, the space and prominence of the recantation of the alleged spy pitted against the source of the tape highlights the futility of the opposition’s move to pin down Arroyo as maneuvering election results as purportedly recorded in the tape. Among other things, the repetitive reference to the illegal (read unconstitutional) means by which the ‘evidence’ was sought remains the heaviest block for any rational reader to accept the opposition’s argument that indeed the President has cheated her way to the Palace.

4.10. Verbal Reactions/Quotation Patterns

van Dijk (1991) observes that quotations patterns are a fairly direct function of news production processes, which are essentially a complex form of text processing. Questions, such as, who is speaking, how often and how prominently, and about what are quoted news actors allowed to give their opinions, are embedded in a broader theoretical framework that accounts for the access of minorities to the Press, and for the conditions that control the ways they are being quoted in news reports. Significantly, the use of direct quotations in the news discourse under analysis is also prevalent in the construction of the headlines as well as in the macrostructures of the news reports which deserve a separate discussion here. Reliance on various sources of information on which the news report is constructed is another characteristic of the online English news reports in the Philippines (see Figures 3 and 4). While the use of quotations in the headlines (see Table 9) is more direct and specific when quoting high-ranking officials, Press Secretary Bunye, GMA, and other pro-administration newsmakers (e.g., Drilon, JDV, [both are now anti-GMA], Ermita, JPE, Duterte), the verbatim quotes of the oppositionists, or those whose views are different from the former are often generalized and indirect. There were ten instances (67%) of direct quotations from  the Palace and their officials, e.g., June 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 headlines compared to six instances (40%) of those from the opposition, e.g., June 7, 8, 16, 19 headlines (Cf. Table 9). Note too that out of these six quotations from the opposition, only one is directly attributed to a specific person ‘Erap’ (June 8 and 20). The rest of the quotes are in collective groups or generalized body (e.g., “Opposition”, ‘House’, ‘House panels’), leading the readers to make a guess as to who exactly says what to whom. The non-naming of these specific speakers is crucial to readers for in their mental model of political bickering in the Philippines, there are legitimate ‘troublesome’ figures whose intent is just to wreak havoc on Philippine politics, and thus, generalizing the oppositionists or administration critics as troublesome individuals would not do justice to those who truly want reforms in the government. Intentionally or not, the preference to quote Erap (found guilty of plunder and graft by the Ombudsman), his participation (source of the wiretapped conversation and P2M (read illegal), and offer to head the proposed junta (read military rule = unconstitutional)) run contrary to what every ‘rational and educated’ Filipino aspires for (peace and economic stability for his country).

As previously mentioned, the use of quotations seems to lend news reports some degree of factuality, objectivity, balance, and credibility due to the fact that “a quote from the newsmaker’s own words renders it as incontrovertible fact’ (Tuchman, 1978, cited in Teo, 2000 p. 18). However, if these ‘legitimate’ sources of information are constantly and repeatedly quoted, either directly or indirectly, they may become the paradigm which lay people must subscribe to, if not accept as the truth and standards their words which their (lay people) actions and thoughts must be patterned after. This propensity for quoting the powerful, consistently, makes them more powerful, visible, or reliable, that enhances their status and voice while those in opposition remain just like that – forever opposing, questioning, and demanding and never contributing to the political and economic stability of the  nation:  Arroyo calls for end to ‘dirty politics’ (Inquirer.net, June 13, 2005), Peso tumbles on rising political turmoil (philstar.com, June 11, 2005), Resist destabilization—GMA (MBO, June 10, 2005), ‘No way the opposition can oust Arroyo legally’ (philstar.com, June 19, 2005), and Church won’t join calls for GMA ouster (philstar.com, June 13, 2005).

There is likewise an impressionable predilection to incorporate or weave into the tapestry of news reports the use of quotes. van Dijk (1991) observes that in the reportage of ethnic affairs, reporters show possible biases in the way they present and position key speakers/news actors, either as interpreters of the news events or sources of opinions about them. In the data under investigation here, it is interesting to note that the same characteristic is prevalent even if the news reports are about the opposition and their stance on the issue. As major actors in these items, it is observable that despite the presence of their verbatim quotation (creating an impression of balanced reporting), a close scrutiny of the news items shows that total frequencies of quotations for all papers are attributed not to the oppositionists but to the pro-administration allies or supporters.

To get a more reliable calculation of the percentages, Table 10 and 11 list the frequency of those items in which ‘oppositionists and government critics’ (minority group members) and/or ‘administration and allies’ (major group members) occur as actors.

Table X: Quotation patterns of news reports under analysis, N=136 quotes

As van Dijk (1991) argues, “after all, in order to be quoted, one must be an actor in the news item” (p. 152). That is, minority actors occur in some 32 percent (44/136 news reports) of all items, whereas major actors are present in almost 70 percent of the items (92/136). This suggests that oppositionists do not appear as sole actors in all news items that would involve or report them as masterminds behind the destabilization plots via the wiretapped conversation between the President and a Commission on Elections official.

Table XI: Frequencies of quotations for majority and minority actors under analysis, N=1168 quotes

Table 11, on the other hand, shows how often administration officials (major group members) are quoted vis-à-vis ‘oppositionists’ (minor group members) in online English news reports in the Philippine. Frequencies and percentages here are given both for the proportion of quote-item relative to the total number of items (1168) and with respect to the dates on which these quotes appeared. The table clearly indicates that minor group members are quoted much less often than majority group actors: minority appear as speakers only in a third (37 %) of all items in which they appear as actors, whereas major group actors are shown in speaking roles in more than half of all items (63%). In other words, when both appear as actors, the major group representatives will mostly be the ones that comment upon election fraud. Indeed, as we see in Table 10 minor group representatives did not appear as the only speakers in any of those news items, whereas majors appear as speakers in all items in which they are acting with minor groups (Cf. June 10, 12, and 14, 2005 news reports).

Quotation patterns as seen in the analysis can become a powerful discursive tool to manipulate readers’ perception and interpretation of people and events in news reports. The generalization of the motif and purpose of the oppositionists creates an impression and association that they are with those groups of destabilizers and of perpetuators of political and economic instability. Denied of the space and a voice to resist and challenge this mental model, the association of the opposition with destabilization and instability ‘naturalizes’ over time, becoming resistant to challenge and change. Quotes from the authoritative and expert figures such as, Press Secretary Bunye, Juan Ponce Enrile, Speakers Drilon and de Venecia who represent the Administration allies (both are now considered oppositionists or critics of GMA) and not from respectable members of the Opposition bloc or even the ordinary citizens of the land who would probably have a more extensive knowledge of the depth and breadth of wiretapping are usually reported or given space in the news reports. The people quoted in the online English newspapers in the Philippine project an image of concern and dedication to the progress and stability of the country. Although what they say about the alleged election fraud is not necessarily wrong, the point is that newspapers seem to be interested in seeking the opinions and perspectives of only the majority; as though it is they alone who have something valuable or insightful to say about the issue, thereby denying and depriving the citizenry or those who contradict the government of a chance to be heard and understood from their perspective.

5. CONCLUSIONS

5.1. Summary

At the core of this descriptive-analytic paper is a three-fold objective: First is to show how theoretical and methodological insights from critical discourse analysis and manipulation theory can be applied to public communication, specifically hard news. The second is to discuss how  studies of the structure of online news discourse in the Philippines map onto van Dijk’s notion of semantic macrostructures of news as well as his discussion of manipulation as a form of social power abuse. Finally, the paper aimed to make a contribution to the understanding of manipulation in news reports, focusing on ways in which it is attained or realized.

Thus, by subjecting to critical discourse analysis the coverage of the three online English newspapers in the Philippines on the alleged cheating during the 2004 presidential elections involving some government officials, the author attempted to provide answers to the following research questions: the constitution and sequencing of the macrostructures or news schema of the online English news reports in the Philippines in terms of conceptual categories proposed by van Dijk (1988); and the existence and positioning of manipulation in online English news reports in the Philippines through these structures.

Consistent with the analytical approach/framework proposed by van Dijk (2006), the use of critical discourse analysis in this paper involved the investigation of the schematic structure present or employed in the 75 national/headline news reports from the three leading online English broadsheets in the Philippines that covered the 2004 Elections scandals from June 6, 2005 through June 20, 2005.

Structurally speaking, the online English news reports in the Philippines under study here followed the hierarchical schema or the conceptual categories proposed by van Dijk (1988) like, Headline, Lead, Main Events, Previous Events, History, among others. Likewise, the data revealed that these news categories were given or expressed in a discontinuous or installment manner of reporting and were interspersed with each other across the entire news item. Specifically, these categories determine the overall function of the topics of the text. For instance, the Headline and the Lead categories serve as the summary of the reports and as such, are usually found at the top-most part of the news article, signifying that they were the most important pieces of information in the news report given the top-down strategy or inverted pyramid structure of news reports which assigns a so-called relevance structure (van Dijk, 1988). The data under analysis here did not show any deviations from what is normally practiced. The preponderance of the use of Verbal Reactions in all 75 news reports investigated here may indicate attempts to be objective and accurate on the part of the reporters; however, a close scrutiny of the data found what previous research had pointed out – dominant or powerful groups are often quoted and allocated more space in the news item than the members of the minority or less powerful groups – in regard to the ideological implications or manipulative strategies behind the assignment of these categories (e.g., Fang, 2001; Stamou, 2001; Teo, 2000; Fairclough, 1995; van Dijk, 1988). What the readers read is not the entire event, but rather a reporter’s version of the event that often contains various forms of suasion or control of the representation of events or situations as well as the key players in these events/situations. More often than not, these key players or members of the majority group (in this paper) are people in positions of power who use the reporters to promote their positions or their “perspective” on events. Sometimes, especially in cases of national security, government officials have an interest in limiting or avoiding discussion of certain issues. They hope that their interpretation of events is accepted, rather than questioned, by the news journalists. They reckon that their view of events should be shared by all rational and just people. In some cases, some news reporters  live up to this expectation. They accept the official position without adequately scrutinizing the assertions of those officials. In other words, the news reporters’ propensity for the use of the Verbal Reaction category across their reports indicated manipulative attempts to make readers subscribe to a particular way of looking at or reading the news reports, given the types of political figures or prominent persons habitually quoted, allocated space, and regularly read throughout the duration of the so-called election rigging scandal reportage. Moreover, it goes without saying that these oft-quoted news actors and the tune they sang helped legitimize the ‘script’ provided by the government: the illegal (read unconstitutional) means of acquiring evidence (that is, a wiretapped conversation) by the opposition to implicate the President in the election fraud would not succeed in ousting her (see, for example, headlines of June 19 and 20, 2005).

5.2. Implications and Future Research

In light of the foregoing discussions, implications for research and classroom teaching become apparent. There seems to be a need to investigate from the critical discourse analysis perspective other forms of mass communications such as, TV newscasts, Senate and House hearings, articles on free trade, among others. This is to show how instances of manipulation are entrenched in a much larger, but hidden structure of power discourse that disguises it in naturalized text and talk. Of equal importance is the need to chip away at the layers of discourse concealing manipulative ideology in various levels and modes of mass communications.

Furthermore, it has implications for classroom teaching, particularly in a language learning contexts. Given the fact that lessons on reading newspaper is part of the basic education curricula in the Philippines (Department of Education, 2002) and is taught as early as Grade 1, there is a need to look at how lessons on reading newspapers is taught in the classroom. A quick look at the contents and the target skills aimed at (see Language Arts/English Scope and Sequence, Department of Education, 2002) would show that students are required and expected to get information from various news sources. It may be helpful to impress upon the students as early as in the primary levels that news reports, like any accounts of any events, are the reporters’ interpretations or versions of the events and situations that would require close and critical reading.

Finally, without sounding apologetic though, this paper only looked at a very small number of data to be truly conclusive in its assertions and that widening or increasing the size as well as the period covered of the sample data for future work on this area is important to provide much more detail about the manipulative nature and intent of Philippine news reporting. Moreover, a different approach to analyzing the news items may yield contradicting findings. It is therefore, suggested that further studies be done or pursued for a more definitive and authoritative discussion of the discursive aspects of manipulation in hard news.

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Eden Regala Flores
Department of English and Applied Linguistics
De La Salle University, Manila
Email: eden.flores@dlsu.edu.ph