gijc2015
Research: “Manipulation in Philippine News Reporting: Real or Imagined?”
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This study examines from the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis the presence of manipulation in news reporting in the three leading online English broadsheets in the Philippines.
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.