Poliitilise skandaali konstrueerimine Postimehes Välisministeeriumist kadunud dokumentide juhtumi näitel
Date
2005
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
My bachelor thesis was to analyze how the Estonian daily newspaper Postimees
builds up a political scandal.
Lull & Hinerman (1997) pointed out that media puts the scandal into a narrative form.
They concluded that a scandal cannot develop before it is served to the audience as a
story. Brian McNair (1999) also said that journalists communicate the meaning of
politics and they may insert the events of political life into narrative frameworks
(McNair 1999:73). Kennet L. Hacker (1996) discussed the relationship of power and
language and stated that the political discourse analysis gives us the opportunity to
examine carefully how reporters label political events and media use language to
communicate politics.
Thompson`s theory of political scandal introduces a variety of criteria a scandal
usually meets. Among them were that the occurrence of scandal involves the
transgression of certain values and moral codes; they occurrence involves an element
of secrecy or concealment; some non-participants disapprove the actions, some
express their disapproval; and the disclosure of the actions may damage the reputation
of the individuals responsible for them (Thompson 2000: 13-14). Thompson also
divided the scandal info phases. I structured my work in the discourse analysis after
these phases.
To find out how Postimees constructs a scandal I used quantitative analysis to
determine the speakers and the ones that were spoken about; discourse analysis to find
out the sub-themes, expand the category of speakers and the ones spoken about, to
determine the journalistic focus and transgression of moral conventions. Finally I
carried out two interviews with news-reporters from Postimees to find out if the
journalistic routines have an effect on the texts that journalists produce, as have
appointed out Shoemaker & Reese (1991).
Besides Postimees I also examined in quantitative and discourse analysis Eesti
Päevaleht – another Estonian daily newspaper. My aim was to give a degree of
comparison for the results about Postimees to be as authentic as possible.
I have to say that for the whole work to be more authentic I should have included
incorporated into the methodology an entographic research for media studies. In other
words conduct an observation of journalistic routines in Postimees. But due to the limitations of the materials of this work I excluded it. Still I am convinced that this
analyze gives splendid opportunities for further researches about political scandals.
From my research I concluded that the person that most often spoke in news was
Andrus Ansip. The reason appeared from interviews – Ansip was an easy source for
journalists because he usually answered the phone and was eager to speak. Other
persons as well as reporters themselves most often spoke about Juhan Parts and
Kristiina Ojuland as the main characters of the scandal.
Discourse analysis concluded that the main sub-theme in the texts was the conflict
between Reformierakond and Res Publica – two of the three parties in the coalition
government. There were still other themes in the articles that were at times like a
maze above the main theme, covering it all up so that the audience did not understand
what was being told.
Interviews concluded that journalists did not analyze critically the motives why some
sources that wanted to stay publicly unidentified gave them the inside information.
Though Toomas Sildam, the news editor assured me that in case of this scandal
Postimees did not depend on its informers, the discourse analyze concluded the
opposite. Namely the journalists used a lot of information without proper reference to
its source in their texts, in addition there occurred cases in witch the journalist
referred to anonymous sources or to media itself. The latter is characteristic to a
political scandal as media tries to legitimate comments into facts.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General)