The presentation of South African politicians in The Times newspaper column “On the Contrary”: 2012-2017

Abstract

This paper examined South African politicians' (re)presentation in Tony Leon’s regular column, On the contrary, which appeared in The Times newspaper from 2012 to 2017. This period in South African politics is made interesting by the fact that it coincides with the time when there was mounting pressure for the then president, Jacob Zuma, of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), to step down, especially between 7 January 2015 and 21 March 2017. Tony Leon, who also once served as a councilor for the Democratic Party (DA), one of the major opposition parties in South Africa is the columnist who at the time authors the on the contrary column. This creates interesting research on how the columnist and the newspaper are able or not to maintain ethical journalism. In conducting the study, this article employs the framing theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as research tools to assess the columnists’ objectivity and bias in his depiction of the then president and several prominent politicians during the examined period. Data analysis constitutes six newspaper articles which were purposively selected to obtain a representative sample. The results indicated that these articles were well-researched in respect of the information they presented. At the same time, biased tendencies were noted in favor of the political party aligned to the columnist.

Keywords: {'name': 'bias'}, {'name': 'critical discourse analysis'}, {'name': 'depiction'}, {'name': 'ethics'}, {'name': 'framing theory'}

Authors & affiliations

Witness Roya
Affiliation not supplied

Sandiso Ngcobo
Affiliation not supplied

Deposited references

Supplied references, not a list of publications citing this article.

DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.09.026

Alonso, I. & McCabe, A. (2008). The expression of the writer’s stance in the British and the Spanish Press: A comparative corpus-based study. Paper presented at the 15th World Congress of Applied Linguistics, University of Duisburg-Essen, August 24-29, 2008. https://worldlanguageprocess.org/Current%20Activities/germany/index.htm

DOI: 10.14569/SpecialIssue.2014.040104

Baresch, B., Hsu, S.H. & Reese, S. (2012). The power of framing: New challenges for researching the structure of meaning in news, in The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism pp. 637-647. https://journalism.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/sites/journalism.utexas.edu/files/attachments/reese/baresch-hsu-reese-chapter.pdf

DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adu083

Braden, M. (1997). Getting the message across: Writing for the mass media. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. https://archive.org/details/gettingmessageac0000brad

DOI: 10.1075/prag.26.1.01bre

DOI: 10.1561/100.00016112

DOI: 10.21272/sec.4(3).93-103.2020

DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.803

Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punishment. New York: Pantheon Books.

DOI: 10.1086/229213

DOI: 10.1257/app.1.2.35

Gitlin, T. (2003). The whole world is watching. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Whole_World_is_Watching.html?id=00iwHPO73mkC&redir_esc=y

DOI: 10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.21

DOI: 10.1177/073953291003100305

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. https://archive.org/details/AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks

Guo, J. (2009). Tibet riots through a Western lens: A frame analysis of news coverage of 2008 Tibet Riots on BBC and CNN. Ohio: Miami University. https://core.ac.uk/display/47012957

Guerreiro Neto, G. (2016). From opinion to identity: Editorial features in two Brazilian newspapers. Sobre Jornalismo, 5 (2), 92–105. https://www.academia.edu/33838777/Da_opini%C3%A3o_%C3%A0_identidade_Caracter%C3%ADsticas_do_editorial_em_dois_jornais_brasileiros

Hall, S. (1997). Representation, cultural representations, and signifying practices. London: Sage. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-36930-000

Hasan, S. & Dutta, P. (2019). Coverage of environmental issues in local dailies of Chattogram

Centering World Environment Day. SocioEconomic Challenges, 3(4), 63-71.

DOI: 10.21272/sec.3(4).63-71.2019

DOI: 10.21272/bel.3(1).80-100.2019

Hoyt, C. (2008). The blur between analysis and opinion. New York Times, 13 April 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13pubed.html

Ibrahim, Y. & Howarth, A. (2016). The third narrative space: The human-interest story and the crisis of the human form. Ethical Space, 13(4): http://communicationethics.net/sub-journals/abstract.php?id=00109.

DOI: 10.1080/02560054.2013.782284

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226388533.001.0001

DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2004.tb02614.x

Klug, F. (2021). Frustrated with North Korea? Welcome to the land of lousy options, The Spokesman Review, July 7 2021. https://apnews.com/article/fc2fbe9f63ec4dec9a36828f001ac917

DOI: 10.1093/heapol/czv128

Lemoine, H. (2016). Editorial framing: Critical discourse analysis of Swedish editorials. Malmo: Malmo University. https://core.ac.uk/display/132114374

Maida, C. (2009). Newspaper column genre study, Dr. Kennedy ENG504 December 9. https://facultyweb.cortland.edu/kennedym/courses/504/504.genrestudy/genrestudies2009pdfs/maida.pdf

DOI: 10.1177/1464884919894126

Maguire, M. & Delahunt, B. (2017). Doing a thematic analysis: A practical, step-by-step guide for learning and teaching scholars. AISHE-J 3. Autumn 2017. pp 3351- 33514. http://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/article/view/335

DOI: 10.1177/1464884907072422

DOI: 10.25200/BJR.v14n2.2018.1088

Nkanjeni, U. (2020). John Steenhuisen trends after heated exchange with news anchor Flo Letoaba, Times LIVE, Johannesburg. Arena Holdings.15 May 2020. https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2020-05-15-john-steenhuisen-trends-after-heated-exchange-with-news-anchor-flo-letoaba/

DOI: 10.12928/eltej.v3i2.2158

Okunna, C, Omenugha, K. & Ebeze, U. (2002). Writing for the mass media in teaching mass communication: A Multi-Dimensional Approach, Enugu: New Generation Ventures.

Pauw, J. (2017). The president’s keepers: Those keeping Zuma in power and out of prison. Cape Town: Tafelberg. https://www.anfasa.org.za/the-presidents-keepers-those-keeping-zuma-in-power-and-out-of-prison/

Punn, G.I. (2018). Column – What’s it all about and its role in journalism, Lahore: University of Engineering and Technology. https://www.academia.edu/40436930/Column_Whats_It_All_About_and_Its_Role_in_Journalism

Radford, B. (2013). Channeling and spirit guides: Voices from within, not beyond https://www.livescience.com/38561-channeling.html published July 31, 2013.

DOI: 10.18653/v1/2021.emnlp-main.783

Sauter, E.S. (2011). Shout Amandla! A rhetorical analysis of Helen Zille. Unpublished Master of Arts thesis. Colorado State University. https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/52125/Sauter_colostate_0053N_10681.pdf?sequence=1

DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02843.x

Smith, S. (2010). S. Africa’s Sunday Times criticized for anonymously sourced Mugabe affair murder story. https://www.imediaethics.org/.

DOI: 10.1177/107769901008700204

?el?tov, ?. & ??l?t?v?, S. (2015). The peculiarity of speech influense of the advertising texts. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 4, 49-58. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2015.4-05

Tomasky, M. (2003). Politics and public policy research paper series Whispers and Screams:

The partisan nature of editorial pages, Shorenstein Fellow, Spring 2003. Contributing Editor, New York magazine. https://shorensteincenter.org/whispers-and-screams-the-partisan-nature-of-editorial-pages/

Ugondo, P.I. (2018). Influence of newspaper editorials on voter attitude towards the 2015 General Elections in Nigeria. D.Phil in Mass Communication thesis. Makurdi: Benue State University. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/322634131.pdf

DOI: 10.1177/0957926596007001001

Willis, J.T. (2014). Narrative, rhetoric and discourse, Dr Michael Zukosky Final Essay Anthropology. https://www-archiv.fdm.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/node/117.html

DOI: 10.4135/9780857028020

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/b3u48

DOI: 10.5040/9780755694709