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Draft 3

As the task of this essay is to represent the events of my birthday through some articles of a daily newspaper from that day, at first the chosen newspaper has to be introduced. In this case it is the Hungarian daily newspaper Népszabadság, which has appeared since 1956 as the offspring of Szabad Nép; and it was the central daily newspaper of the Hungarian Socialist Labour Party. "After the counter-revolution it played an important role in the creation of the consolidation."(1)

The aim of my essay is to show the 8th of January 1975 through four articles from Népszabadság of that day. It will discuss the presentation of three news values in Népszabadság's January 8, 1975 edition. It will highlight how the newspaper reported events that were characterized by negativity, eliteness or facility.

In the articles these news values appear at different degrees, which means that not all the three values appear in all the four articles. Since this the essay will analyze each of the news values through those articles in which they have a focal function. In case of those news values which are complements of more reports, also the difference(s) of the presence of the concerned value will be interpreted.

Having read the articles concerning the country it might be possible to characterize that day, but the events reported on the 8th of January do not really describe that of Hungary. This means that most of the articles have general topics, e.g. that in 1975, 90 000 new flats are going to be built; there is an article about the definition of democracy; another is about the ideological work at schools. These articles cannot be considered as news in that sense that they do not report events of that one day. Still, there are some pieces of news which describe one particular day. From these this Wednesday seems to be a quite customary day; nothing special happened in the history of the country: there are reports about meeting of politicians, conferences of parties and associations, about trade.

In contrast to this the reported events which happened outside the Hungarian borders suggest that this was a special day indeed, but rather in other countries, not in Hungary. E.g. there is a report about South-Vietnam, where the Saigon regime lost its illegal bases; another one reports about the meeting of the heads of Syria and Lebanon. Its topic is the collective action against the Israeli attack plans. Another important motif of this article is Kissinger's statement that declared the possibility of a US military intervention in order to protect the American oil-interests in the near East. Even these two examples show that in the whole wide world there were happenings of greater significance than in our country.

From the four chosen articles there is one foreign news, which is actually one of the two leading articles of that day's edition. Being this it appears on the front page of the newspaper, right under the headline. Another article reports about the meeting of the Hungarian and Yugoslavian ministers of Foreign Affairs. There is a short article about the transport of iron ore from the Soviet Union to Hungary, and finally there is a report in the sport section about the latest happenings in Hungarian boxing, which article is especially interesting because there is an extract from an interview with the most competent person being the source, namely László Papp.

To be able to interpret these events as news, at first news has to be defined. News is not found so much as made, which means that it is a creation of journalistic process. There are criteria which determine whether an event is newsworthy or not, and these are the news values. The more news values can be found in an event, the more likely it is to be reported.

There are many accepted analyses of news values and to make the definition of the chosen values more explicit I compared Allan Bell's version with the one of Johann Galtung's and Mari Ruge's, the latter one taken from Roger Fowler's Language in the News.

Negativity is part of both analyses and Fowler defines the reason of negativity being a news value this way: "A more powerful set of news values dictate preferences for the event which is of large scale rather than of modest proportions,(...)negative rather than positive. More newsworthy than everyday stories of ordinary folk are stories which exemplify the negative attitudes and behaviors thought to be characteristic of "them"; so the newspapers fill their columns with murder, rape, fraud, espionage, riot, natural disaster, freaks:"(2)
Based on this negativity can be defined as conflict on different levels of society, be it between nations, people, parties, generations to name only some of these levels.

Negativity is a focal news value in the foreign news about the Saigon regime's defeat is South-Vietnam. It appears in two main forms in the article: partly it is the reported war conflict between the Saigon regime and the national military liberation movement. Partly it is the explained danger coming from the USA: it is an American fleet, containing the biggest ship of the American naval force. Based on the UPI information originating from the American diplomatic circles being in Saigon, the destination of the fleet unit is the South-Vietnamese coastal sector. Though the US Ministry of Defense denies that the destination of the ships is South-Vietnam.
Containing war conflict, danger and alarm, this article is a rich and productive story, well fulfilling the news value criteria described.

The other article in which negativity appears is the sport news about Hungarian boxing. The article is introduced with the description of the actual work of the representative boxing team, which is the preparation for the European championship. In connection with this is László Papp's resignation is reported. In the focus of the article is Papp's statement that describes the circumstances which induced him to resign. These were the personal conflicts and discords within the lead; the disobedience against his instructions; and that the association had no president.

Thus, negativity gains realization in this report through these facts listed, negativity here is the conflict between people.

Eliteness also appears both in Bell's and in the Galtung-Ruge analyses of news values, though Galtung and Ruge differentiate reference to elite nations and reference to elite people and define the difference by the following fact: "reference to elite nations encodes the "superpowers" ideology"(3), which means that there are nations which are considered being especially influential worldwide; whereas the definition of elite persons is nation-dependent, i.e. every land has its own elite persons.

This news value appears also in two of the chosen articles. The first one is the report about the meeting of the Hungarian and Yugoslavian Ministers of Foreign Affairs, which theme indicates that eliteness concerns politicians.

The other story in which this news value is present is the sport news: the core of this article is László Papp, who is a world-famous as well as the most famous Hungarian boxer.
Taking into consideration the more specific Galtung - Rugian division, both reports include reference to elite persons.

Facility is incorporated only in Bell's news values analysis and it is determined being "the degree to which a story contains the kinds of facts and figures on which hard news thrives: locations, names, sums of money, numbers of all kinds"(4).

This news value also plays an essential role in two stories: in the foreign news about South-Vietnam and in the article about the transport of iron ore.

The foreign news being one of the two leading articles gains its effectiveness through the two analyzed news values, namely negativity and facility. The latter one becomes exceedingly significant because it contains such facts and figures that include the expression of negativity in themselves as well at the same time. I.e. they increase the suggested danger and alarm.
Such facts and figures are first of all the enumeration of the ships attending the fleet, emphasizing that one of them is the biggest ship of the US naval force; and the highlighting of the 700 million military-aid law that - based on the AP-report - the Americans try to avoid.
The report about the iron ore transport could be characterized as a heap of data: it includes the names of the Soviet and Hungarian transport ships, the length of the voyage in space and time, the weight of the unloaded iron ore, the number of the barges having come to Hungary last year, and the number of barges transporting from Hungary abroad. Though these data might not make the article interesting enough to represent it as news, there is one main data which makes the story so important. Namely, that the dockers managed to reach a record by unloading 326 thousand tonne iron ore.

This fact is also important from the point of view of news values analysis because through this the article contains the superlativeness as news value as well.

Besides the interpretation of news from the point of view of news values, it also can be analyzed from the point of view if opinion. It is a general rule that the newspapers should be objective, their reporting style should be value-free. Based on Fowler(5) there are certain levels in which this objective representation can be measured, e.g. vocabulary and modality. Examination of these levels help to identify whether there is a subjective editorial opinion expressed in the article or not. Within vocabulary first of all adverbs and adjectives can carry such subjective opinions as their basic function is to specify the meaning of the word they are related to. Within modality a subjective opinion can be expressed through the usage of certain modal auxiliaries.
Taking into consideration these factors there is only one sentence in the leading article, in which the editorial opinion is expressed: "On Tuesday the headquarters in Saigon also admitted another sore loss..."(6).

All the other three articles are devoid from such expressions which could suggest a subjective editorial opinion; they all report facts and data. From this point of view the chosen articles fulfill the required objectivity of newspapers.

Based on the analysis of these articles the following main points can be summarized in this essay: this analysis contained two focal viewpoints of news interpretation, namely the study of news values and of the objectivity appearing in the chosen reports. The examination of the three chosen news values - negativity, eliteness and facility - are founded on the Bellian and the Galtun -Rugian theories, comparing these two analyses and showing the differences of them if these appear also in the articles. Besides this it examined whether the demanded objectivity of newspapers can be identified in the four discussed stories or not.

Taking into consideration these two point of views of news analysis the interpreted articles fulfilled both the criteria concerning the news values and the objectivity, and can be characterized as newsworthy articles excluding subjective editorial opinions.