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Draft 3

1. Délmagyarország is a regional daily newspaper of the southern part of Hungary, especially of Csongrád county. It was established in 1910. In 1976 it was the newspaper of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. When I was born , on 1st December in 1976, it was a six page daily paper. The first two pages covered international and country-wide news, the next two pages informed the reader about local events and news. Local sport events occupied seven percent of the paper. On the last pages amongst general information, there were television and movie programs and weather forecast. This newspaper survived the changes in the political system and today it is an independent sixteen page daily paper. Not only its length has changed, but also the style and the contents. It deals now with different topics and the ratio of foreign and home news have changed as well.

1.2 My aim in this essay is to analyse certain news values in articles dealing with political and economical issues. Thus, I will discuss the presentation of three news values in Delmagyarorszag's December 1, 1976 edition. I will highlight how the newspaper reported events that were characterised by recency, unambiguity and facility. I picked several articles from this issue that demonstrate these.

2. Wednesday, 1st December 1976 was an ordinary weekday without any sensation reported. National news on the front page reported that Pál Losonczi, president of the Hungarian People's Republic, travelled to India for an official visit; the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party held a meeting about the general budget for the following year; the delegation of Hungarian Parliament visited Cuba; the delegation of Yugoslavian People's Front arrived to Csongrád county; overview of the Hungarian economy of the year 1976. The international events of the day were: Soviet-American economic negotiations began; the Vietnamese Communist Party is preparing for a congress; the announcement of Bucharest was welcomed by the world's public opinion. Local news included reports about the modernisation of the match factory in Szeged; about reconstruction plans of Dugonics square (Szeged); about the press-conference dealing with the practice of the law of general education; about the conference of socialist brigades in the rubber factory: about the problems of the further education of music teachers; interview with Abraham Ambrus, the world-famous neuroscientist, working in Szeged; about the new tasks of educational institutions; about an agricultural study-trip for the students of JATE (József Attila University); about specialisation of iron monger's shops in Hódmezõvásárhely. In addition, the newspaper contains local sport news and actual announcements of public interest.

3. Reading through these pages, the reader feels an atmosphere totally different from today's papers. The topic of the articles is very trendy, the reader can feel that the party and the principals of socialist ideals are always behind the texts.

It is quite obvious that not a single negativity is mentioned throughout the newspaper. There are no crime stories or accidents reported. One can imagine that this could not have been true. In general, the paper aimed to suggest that in a socialist society nothing goes wrong.

3.1 Delmagyarorszag carried a total of 26 news stories on the six pages of this issue. Of these, 6 were front-page stories, 4 inside front cover foreign news stories, with the rest of the stories on pages 3 to 6. The ratio of foreign and home news was 2:3. The main cover story wrote about the results of Hungarian economy in 1976. As for home news matter, 6 articles appeared with an illustrative element: either a photograph or a drawing.

3.2.1 Regency is a news value that means 'freshness' of the news. The name news itself comes from this feature. In the world of media it is very important to be among the first informing the public about an event recently happening. In 1976 it was not so difficult to be recent as it is today, because there was not competition among newspapers at that time and all the news came from one source for everyone, namely the Press Agency of the Communist Party. Thus, it was strictly controlled what kind of news could be published in any of the newspapers. This was valid for regional newspapers too, for example, in the issue in question, the most lengthy article was about an overview of the Hungarian economy before the end of the year (N.A.1976:1, Az év). In the introduction of the article it is stated that MTI (Hungarian Telegram Office) reporters were informed one month before the end of the year by leaders of 5 major industrial branches. The article suggests that the most competent leaders were asked on the topic who gave precise and recent data about the state of affairs. In the other reports it is also included that the events they are informing about had happened either the day before or happened on the day of the issue. For example, the delegation of Hungarian Parliament travelled to Cuba the day before 1st December 1976 (N.A.1976:1, Apro). The same was true for the arrival of delegation of Yugoslavian People's Front (N.A.1976:1, A hazafias). The Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party also held its meeting on 1st December . At the same time there are articles which inform about ongoing projects such as the building of Orenburg gas pipes in the co-operation of Hungarian and Russian Youth Organisations ( N.A.1976:1, Hét). In these articles there is no exact date mentioned, instead only obscure terms are used.

3.2.2 Unambiguity is a news value that refers to the clarity of the story. The less ifs, buts and maybes are used, the more favoured the article is. From this point of view, this newspaper seems to be very objective and unambiguous. The style of articles is strictly factual and straitforward. Statements are so definite that the sources seem unquestionable. There are no very long articles, most reports are short, containing only facts. The journalistic style of almost all the articles are the same, as it can be well observed in the report on the state of Hungarian economy ( N.A. 1976:1, Az év). Each of the 5 major industrial branches fulfilled or even exceeded the planned production. The data seems accurate and they confirm the statements of the article. Although, all the media of that time announced the same. However, no one was allowed to doubt or in a position to check the validity of the published data. People had to believe them.
Unambiguity in this era meant that only one side , the socialist side, was the right side. Only one short radio telex message expresses ambiguity in the paper in which the 8. Chinese ambassador of the United Nations was called back to China and, according to not yet confirmed information, the Chinese foreign minister is also politically attacked. (N.A. 1976:2, Kína)
3.2.3 Facility is a news value that shows the degree to which a story contains the kind of facts and figures on which hard news thrives: locations, names, sums of money, numbers of all kinds. In this era it was essential that the articles and news should sound reliable. In order to achieve that locations, names and other data were exactly mentioned. There are many news directly taken from MTI. These are very short and they contain only facts for instance two front page news: Losonczi Pal travels to India (MTI.1976:1, Losonczi) and the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party holds a meeting (MTI.1976:1, A magyar). In the longer articles, such as the review of the Hungarian economy (N.A.1976:1, Az év) , in each section several figures are listed to back up the idea of continuous development. However, the reader should not forget that the figures are not always correct. The interpretation of these statistics are usually biased.

3.3 The style of reporting is rather boring. The articles are very impersonalised, the reader cannot feel the different journalistic approaches behind the articles. The majority of articles are not even signed by anyone, thus, the reader cannot follow the activity of a certain journalist. It might as well be that the same person wrote all these unsigned articles because their factual style is so similar. Moreover, there are no commentaries, that could reflect the journalist's own views, personal views and opinions published concerning events, data or social and political phenomena.

3.4 All these features due to the fact that the source of news were strictly controlled by the Communist Party. The party had large organisations ( so called 'agitation propaganda') working on the maintenance of an attractive image of socialism.

They were filtering out all the disturbing elements from the news and allow only the proper ones to the public. This apparatus sometimes not only filtered out the non-advantageous elements but also made changes in the texts or manipulated the data. For instance, if one reads the front page article about the review of Hungarian economy, one can think that there was a continuous development in each branch of economy. However, by now it turned out to be a lie. In the studied issue of Délmagyarország, the only explicit source is MTI.

Reading this 20 year old newspaper, the reader has the impression that nothing of big importance happened in the country or in the world, at least, according to the paper and from the point of view of an average reader. The news informed about arrivals and departures of delegations, meetings of party committees and these events did not have an effect on the every day life at all. The only report which is worth to mention among local news is dealing with the reconstruction of a central area of Szeged, the Dugonics square (P.K.1976:3, Prágai). This is important because Szeged is the largest city in the county and therefore, the majority of the potential readers lived in this city. In general it can be assumed that this issue contains articles that live up to the essential criteria of the three news values discussed: recency, unambiguity and facility, thus it was informative for its readers.