
прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - News Analysis
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Doubt
One standard strategy of the press to mark distance with quoted others is the formulation of doubt. Quotation marks, modal expressions, or other signals may be used to portray a them-group. This means that ethnic groups, even when in the Netherlands for a long time or even when they have Dutch nationality, are not perceived as one of us in the press.
One of the proniinent examples recurring in our data is the use of "alleged" when the accusation of discrimination or racism is leveled against the authorities by ethnic groups or persons. Thus, Black groups are reported to argue that the antidrugs-actions of the city "allegedly increase racist tendencies", instead of "increase." When the authorities are quoted in ethnic news events, their declarations are much less often put in quotation marks or accompanied by signals of distance. The use of the standard word in Dutch to express doubt (`zou'= should/would) has become routinized to a point that even when somebody was convicted by a court for discrimination, a newspaper in the fall of 1985 writes that he had been convicted because he allegedly discriminated against a minority group members. Even proof of discrimination is apparently not enough for some of the press. When Het Parool (Sept. 5, 1985) reviews a research report demonstrating racism in children books and textbooks, its coherent style is one of doubt, hesitation, mockery or distance, emphasizing attribution particles such as " according to the author . .". There are few news reports in the Dutch press of 1985 about discrimination where reliable information about discrimination is not accompanied by such particles of joumalistic doubt or distance. This hesitation to acknowledge discrimination or racism is generally shared by both journalists and politicians. Prime minister Lubbers is quoted in NRC-Handelsblad (Nov. 18, 1985) as saying that foreigners feel (my italics, TAvD) they are treated as second-class citizens." In other words, discrimination is only a subjective feeling, not a social fact. And Rietkerk, the late minister of interna! affairs (responsible for the coordination of minority policies), is quoted in De Volkskrant that "social unrest, crime, and insecurity are the basis of racism", thereby again blaming a vague general state of affairs or the (threatening, criminal?) victims of racism.
Sharpening and Mitigation
The accentuation and mitigation of meanings is one of the central semantic strategies of newspaper language, which was often found in our data. The reactions of citizens against the arrival of gypsies in the neighborhood is described as "they are not exactly enthusiastic" by one quoted official. Background knowledge suggests that diese citizens react in a plainly racist way and will do everything to expel gypsies from the village. Similarly,

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protests against the treatment of political refugees, put in prison by the
police of Schiphol Airport is headlined as "Police tactics incorrect" (Volkskrant, Oct. 9, 1981). The same newspaper writes about the Anne Frank House exposition against racism in terms of "decreasing tolerance". And Het Parool, interviewing the Amsterdam city authorities about a police action against Surinamese women and children, reports "there have been small mistakes", but that action groups have "terribly exploited" these families.
We may conclude that several papers tend to use mitigating expressions, directly or quoted from officials, for the negative actions of the authorities and accentuation or exaggeration for the negative actions of ethnic groups and their supporters. Conversely, negative assertions about minorities may also be dissimulated rhetorically by litotes or abstract characterizations, as is done in a quotation of the Underminister of Justice, Korte van Hemel, about refugees who may have "a negative influence on the social climate" (interview in NRC-Handelsblad, Sept. 13, 1985). Apart from this explicit negative evaluation, this is also an example of blaming the victim or the wellknown fundamental attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979). Instead of blaming racist Dutch reactions against the immigration of refugees, she blames the possibly ensuing negative climate upon the refugees themselves. The same (conservative, quality) newspaper in an article about minority policy (Nov., 7, 1985) states that "the presence of foreigners leads to increasing social tension", thereby again blaming the victim.
Perspective
The various examples mentioned aboye contribute to an overall ethnocentric perspective in the news about ethnic groups. In most situations of conflict, the authorities are given the opportunity to formulate their opinions. Ethnic spokespersons are quoted less often, less prominently, and with more signals of distance or doubt. De Volkskrant (October 6, 1981), reports about the quota plan of the Underminister for Ethnic Affairs by first presenting the various objections against this plan as formulated by business officials, and only then, are the much-shorter opinions presented of those who support the plan. If the police helps immigrant children who ran away from home, the press reports favorably about the police ("your helper and friend" as a Dutch ad goes) and only negatively about Turkish fathers who batter their children. Often such authoritarian behavior is connected to the "backward" culture of the foreigners. As with the negative treatment of foreign women, discussed previously, no comparison with the Dutch situation is routinely made. We read surprisingly little about how many Dutch children are maltreated <lady by their parents. Hence, negativity is applied selectively as a news value to ethnic minority groups. This is a well-known

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feature of stereotypical and prejudiced attitudes (Hamilton, 1981; van DI. 1984a, 1987a).
In the fall of 1981, all people who lived on a mínimum income allowance were entitled to an extra bonus, if they filled out a form. foreign workers may have language problems in completing such forms, sud would risk not getting the bonus. De Volkskrant (Oct. 29) presents this svity from the authorities perspective, for whom this language barrier is a problem and who reject complaints about lack of forms in sufficient lsnguages in tercos of "they should be glad to have forms in their language". No mention is made of the opinions of the foreigners themselves and of their problems in finding out the many subtle rules of the Dutch social system. Hardly intentionally, but no less effectively, the majority of the Dutch press represents the point of view of our society and our authorities against them.
Explanation and Attribution: Blaming the Viction
News events often require an explanatory framework, in which causes such events or reasons for actions are specified to enhance comprehensten. Some actions of ethnic minority may be especially subject to these explanations because cultural differences may make them incomprehensible for white Dutch people. Such attributive explanations of action are often part of a stereotypical view of such cultural backgrounds or of a racist interpretation of the personal characteristics of ethnic group members. It is a safe strategy to vaguely attribute negative actions to culture while actually referring to inferior characteristics of the other group. At the same time, alternative explanations are ruled out. Thus, in the fall of 1985, some Dutch newspapers (e.g., NRC-Handelsblad of Oct. 24 and Het Parool of Oct. 18) featured stories about children who often stay away from school. Although this is a more general problem, attention is focused on foreign (Turkish, Moroccan) children who "illegally" stay home. For girls in particular, this is attributed to cultural practices of the ethnic group. At the same time, however, a research report finally showed that many Turkish or Moroccan girls didn't want to go to school because of racist behavior by the teachers or other students. We see that biased or selective explanations based on stereotypical attributions are an important way of blaming the victim.
Description
Important also for the reader's representation of ethnic minority groups are their identifying descriptions. In the Netherlands, we fmd a generalized use of the terco "foreigners" ("buitenlanders") to denote all minority groups, including Surinamese, most of whom have Dutch nationality. After the initial use of the term "cultural minority" by the authorities and the media, the term "ethnic minority" is now used more often, but keeps an

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academic flavor. For Mediterranean immigrant workers, both in the Netherlands and in West Germany, the equivalent of "guest worker" is still widely used in the press, although the more academic and political term "foreign worker" is gaining popularity. Further, proper names or country designations are used in such a way to create persistent ambiguity: The term "Surinamer" is usually used for a man of Surinamese origin who lives in the Netherlands but may also refer to people who actually live in Surinani.
Color-based or racial descriptions occur less frequently. The media, in response to the U.S. example, are now using the description "Black", more often, but rather for U.S. and South African Blacks than for Surinamese or Antillian Dutch. In a political sense, "Black" is used even less for other colored minorities in the Netherlands, such as those of East Indian (or Moluccan), now Indonesian, origin. As a general description of any nonwhite minority group, including Turks and Moroccans, the use of "Black" is more or less restricted to politically conscious minority organizations and their members and, therefore, occurs in the media only in quotations. The description "Negro" is used somewhat less frequently, although it is still used by many people, including the elite, and may as such find its way finto the media through quotation or in columns. In this respect, the Dutch elite and the media have shown less social and political consciousness than the U.S. media. This ambiguity is characteristic of Dutch media and of Dutch elite discourse on race in general: On the one hand, it appears less overtly racist than comparable discourse types in, e.g., Western Germany, United Kingdom or France; but, on the other hand, sociopolitical awareness about racism and racist discourse is much less developed compared with the media, politics, education, or other elite discourse in the United Kingdom and especially the United States.
The German and Dutch languages use, and the media feature, the terms "race" or "racial" much less often then in the United States or the United Kingdom, probably because of the very negative associations of these terms with their fascist use during the Nazi time. "Racism" as a term, however, is widely used, although we have seen repeatedly that the newspapers usually place the term between quotes because they invariably treat it as a subjective term of evaluation and not as a term designating a social fact. More frequent in Dutch is the use of weaker terms such as "foreigner hate" or "foreigner fear". The standard German term has become "Auslánderfeindlichtkeit" (hostility against foreigners).
British academic publications only recently tend to generalize the terms "race" and "racial" to "ethnic", to emphasize the cultural dimensions of the "new" racism (Barker, 1981). The media, however, still use the term "race" very prominently in their coverage. In their analysis of headlines, Hartmann, Husband & Clark (1974) found that for the representation of minorities in Britain, the concept of race was used in 12.1% of the cases, together

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with 15.2% of uses to indicate immigrant, followed by 11.4% of specific names or origin designations, and 7.1% of references to color. In other words, the ethnic groups were generally defined and identified (already in the situation defining and macrostructure expressing headlines) as belonging to another racial, ethnic, or national group. From the start, their special status as immigrants is underlined, despite their British citizenship or despite the fact that many of them have lived in Britain for many years or even all their lives. References to white groups are rare, even when the news reports are about white hostility and discrimination. In that case, the notion of race is often used.
The same authors also found that 31% of all headlines feature negative words of different classes: first, words that denote conflict or disagreement
(hate, row, flight, crisis,); followed by words that denote control (stop, cut, curb, ban, censor,); words that denote violence (murder, kill, riot, shoot, burn, massacre, the latter used especially for events overseas); and those that are associated with legal process, crime, or illegal acts (prison, jail, police, arrest, illegal entry, theft). Again, most of these concepts and words are used in association with ethnic groups and much less in relation to white hostility or racism, unless occurring in the United States. (Similarly, in the Dutch press, it is much more accepted to speak of racism in other countries, especially the United States and South Africa). The preferred words in the British headlines come from the lexical classes of restriction and conflict (in combination with race, color, or immigrant), whereas the use of ethnic names is more frequent for the description of groups in foreign news.
In other words, despite the vast variety in origins, immigrants or minorities are treated as one undifferentiated group. This tendency has been shown to be related to ethnic prejudice and intergroup perception (see Tajfel, 1981). Oyeran, the notion of race is used in 30% of the headlines in combination with conflict or violence words. This is particularly, though not exclusively, true for the tabloids, which usually score twice as high as the liberal or conservative quality press. Although these analyses and figures are based on media content in the 1960s, there is little reason to assume that the situation in the British press in the 1980 is significantly different.
Concluding Remarks
From these observations at the local semantic and stylistic levels, we may conclude that ethnic or racial groups, or race relations in a multiethnic society, are consistently associated with problems, conflict, and difficulties, if not with violence and illegality. It does not matter greatly in such cases whether the authorities or the police are portrayed as performing an action that might be evaluated negatively, such as "curb", "expel", or "arrest". As soon as such words are used in a context of ethnic or racial affairs, they tend

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to attach to the minority group rather than to the autochthonous organization (who are merely doing their job and, for many readers, even rightly so). In other words, it is less the precise context than the vague association that is relevant for the cognitive consequences of interpretation in this case. Extant prejudices will make readers tend to attribute negative properties or acts of the whole situation to one focused actor: the Black, immigrant, or minority group member (see Duncan, 1976; Hewstone & Jaspars, 1982; Hamilton, 1981b; and the other contributions in Hamilton, 1981a).
PROCESSING NEWS ABOUT MINORITIES
Bad News, Bad Effects?
The general conclusion that news about minorities in the press, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired would lose much of its social impact if its effects would be harmless. The argument may be put forward—and has been put forward by both newsmakers and scholars—that the negative effects of media messages should not be exaggerated. Readers would pick up the agenda set by the press for everday conversation (Atwood, Sohn & Sohn, 1978); but further, each reader would use the media message in accordance with one's own goals, beliefs, and attitudes (Rosengren, Wenner, & Palmgren, 1985). Although this is not the place to discuss the fate of various effect theories in mass media research (Schramm & Roberts, 1971), the question is most relevant for media discourse about minorities. After all, media information for most members of the majority is about the only daily source of knowledge and beliefs about ethnic minority groups. Except for those people, mostly in the cities, who have frequent contacts with minority group members, everyday conversations about foreigners will be predominantly based on media information. From this it follows that if no alternative information sources exist, relevant social topics will indeed probably be those that have been put on the agenda by the media or by the political or social elites who speak through the media (McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Gormley, 1975; Erbring, Goldenberg & Miller, 1980).
The problem, however, is that agenda topics as such are seldom neutral in the sense that readers may simply choose to form an independent opinion about immigration, discrimination, employment, housing, education, or cultural differences, for example. Therefore, a limited effect or agenda-setting hypothesis for minority news could be seriously entertained only (1) if people would have ample prior and continuous access to alternative information; and (2) if the media would offer neutral topics ; or (3) if a controversial topic would be díscussed from different points of view in the press. The research we have reviewed and reported suggests that these conditions are

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not satisfied. We argued that most majority members do not have alternative sources of information about present minority groups, and the ethnic topics discussed in the media are both highly stereotypical, if not straightforwardly racist, and embedded in a general consensual framework that allows little alternative evaluations, let alone severe antiracist criticism. In other words, not only media discourse itself but the whole communicative context is biased.
This means that for readers to be able to form independent, alternative opinions and attitudes about ethnic groups and ethnic relations, they must have (1) the rare ability to decipher the ideological codes of the press; and
(2) counterinformation and counterideologies to form different models of the situation and from there different general opinions and attitudes. It goes without saying that there conditions only hold for those people who by experience and/or alternative sources of information (antiracist publications) are able to develop strong alternative attitudes as well as argumentative strategies that allow them to reject the interpretative framework proposed by the dominant media institutions. For members of the white dominant majority, such conditions hold only in exceptional cases.
For minority group members, obviously, it will be much easier to reject the dominant framework, simply because they not only have immediate access to information about their own group (if only by informal conversation and everyday interaction) but also regular experiences, for instance of racism, with dominant group members. That is, if anything, they are the real experts that may defeat the dominant message of the white media. There is much evidence that many minority group members themselves do indeed exercise this privilege and arrive as a well-founded critique of the white media. This resistance may take a more intuitive, implicit form for the minority public at large, but little experience and training will be necessary to arrive at more explicit and argumentatively corroborated formulations of a counterideology. The role of independent ethnic media is of course crucial in the reproduction of such counterideologies.
The Power of the Dominant Interpretative Framework
In such a communicative context it follows that the majority of the white readers have few resources to resist the interpretative framework of the media. This does not necessarily imply that all its messages are believed to be true by most readers. Among the dominant white media, social, political, and ideological differences allow at least some variation in ethnic news and opinions. To a limited extent, this variation may also hold for different writers of one newspaper, for instance for opinion articles or letters sent to the editor. In this respect, there is some freedom in opinion formation,

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based on selective processing of facts and opinions that are consistent with personal opinions or subgroup ideologies. Most of those white readers who are critical of government policies or editorial treatment of minorities will also get most of their information from the media, and for them, the effect of the prevailing portrayals may be less persuasive if their alternative attitudes are explica and strong enough. Yet, the dominant frame of reference is more abstract and operates more indirectly and, therefore, has more subtle persuasive power. Thus, when minorities or ethnic affairs in general are consistently described from a specific, white, perspective, it is difficult to construct an alternative perspective. Also, people may be critical or selective in their processing of information in the press, but this presupposes that this information is present in the first place. If vast areas of information are simply not part of the regular news agenda at all, many facts cannot even be used to build counterinformation and hence a counterideology.
Let us give a concrete example. During the last few years, one racist party in the Netherlands (Centrum Partij, CP), won up to 10% of the votes in city council or parliamentary elections in some inner-city areas and suburbs, although its general adherence was limited to only a small percentage. (They lost their one seat in parliament in the 1986 elections.) The general consensus for most media, however, is that such a party is a scandal: Outright racism or foreigner hate is generally resented or at least not done. This was the background for a controversy about whether this party or similar racist parties should be forbidden. Most people and most parties did not favor prohibition and argued that (1) such parties may go underground, so that they could no longer be controlled; and (2) prohibiting any party would be inconsistent with the democratic principies of free party formation if not with those of free speech. For the extreme left, the latter argument was especially persuasive because party prohibition might, under a right-wing government, also tum against them.
From a certain perspective, this line of argument seems to have a point. However, the political elites, the media, and public discourse in this debate consistently argued within only one interpretative framework. First, it ignored the fact that racism is not limited to explicitly racist parties but is structurally present throughout society at large. This alternative point of view, shared by few white people in the Netherlands, would have made the whole controversy rather pointless because either solution in that case could be interpreted simply as a strategy to attribute racism solely to a small extremist group and, hence, as an excuse to ignore societal racism at large. Second, for the same reason, the problem of control would only become a pseudoproblem because the control of societal racism in general would still not be controlled and because as long as racism of extremists is truly underground it would hardly be noticeable and difficult to reproduce in society. In fact, the racism of a few extremists would be serious but, nevertheless,

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negligible for the minority groups involved when compared to the, perhaps less extremist but no less serious, regular, widespread, and legitimate racism of the respectable parties or the population at large. Third, and most crucially, the argument of party freedom in this line of argument apparently is felt to be more relevant for the defense of democratic ideals than the freedom and the elementary rights of ethnic minority groups, as guaranteed by Article 1 of the Dutch constitution, which states equality for all and prohibits discrimination on any ground.
In other words, what for the elite, the media, and the public at large seems a controversy in which people may have different points of view or in which the dominant groups have a point (and in fact made a decision: the party is still not forbidden), rather appears as a variation within one interpretative framework, namely the white dominant one. No wonder that during the whole media debate the alternative point of view and the perspective and rights of the minority groups themselves were hardly, if at all, topicalized. The ignorance and neglect of that perspective led to the systematic denial of everyday racism as experienced by minority groups, whether by racist party members or by the white public at large, if not by the dominant elites themselves, e.g., in politics, the media, education, and employment.
From this example we may see in more detail how even within an otherwise reasonable debate and its concomitant press coverage, radically alternative frameworks of interpretation may be ridiculed or censored if not fully ignored. There is an apparent form of discussion; there seems to be a freedom of choice, but the relevant other facts that would allow a different definition of the problem altogether have not been made public by the media. Similar examples may be given for many other seemingly problematic aspects of immigration and ethnic or race relations in the Netherlands, Western Europe, or North America. The various dimensions and implications of cultural differences with ethnically different groups are just one example. Thus, maybe most progressive people agree that many traditional Turkish or Moroccan men treat their wives, daughters, or sisters in a way that is inconsistent with Western emancipatory or feminist principies. In this respect, their attitudes may be close to the more openly stereotypical opinions of the population at large, as we have witnessed in our own interviews (van Dijk, 1984a, 1987a), in which the bad treatment of women was often topicalized. The media, and especially the quality press, have paid extensive attention to diese and other problematic aspects of ethnic and cultural differences and lack of integration. The problem takes on a quite different dimension, however, when it is realized that (1) such family relations are in many respects restricted to rural arcas and cannot be generalized for all modem Turkish and Moroccan families; (2) the different negative treatment of women is in some ways counterbalanced by positive

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aspects, such as autonomy in specific female domains or by stronger family bonds; (3) the Netherlands itself has one of the lowest percentages of women in outdoor job or in managerial positions in industrialized nations. Most women (about 70%) are still sometimes forced into the role of housewives; (4) perhaps less blatant but no less serious sexism is widespread at all levels of male society at large; and (5) not all goals of Western-style feminism necessarily agree with those of Third World women. Again, we see that from a different perspective the stereotypical media account of traditional Moslem or Mediaterranean-style male behavior may appear as a sophisticated form of cultural and social superiority and, hence, as ethnocentrism or ethnicism. What appears to be obviously wrong according to the liberal quality press soon gets the flavor of a prejudiced stereotype, by which the foreign group as a whole may be viewed negatively and backward. As with the discussion about the prohobition of racist parties, this framework conveniently overlooks the fact of sexism in the dominant male group or the ethnocentrism of the female dominant group with regard to ethnic minority women. Whereas the conservative popular press may focus on the problems of minority crime, drugs, and other forms of deviance, the liberal or conservative quality press may find its own problematic areas of immigration and ethnic relations. On both counts, however, the result is the same: The minority group is stereotypically categorized as a "problem". It is this general interpretative framework, with its common-sense rules and norms, that undergirds the restricted opinion formation ,, f its readers.
Similarly detailed examples may be given for the immigration of refugees (small overpopulated country, few resources), education, and the use or teaching of the group's own language and culture in the classroom ("isn't it better that foreign children focus on the language and culture of the majority, in which they will have to grow up"), and many other controversia) issues. If minority children appear to do less well in school, the obvious explanation features causes that range from lack of motivation, linguistic "deficiencies", family structure, or cultural barriers to the famous predicament of children that have to live between two cultures. These conveniently leaves out the pervasive racism of the classroom or the textbooks. If a high
percentage of minorities, especially the young, cannot find a job, this is again attributed to their deficiences in education or their cultural differences and not to discrimination by the employer or employment agencies
of the state or the city. Thus, the blame is put on the victim and not on the dominant society. Important for our discussion is that the media accounts of such "problems" and the orchestration of the public debates about them consistently betray a dominant, white, majority point of view, be it conservative and openly prejudiced, or more liberal and more subtly prejudiced.
We may conclude this discussion about the overall effects of the media portrayal of minorities by emphasizing the power of the dominant frame-