прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - News Analysis

the police with violence, albeit as a means to control (violent?) demonstrators.

Analysis of the pictures allows us to draw further inferences from the ways the situation and their participants are represented. just as for the comprehension of text, we need models and knowledge schemata (scripts) to interpret the photos. We only see a fragment of a scene, and only a still from ongoing action. The throwing movement of a demonstrator and the trash can touching the starred glass of the bank window, together allow the inference that the demonstrator is engaged in the action of smashing the window of the bank. The word -bank" is written on the front of the building, aboye the window. That the actor throwing the trash can is a demonstrator may be inferred from the fact that he(?) is masked with a shawl. Hence, it is somebody in half-disguise, apparently wanting to remain anonymous. The inference lies at hand that an illegal act is being performed.

These various dimensions of visual comprehension may be completed with further, connotative, sociocultural interpretation. A demonstrator is attacking a bank by trying to smash a front window. The fact that it is a bank, and not any building, is of course significant. The news reports sometimes stress that demonstrators attacked expensive shops, banks, and cars. This suggests that they are involved in anticapitalist action, interpreted as protest against those who support, or are otherwise associated with, the speculators. Hence, the picture of the person smashing a bank window may also be interpreted as an attack on the most prominent instance of the power and status institutions of bourgeois society. Thus, the demonstrators and squatters intend to attack if not overthrow our most important and safest institutions, viz., the bank. Characteristically, the bank is attacked with a trash can. This not only signals an opposition between the trashy street weapons of the demonstrator, on the one hand, and the money attacked, on the other hand, but also associates demonstrators with trash.

We may conclude that this is not just a nice action picture. Rather, it symbolizes concretely the action of demonstrators and squatters against the status quo and its most treasured institutions. If the attacking demonstrator is not attributed with such intentions, the alternative is hardly better. In that case, window smashing could be seen as an irrational act of destruction. The exercise of irrational destruction is also felt as a basic attack against the values of society (compare with the wide attention paid to soccer hooliganism). Readers that sympathize with the squatters and their actions may adopt the first connotations but also take the picture as the representation of an expression of rage and of a protest against the eviction. Yet, this interpretation is seldom supported by the meanings of the text of the news reports. The dominant interpretation, then, is that of attack and violence, exerted by the demonstrators. It is this interpretation that is in line with the macrostructures of most news reports in our data.

OTHER MEDIA AND MESSAGES

After this analysis of the newspaper accounts of the evictions, let us briefly examine some other media or sources of the events in Amsterdam.

The National News Agency, ANP

The national news agency (ANP) covers the events in detail, both in the afternoon and during the evening. Since the eviction event (at least of GW) was known in advance to the reporters, ANP was able to put a long background story on its telex network (to which all newspapers are connected). This information includes a history of the legal dispute preceding the oecupation of GW, as well as the motivations and the protests of the squatters. This information is barely used by the press: The regional press focuses mostly on the violent events themselves, and the national press makes use of its own reporters and not only of the ANP dispatches. Declarations of the squatters hardly reach the press. ANP style is generally more neutral than that of the press: No negative designations are used for squatters and demonstrators. The press, when using the ANP dispatches, often assigns more negative interpretations to the events, while on the other hand copying a number of catchy or metaphorical phrases from the ANP telex. Interestingly, the eviction events during the afternoon are described more neutrally by ANP than the demonstration and the distrubance during the evening. One of the reasons for this difference appeared to be that these events were covered by different reporters, which suggests that there also individual differences in the accounts of the same source.

Other Media: Radio and Television

The other media were able to report the events earlier than the newspapers of the next day. The three evening news programs on TV all show pictures of the conflict, especially of fighting in the streets. At the end of the afternoon, various radio stations broadcast direct reports from the scene. The wellknown city radio station (STAD radio) paid most attention to the events and to the backgrounds and, much like it does so mostly from the

squatters. On earlier occasions, this station had been criticized by the conservative press and politicians for paying attention to the squatters' point of view. Also on this occasion, it ran into difficulties with

the authorities.

The other news and commentary programs focus on the topics that also dominate in the press. Much attention is paid to the declarations of the authorities such as the police and the city authorities (mayor, officials). No

information about the point of view of the squatters is presented, and little information about the background of their squatting is provided. These various media accounts, especially that of TV news, are important because they provide the first definitions of the situation, both for the press itself and for the public that reads the press stories of the next day. Since this first definition focuses on the negative consequences of the eviction, that is on violence by demonstrators, this will also influence the subsequent interpretations of later accounts.

Public Statements: The Pollee and the City

In an analysis of all public statements made about the events and of their coverage by the press, it was found first that the declaration of the police inspector in charge of the eviction was quoted most often (13 times), followed by the first statement from the city authorities. Both statements stress the nonviolent tactics of the eviction and emphasize that agressive young people had violated this strategy. Two newspapers mention a statement by the owner of the building and his plans for the near future. A statement is quoted by one of the squatters of GW only once, a declaration from the occupants of Huize Lydia is quoted twice, a reaction of a communist city -eouneil-rnember-is-quotedtwice, und the statement of a Surinamesa organization is quoted three times. Most of diese opponent statements also appear in the same newspapers (De Waarheid, Het Parool, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, and Trouw). The voice of the authorities is heard far more often than that of the victims of the police actions and of the city policies. But éven from the official statements, background and explanations are mostly ignored by the press.

Follow-up

In a study of the follow-up in the press the further consequences of the events on October 8, 1981, it was found that apart from one or two small iteras in the national press, most of the press did not pay further attention to diese consequences. It was reported that those arrestad were released the same or the next day, and only a few newspapers reported about another demonstration against the earlier arrests. There is a report that police had acted rather brutally in that new event a few days later, but this information did not reach the press. Indeed, there are no police reports about this. De Volkskrant, among others, headlines a follow-up itera on the next day in a rather negative way:

TION. Apart from some details about the legal aftermath of the events, this article is mainly about the Black families that occupied Huize Lydia. Racism

at the police station is mentioned, quoted, and referred to as alleged ; and police officials' quotes contradict these facts. Except from this immediate follow-up on the next day, there is hardly any information about what happened with the squatters. Only De Waarheid and Het Parool follow for several weeks the fate of the Surinamese families and provide further background information about the earlier events and motivations of the occupations, which were not yet known to the public and the press on the day of the evictions. The other newspapers do not bother to pay attention to this new information. As soon as the central, violent news event is over, the backgrounds are no longer relevant. We have witnessed in the previous chapter that no newspaper analyzes the eviction of Huize Lydia in terms of police brutality against Black families, that is, as an instance of institutional racism.

The Squatter Press

Analysis of a squatter newspaper published somewhat later, as well as of reports made by law agencies that record instances of police violence, show many events that never reached the press. Despite the claims of nonviolence, it appeared that small squads of not and city police cornered single demonstrators and then assaulted them. The squatter paper revealed information about motivations, intentions, and actions of the squatters before, during, and alter the eviction of GW. It reported about the earlier housing conditions of the occupants of HL, including names and numbers of house owners earning more than 10,000 guilders a month from Surinamese families living in small, dirty, fire hazardous apartments. Neither these names, nor these numbers reach the national press.

CONCLUSIONS

The conclusions from our study of reporting squatters and demonstrators in the press are suggested by nearly each dimension of our analysis. In line with the general news value of negativity, the negative consequences of the events receive most attention in the press: Violence, riots, attacks on private and public property, and fighting are the main ingrediente of the press account of a largely peaceful eviction and demonstration. Yet, negativity, as such, is not the dominant criterion: Negative actions of the police, if known at all, are not dealt with, or mitigated and summarized in terms of tough actions. Only the negative actions of the social opponents are emphasized. On the other hand, the positive intentions of the authorities are focused upon selectively. This means that the news stories have a clear polarizing

effect and reconstructs the events as a drama with easily identifiable opponents.

Besides demonstrator and squatter violence, it is the spectacular and technological nature of the police action that receives primary attention: the use of cranes, an armored car, etc. Both appear to provide the raw materials for high visibility and, hence, for most photographs in the press.

Information about backgrounds, such as the housing conditions of the occupants, is minimal and not very prominent. Analysis of local meanings, style, and rhetoric further confirms the overall definitions of major topics, headlines, and leads. Emphasis is placed on violent conflict, and the two main actors, the squatters and the authorities, are further characterized in their respective roles of villains and the heroic protectors of law and order in the city. Information is based mostly on statements from the police or from city officials and never on statements or reports of the squatters and their supporting agencies. Generally, these various tendencies are more pronounced in the regional press. Regional papers sustain the widespread attitude outside the capital that Amsterdam is a dirty, violent, lawless, druginfested city, where youths can do what they want. Of the national newspapers, some are intentionally more neutral (like Trouw) in their reports, whereas others (notably Het Parool) give extensive coverage of further consequences and of both the opinions of the officials and of the squatters. Only one small newspaper, De Waarheid, generally reports in an antiauthoritarian style, representing the view of the squatters and generally f,,rminl about the background of the squatting and the eviction. Its counterideological voice however only serves some 30,000 readers of more than 4,000,000 newspaper-readers in the country. Generally, then, it may be concluded that the press coverage of an important social phenomenon like squatting focuses on isolated, negative, or violent incidents. Its portrayal of the events on October 8, 1981, further contributes to the rapidly changing attitudes toward squatting and seems to confirrn the consensus regarding social protest in Amsterdam. Unwittingly, but professionally and ideologically, journalists represent the views of the authorities, if only by their selective uses of sources and statements. Their lack of interest in the backgrounds of the events, especially those that could explain the squatting situation and the motivations of squatters, obscures these for the public at large. The focus on spectacular and dramatic events on a single day reduces a social problem to the level of an incident. The social issue of housing shortage is thus redefined as a social problem of violence emanating from juvenile squatters and demonstrators and thereby conceals a lasting and real underlying problem in Dutch society.

The predominately British literature we have referred to suggests that this role of the press, faced with similar issues and social groups, is not just a Dutch phenomenon. It is part of the very definition of domestic news in

many countries, and a consequence of the routines of newsmaking, that have such news as its product. In the previous chapters, we have seen, for instance, that rather similar processes are at work in the representation of ethnic minority groups, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The results of this chapter show that the sweeping generalization, formulated as a conclusion of much critical media research—that the dominant Western press reflects, sustains, and helps create the dominant ideology in society, predominantly that of the authorities—appears to have more than a kernel of truth.