'Watching the Watchdog' Malaysian Media Coverage of GE13 Final Individual Report: SINAR HARIAN 15/08/13 Dr Tessa J. Houghton School of Modern Language s and Cultures Director of the Centre for the Study of Communications and Culture University of Nottingham Malaysian Campus in collaboration with Comments and feedback welcomed at: [email protected]010 523 4575 or Masjaliza Hamzah Executive Officer Centre for Independent Journalism [email protected]03-4023-0772/4024-9840 The work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Table of ContentsExecutive Summary of Key Results for SINAR HARIAN..................................................................................... 3Section 1: Media Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions.......................................................................... 5
1.1 Volume of Coverage of Parties & Coalitions......................................................................................... 5Figure 1: Volume of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions.......................................................... 5Figure 2: Volume of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions: Government vs. Opposition vs.
Independent/Other........................................................................................................................................61.2 Tone of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions...............................................................................7Figure 3: Raw Tonal Coverage Volume of Political Parties & Coalitions............................................7Figure 4: Negative Political Party & Coalition Coverage ....................................................................8Figure 5: Positive Political Party & Coalition Coverage.........................................................................9Figure 6: Tone of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions: Government vs. Opposition vs.Independent/Other.....................................................................................................................................10
Section 2: Media Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures.......................................................................112.1 Volume of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures.......................................................................11
Figure 7: Volume of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures....................................................... 11Figure 8: Volume of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures: Government vs. Opposition vs.Independent/Other.....................................................................................................................................12
2.2 Volume of the Use of Politicians & Political Figures as Sources.......................................................13Figure 9: Volume of the Use of Politicians & Political Figures as Sources........................................13Figures 10: Volume of the Use of Politicians & Political Figures As Sources: Government vs.Opposition vs. Independent/Other..........................................................................................................14
2.3 Tone of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures............................................................................15Figure 11: Raw Tonal Coverage Volume of Politicians & Political Figures......................................15Figure 12: Negative Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures.......................................................16Figure 13: Positive Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures..........................................................17Figure 14: Tone of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures: Government vs. Opposition vs.Independent/Other.....................................................................................................................................18
2.4 Tone of the Use of Politicians & Political Figures As Sources: Attack Politics or Negative
Campaigning......................................................................................................................................................19Figure 15: Attack Politics: Which Politicians and Political Figures Employ 'Attack Politics' MostOften?............................................................................................................................................................ 19Figure 16: Attack Politics: Which Coalition Employs Attack Politics Most Often?..........................20
Section 3: Media Coverage of Issues.................................................................................................................213.1 Volume of Media Coverage of Policy Issues vs. Non-Policy Issues..................................................21
Figure 17: Coverage of Policy Issues vs. Non-Policy Issues.................................................................21Figure 18: Media Coverage of Policy Issues.........................................................................................22Figure 19: Media Coverage of Non-Policy Issues................................................................................23
Section 4: A Brief Methodology..........................................................................................................................24Section 5: Appendix 1 – Tables..........................................................................................................................25
Like all modern elections, it the Malaysian 13th General Election was fought primarily through themedia – the so-called 'watchdogs' of democracy.
But how effective were Malaysian media outlets at providing fair and objective informationabout national politics? How well did they inform Malaysian citizens about their political environment,and thus enable them to make informed decisions about who to vote for?
The Watching the Watchdog project monitored coverage from 28 media – newspapers, televisionnews broadcasts, online news sites as well as the national press agency, in four languages (English,Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, and Tamil); in Sabah and Sarawak as well as in Peninsular Malaysia,during the month spanning April 7th to May 7th 2013 (31 days in total). It is a collaboration betweenthe University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and the Centre for Independent Journalism.
The key results summarised below pertain to the individual publication addressed in this report.
Key Results
In scrutinising the GE13 coverage provided by Sinar Harian, we found the following trends:
(1) Coverage of Parties & Coalitions
• PR were given the most coverage or talked about most by a significant margin.
• PR were attacked and covered negatively more then BN, but received around the sameamount of positive coverage as BN.
• Of all the tonal categories used in the coverage of political parties and coalitions, the neutralcategory was used very much the most often (78%), followed by the negative category(11%) then the positive category (8%).
(2) Coverage of Politicians and Political Figures
Who is talked about the most? And how are they talked about?
• The volume of mention-level coverage given to politicians from both coalitions was skewed
towards PR (66%). Najib Razak was the most mentioned politician, followed by AnwarIbrahim.
• Of all the tonal categories used in the coverage of politicians and political figures, theneutral category was used very much the most often (89%), followed by the positivecategory then the negative category.
• However, of the non-neutral material, more positive and negative coverage was given to PR,while BN was attacked more often.
Who is used as a source the most? And who engages in attack politics the most?
• Najib Razak and Anwar Ibrahim were used as sources most often.
Figure 2: Volume of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions: Government vs.Opposition vs. Independent/Other
• Once parties/coalitions' coverage volumes are combined, the PR coalition received the mostmention-level coverage by a significant margin (57.06%), as opposed to BN (37.91%).
1.2 Tone of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions
Figure 3: Raw Tonal Coverage Volume of Political Parties & Coalitions
• Of all the tonal categories used in the coverage of political parties and coalitions, the neutralcategory was used very much the most often (78%), followed by the negative category(11%) then the positive category (8%).
Figure 5: Positive Political Party & Coalition Coverage
• BN receive the most positive (83.24%) and neutral (35.96%) coverage by a very significantmargin, with the opposition coalition/parties receiving very little positive coverage at all.
Figure 6: Tone of Coverage of Political Parties & Coalitions: Government vs.Opposition vs. Independent/Other
• When coalition and party coverage is combined into the two opposing coalitions, we see thatoverall, PR were attacked and covered negatively more then BN, but received around thesame amount of positive coverage as BN.
• It should, however, be remembered that the neutral tonal category is overwhelmingly thelargest category.
• Refer to Table 4 for figures and below for ratios.
Section 2: Media Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures
2.1 Volume of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures
Figure 7: Volume of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures
• Only the top 20 most mentioned politicians are shown on this graph.
• Out of these 20, Najib Razak received the most mentions by a significant proportion(19.62%), followed by Anwar Ibrahim, then Hadi Awang, Nurul Izzah and Khalid Ibrahim, inthat order.
Figure 8: Volume of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures: Government vs.Opposition vs. Independent/Other
• When the mentions of individual politicians and political figures are combined and mergedinto their respective coalitions, we can see that coverage of figures from both major coalitionsis skewed quite heavily towards PR (66%).
2.2 Volume of the Use of Politicians & Political Figures as Sources
Figure 9: Volume of the Use of Politicians & Political Figures as Sources
• Of the politicians and political figures tracked, Najib Razak and Anwar Ibrahim were used assources most often (21.31% and 14.48% respectively), followed by EC Spokespeople, HadiAwang, then Khalid Ibrahim.
2.3 Tone of Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures
Figure 11: Raw Tonal Coverage Volume of Politicians & Political Figures
•
Of all the tonal categories used in the coverage of politicians and political figures, theneutral category was used very much the most often (89%), followed by the positivecategory then the negative category.
Figure 12: Negative Coverage of Politicians & Political Figures
• In terms of the tone of mentions of politicians and political figures, Anwar Ibrahim, KhalidIbrahim and Nurul Izzah all received equally the most most negative coverage (19.05%),followed by Najib Razak and Lim Kit Siang.
•
Najib Razak was the most attacked (75%), followed by Anwar Ibrahim (25%).• Refer to Table 8 for full figures.
• Of all Non-Policy Issues covered, Democracy & Human Rights was given the most coverage,followed by Ethnicity, Gender, Socioeconomic Status, then Electioneering.
Number of data points/references identified and analysed: ndp = 8098
Number of articles identified and analysed: na = 366
Average number of articles/day: na/d = 11.8
Data Collection
The data was collected or 'coded' using sentence-level content analysis. A team of around 70'coders' from all over Malaysia, from both private and public universities, and from civil society,coded their assigned media on a daily basis.
Stories 'coded' were selected according to the following criteria:
• They were within the Malaysian news section/s of the newspapers including the front page, orwere the paper's editorial (if they run one).
• They were from pre-defined 'Malaysian News' areas of the news websites monitored, with'snapshots' taken at 8pm daily.
• They were from within the TV news broadcasts.
• They were more than 1/3 about the election, and were news stories as opposed to columns,opinions pieces, letters, etc (with the exception of the paper's own editorial, if present).
Within each story, category/operator references were identified and coded at the sentence level
(from period to period). The 21 categories identified and their sub-categories or 'operators' areoutlined in Appendix 2. These 21 categories form the 'unit of analysis' for this study.
Tone (positive, negative, neutral, attacking, or attacked) was determined based on matching eachreference to a media frame or frames, supportable via emotive/descriptive/subjectivelanguage/vocabulary utilised by the either the news personnel or the source beingquoted/paraphrased. As such, tone is not based upon coder opinion but on linguistic data. Coderswere instructed to 'code as neutral' whenever there was a lack of linguistic data to support apositive/negative/attacking/attacked frame, or whenever they were unsure/conflicted.
Data Analysis
The data was analysed using the open source software package GNU Octave (a multi-disciplinarymathematical data analysis programme capable of SPSS/NVIVO-level statistical analysis, as well asmuch higher-level mathematical analysis). Scripts were composed to count occurrences of key data-codes, as specified by the project's finite code-listing set (see Appendix 2), for every row of codeddata (i.e. every reference). Where appropriate, code-count occurrences have been normalised toprovide the percentage of these key-code occurrences.
2. Alfred Jabu3. Ambiga Sreenevasan4. Anwar Ibrahim5. Azmin Ali6. Baru Bian7. Bernard Dompok8. Chong Chieng Jen9. Chua Soi Lek10. Dzulkefly Ahmad11. Elizabeth Wong12. G. Palanivel13. Hadi Awang14. Hassan Ali15. Hishamuddin Hussein
16. James Masing17. Jeffrey Kitingan18. Karpal Singh19. Khalid Ibrahim20. Khalid Samad21. Lim Guan Eng22. Lim Kit Siang23. Liow Tiong Lai24. Mahathir Mohamad25. Maximus Ongkili26. Mohamad 'Mat' Sabu27. Muhyiddin Yassin28. Musa Aman
29. Najib Razak30. Ng Yen Yen31. Nik Aziz32. Nizar Jamaluddin33. Nurul Izzah34. Rafizi Ramli35. Rosmah Mansur36. Siti Mariah Mahmud37. Taib Mahmud38. Teresa Kok39. Tian Chua40. Tony Pua41. William Mawan42. Wong Ho Leng
43. Wong Soon Koh44. Yong Teck Lee
2. Politicians or Political Figure (Used as a Source)
1. Ambiga Sreenevasan (Bersih)2. Anwar Ibrahim (PKR)3. Baru Bian4. Chua Soi Lek5. Hadi Awang6. Hassan Ali7. Jeffrey Kitingan8. Khalid Ibrahim9. Lim Guan Eng
10. Lim Kit Siang11. Mahathir Mohamad
12. Muhyiddin Yassin13. Musa Aman14. Najib Razak
15. Nazri Aziz16. Nik Aziz17. Taib Mahmud18. Vox Pop Male19. Vox Pop Female20. Public Opinion/Vox Pop General21. Election Commission Spokesperson
3. Party or Coalition
1. BN (Barisan Nasional)2. DAP (Democratic Action Party)3. Gerakan (Malaysian People's Movement
Party)
4. MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association)5. MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress)6. PAS (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party)7. PBB (Parti Besaka Bumputera Bersatu)8. PBS (Parti Bersatu Sabah)9. PKR (People's Justice Party)10. PR (Pakatan Rakyat)11. PRS (Sarawak People's Party)12. PRM (Parti Rakyat Malaysia)13. PSM (Parti Sosialis Malaysia)14. SAPP (Sabah Progressive Party)15. SPDP (Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party)16. SUPP (Sarawak United People's Party)
17. UMNO (United Malays National Organisation)18. UPKO (United Pasokmomogun KadazandusunMurut Organisation)
4. Organisations
1. Bersih2. Community-based organisations.3. Democracy- or human rights-oriented
organisations (excluding Bersih)4. Environmentally-oriented organisations5. Ethnicity-oriented organisations6. JATI7. Perkasa8. Professionals organisations9. Religious organisations.10. Trade Unions11. Womens' rights or issues focused organisations.12. Youth or student focused organisations13. Election Commission
5. Policy Issues
1. Vision Policies or Programmes1. 1Malaysia2. GTP (Government Transformation
6. Religious Freedom (non-apostasy related)7. Interfaith Dialogue/Unity8. Interfaith Friction9. Other
3. Democracy & Human Rights1. General Corruption2. Electoral Corruption3. Media Freedom4. Electoral Reform5. Electoral Legislation6. 2-Party System7. Protest/Rallies8. Other
4. Socioeconomic Sectors1. Middle Class/Professionals2. Working Class3. Aristocracy/Monarchy4. Civil Service5. Military and Police6. FELDA7. Plantation/Estate Workers8. Chine New Villagers9. Senior Citizens/Retirees10. RELA/Wataniah11. Urban
