Principios de seguridad de la información

Content analysis of the published articles revealed recurring narrative motifs that the four newspapers drew on when recounting the arts story. Table 9 displays a selection of the coding results compiled from Section Two of the coding schedule. The table

and 2005. For instance, references to “donkey”71 _{and “cost” appeared in the coverage of} all four newspapers during both years, while other motifs, such as “et al.’s media shyness” or the name “Tweedie”, were present in some news organisations’ stories and not others. Because of the significantly higher number of stories produced by the Dominion Post, a proportional analysis, i.e., the percentage of stories in which motifs appear in relation to the total number of stories published, is presented in this analysis to indicate their prominence in each of the newspapers’ coverage.

Table 9: Comparison of recurring narrative motifs in news stories published 2004–2005

NZH Dom Post Press ODT

2004 2005 2004 2005 2004 2005 2004 2005 Donkey, portaloo 10 0 11 11 4 1 6 1 Cost, $500,000 3 3 7 15 5 3 5 1 et al.’s identity 5 3 7 16 8 3 0 1 et al.’s media shyness 2 3 5 10 4 4 0 0 Coddington 2 0 4 6 2 0 2 0 “Crap” 0 0 4 4 1 0 1 0 Taxpayer 0 0 3 11 0 1 0 0 CNZ 4 3 10 12 6 5 6 0 Tweedie reference 0 0 5 20 6 6 2 0 PM Helen Clark, MP Judith Tizard 1 0 2 13 3 0 1 0

Media coverage 4 2 3 8 neg 1 pos

2 2 0 0

An examination of the 2004 coverage indicates that the metropolitan newspapers employed mostly the same narrative motifs. The consistency in their initial naming of the case supports what Shoemaker and Reese (1996) identified as a routine intermedia reliance on other journalists, not only to generate ideas but also to confirm the news value of a story. According to Sabato (1991), “Pack journalism more than bias leads all

71

A lexicon of equivalent terms was identified for each of these motifs and was included as part of this

analysis; for instance, the “donkey, portaloo” motif also included related words such as “ass”, “dunny”, “bray”, etc.

media outlets to the same developing ‘good story’ and encourages them to adopt the same slant” (p. 91). Bourdieu (1998a, p. 23), also noting the similarity of “journalistic products”, attributed this uniformity to “circular circulation of information”, a logic of practice within the journalistic field related to competition between different news organisations and media that are under pressure to produce stories. Bourdieu (1998a) observed that “competition homogenizes when it occurs between journalists or newspapers subject to identical pressures and opinion polls” (p. 23).

Competitive pressure not only results in pack journalism, but it can also motivate a news organisation to distance itself from the herd. One way journalists detach

themselves from this interdependency is by critically examining and exposing those in the field that appear to be contravening accepted professional norms. This reflective engagement operates as a kind of “paradigm repair” by which journalists and their news organisation may maintain or even acquire symbolic capital while distancing themselves from other news organisations or reporters that may be perceived as

challenging journalistic norms and practices, especially that of objectivity (Haas, 2006).

This effort to create distance appears applicable in the case of the articles published by three of the metropolitan newspapers in 2004. As Table 9 shows, the media coverage became a significant part of the visual arts story. Comparison of the metropolitan newspapers reveals differences in their emphasis and treatment of the issue. For instance, each of the four NZ Herald articles, written by a range of different reporters (including the newspaper’s political reporter, arts editor and assistant editor),

commented on the Holmes broadcast and the host’s handling of the art story and treatment of Peter Biggs, the Chair of Creative New Zealand. The few Dominion Post articles published in 2004 also criticised the media’s reporting on et al. and the Biennale. Two of the three Dominion Post articles, one by the visual arts columnist Mark Amery and the other an op-ed contribution from Peter Biggs, alluded to the Holmes broadcast but also complained about the misinformation and “low level of public debate” (Amery, 2004) provided by the media. One article, written by the newspaper’s TV columnist, was devoted to a discussion of the Holmes and Frontseat broadcasts about et al., but primarily criticised them in regards to their value as television programmes rather than as arts journalism. The focus of most of the

newspapers’ media criticism was directed at the broadcasts that covered the arts story, suggesting that the rhetorical distance that is being created is between print and

television journalism.

In 2005, the issue of the media’s coverage of the event figured more prominently in the Dominion Post’s coverage than in that of any of the other metropolitan newspapers. An op-ed contribution from Peter Biggs celebrated the positive reviews the exhibition received from the international arts media, while another article contradicted this, claiming the exhibit had “barely registered overseas” (McLean, 2005d). Five other articles, published throughout June, focused on the artist collective’s resistance to giving interviews and journalists’ lack of access as a result. In other words, from the journalists’ standpoint, their failure to cover the event and the artists and their artwork satisfactorily was due to the artists themselves. The only reflexive assessment of the Dominion Post’s general editorial stance appeared in a visual arts column by Mark Amery in the Dominion Post. (Discourse analyses of the antagonistic relation of Amery’s visual arts columns and selected editorials will be discussed in Chapter 7). Comparison of the narrative motifs in Table 9 indicates the possibility of other distinctive editorial decisions pertaining to the newspapers’ treatment of the story. In fact, the data shows that in 2005, the appearance of many of these motifs decreased in the coverage by all the newspapers except the Dominion Post. For instance, an

examination of references to the “donkey in the dunny” indicates that these tapered off during 2005 in the articles published in most of the newspapers excluding the Dominion Post (for example, see row 1 in Table 9). The “donkey” motif was not used in any of the

New Zealand Herald’s four articles published in 2005 (all of which were positive), and it appeared in only one article in The Press and Otago Daily Times. However, the reference appeared in 11 articles (38%) in the Dominion Post in 2005. Due to the New Zealand Herald’s reduced coverage of the arts story in 2005, the proportion of its articles referring to the cost of the event, to the artists’ identity and media shyness is quite high; however, the four articles published that year were all coded positively, so these references functioned primarily as narrative description and contextualisation rather than a focus of criticism.

A sharp contrast to the pack journalism of 2004, the Dominion Post’s fixation on the visual arts story may have been motivated by several factors. First of all, the

newspaper’s different approach to the coverage may be interpreted as the news organisation’s demonstration of its professional independence, an effort to distinguish

itself by asserting its autonomy in relation to competing news organisations (McDevitt, 2003; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). Alternatively, the newspaper’s ongoing and

increased negative coverage may have been a strategic way of obtaining an interview with the elusive et al., by exerting pressure on CNZ and the members of the creative team. Landing an exclusive interview would have been a coup and the news

organisation may have been motivated by that possibility and by the readership interest along with the economic capital it could generate. (The interview as a key aspect of journalistic habitus and its economic and cultural capital will be discussed in Chapter 8.)

In general, the narrative elements can be grouped according to two broad categories: those that pertain to et al.’s public persona and those that have political implications. The first category is associated with the artists’ resistance to the normalized social expectations, such as their reluctance to participate in media interviews with the mainstream press and their ambiguous name and identity. From a journalistic

perspective, these characteristics are newsworthy because they can be associated with controversy, a news value that signals a potentially important issue (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996); in this instance, public figures that resist giving interviews appear suspicious and may be judged as concealing something.

Considerable variations occurred in the reporting of et al.’s media shyness and identity over both years. As Table 9 indicates, references to the artist collective’s media shyness or multiple personas hardly figured in the Otago Daily Times’s reporting but was more of an issue in the news stories of the other three newspapers. For instance, references to the artists’ media shyness appeared in well over half of the Press’s news items, in 35% of the articles in the Dominion Post and in over 26% of those in the New Zealand Herald. The issue of et al.’s name and identity generated even more news interest among these three papers; 78% of the Press’s articles, 53% of the Dominion Post’s and 42% in the New Zealand Herald referred to this idea.

Also, of the four newspapers, the “actual” name of the artist, “Merylyn Tweedie” appeared in more of the articles published in the Dominion Post (58%)and the Press (71%). The presence of the artists’ name suggests that these newspapers were more thorough and detailed in their reporting. Tweedie, though, was born, educated and known locally in Christchurch, and that local pride may have played some role in the Press’s reference to her identity. However, as Bourdieu (1991) has explained, naming –

in this case, the decision to identify a named individual – is “a symbolic act of

imposition, which has on its side all the strength of the collective, of the consensus, of common sense” (p. 239). It can be argued, then, that the naming of et al. was a form of symbolic violence by which the artists’ collective persona was demythologized and a key aspect of their artistic practice interrogated and undermined.

The influence of the political field on journalistic editorial practice is revealed in the way politically charged and politically sourced motifs were employed. In general, the evaluative term “crap” was accompanied by a reference to Deborah Coddington, who was the first to publicly apply the description to et al.’s art. The words “crap” and “Coddington” appeared in more of the Dominion Post’s narrative accounts of the visual art story than in those of the other three metropolitan papers. In fact, these narrative motifs did not appear at all in the 2005 coverage of the other newspapers. A similar pattern exists in the newspapers’ references to the Labour government’s key players in the story, Prime Minister Helen Clark and MP Judith Tizard. References to either or both political figures appeared in 35% of the Dominion Post’s stories and in very few of the other newspapers’ stories. Finally, the term “taxpayer” appeared in 32% of the Dominion Post’s stories but only once in the Press and in none of the stories produced by the Otago Daily Times or New Zealand Herald during 2005. This data shows that the Dominion Post’s use of political motifs distinguishes its account of the visual arts story from that of the other metropolitan newspapers.

The data suggests that the Dominion Post’s representation of the art story in its coverage emphasised a distinctly political angle. This conclusion also supports the point made earlier that the local political context in which this newspaper operated likely had a strong impact on its construction of the visual arts story and the expressed concern about an indulgent abuse of taxpayer funds. Furthermore, the ongoing reference to the “taxpayer” within the political focus of the narrative framework highlights the

newspaper’s effort to appeal to the mainstream populist sensibilities of readers. How these perspectives figure within the antagonistic dynamics of the journalistic and visual arts fields will be discussed in Chapter 7.

The next two sections of this chapter present content analyses of the texts published by the metropolitan newspapers during the sample period that are associated with the expression of opinions: editorials, columns, op-ed essays and letters to the editor. The

data presented here serves as a foundation for the in-depth discourse analyses in Chapters 7 and 8.