Dominant Discourse on News-making Decisions on Terrorism: the Case of Indonesian Newspapers

This book is to evaluate the influence of dominant discourse on news-making decisions affecting the coverage of the Bali Bombing 2002 by the Indonesian newspapers KOMPAS, Republika, and Bali Post. Norman Fairclough?s Critical Discourse Analysis method has been chosen for this study, since it provides two levels of analysis, textual level and discursive level. In the case of the textual level analysis, the texts of the news stories from the three newspapers were analysed and at the discursive level of analysis, results from observations of newsroom procedure and interviews with journalists were analysed. The discourses revealed were examined to ascertain which discourses were dominant at what time and in which news organisation in order to uncover the reason for the influence and the dominance. In most cases, the dominant discourses reflected in the stories of each news organisations coincided with the opinions of the majority of the staff and owners of that news organisations.