INTRODUCTION

The question how do events become news? is significant in understanding news

because it enables us to explore the mechanics of newsworthiness construction, pertinent to
the comprehension of news itself. However, in studying Malaysian news (within an EnglishLanguage thesis), another question should also be considered: Does the focus on Malaysian
newspapers (as a non-Western case study) enable us to claim that newsworthiness is a
culturally specific phenomenon?
This is because the question about news and newsworthiness in Malaysia has been
approached with a strong influence of the Western news studies tradition, and these studies
demonstrate their own weaknesses and contradictions. Among the main defects is the way the
Western scholars have asked these questions about news, which have been answered
differently both by academics and journalists - creating barriers between researchers and the
practitioners (Cole and Harcup 2010, Harrison 2006, Niblock 2007, Zelizer 2004, Zelizer
2005, Zelizer 2009). This phenomenon unfortunately has also spread to scholars in Malaysia,
furthering the rift in understanding news in non-English speaking countries.

Object-Driven New Values

The rift between journalism and academics has been furthered by the emergence of
news studies, which largely resolve the question of how events become news into two types
of answers. One of them can be called the object-driven news values, where academics tend
to suggest that the question of how events becomes news can be answered through studies
that focus on the nature of news events that link the answers to the concept of
newsworthiness criteria. The proponents argued that the value of news is derived from the
characteristics of the event. These characteristics are called newsworthiness criteria: what
makes an event newsworthy is the event itself. Thus, from this view, newsworthiness could
be explained from a list of newsworthiness criteria such as Frequency, Threshold,
Unambiguity and Reference to something negative (Galtung and Ruge 1965: 65-71) and
The power elite, Celebrity and Entertainment (Harcup and ONeil 2001: 278-279).

To some extent, the classic analogy of when a dog bites a man it is not news, but
when a man bites a dog it is news defines the way objectivists determine newsworthiness. In
this instance, the rarer the event, the greater its possibility of becoming news. Thus, news can
be predicated in terms of what makes news newsworthy depending on the rarity and unlikelyness of an event. From the criteria established, the event can be analysed as a set of
distinctive criteria which can be deployed not only to predict what become news, but also to
help journalists make more rational (objective) decisions. This objectivity is reinforced
where the proponents believe that it is the nature of event itself that determines
newsworthiness.
Subject-Driven News Values
The second way of answering the question relates to subject-driven news values that
observe news by focusing on the nature of the selection process. The arguments range from
the personal bias of the gatekeeper (Manning 1950/1997) to the social factors that
influence news making including political, organisational and cultural contexts that influence
newsworthiness. It is due to this view that object-driven news values have been neglected,
which is the context of news production. Every news organisation, for example, has its own
objectives that are distinctive to the nature of the event.
Subject-driven news values connect news processes with concepts such as ideology
(Gramsci 1971, Hall et al. 1978, Herman and Chomsky 1988) and corporate identity (Bantz
1985, Breed 1955, Cottle 1993, Cottle 2002, Fishman 1980, Manning 1950/1997, Molotch
and Lester 1974, Soloski 1989, Tuchman 1978). They argue that the value of news is derived
from its function within the news industry, including its political, economic and ideological
purposes. Thus, how events become news is determined based on the values of the news
derived from these contexts.
This view also insists that academic studies of news values inform decision making
as derived from other forces than the story itself. To strengthen these arguments, news values
are produced, it is asserted, by these diverse factors that can be independent from the event
covered by the journalists (although events can be staged and then objectivist
newsworthiness is actively produced).

Identity in Newsworthiness Construction

Often, these values are known as political identity, organisational identity, or cultural
identity, or interests related to power, commerce and belief. These values derived from
organisational, political and cultural contexts form the notion of identity that implies
sameness in news practice among journalists in a particular organisation or/and in a
particular political and cultural setting. This differentiates the views derived from objectdriven news values and subject-driven news values in understanding news because of
emphasis of the structural contexts that define how events become news.
Based on the subject-driven news values, identity is seen as a local articulation of
something bigger, more abstract and more complex. From this view, identity is a way of
explaining something based on the context, system or structure of the place it inhabits. I
refer to this way of talking about identity as extensive contextualisation, which has been
contradicted by Marilyn Strathern (2002) in Abstraction and Decontextualization: An
Anthropological Comment with intensive contextualisation. To Strathern, extensive
contextualisation happens when ethnographic findings are put into the larger social context
(such as culture) to understand the particular meaning of human actions. What is lacking
from this way of thinking is, it that it is unable to examine complex data and determine social
actions based on merely the inherent external contexts.
Secondly, identity is seen as an effect of differentiation as a process of collecting or
gathering (Tarde 1962, 2000) that echoes Stratherns intensive contextualisation. Strathern
added that ethnographic data are useful only when they are approached as such, where the
data are not forced to belong to any larger structural contexts, but rather decontextualised,
while at the same time having self-description features, as if having a life of its own. This
means, data should not be forced to be belong to certain contexts, but when they are able to
self-describe themselves, they actually enrol various social mechanisms that confirm its
internal efficacy; thus it can evaluate the results of social processes without having to deal
with the processes themselves such as the activity of audit (Strathern 2002: 306).
Audit is an example of activity where the interests of the auditor are not limited to the
issue of measurement to improvise a system, but also to achieve the level the auditor aims
for. It is here that Strathern sees that decontextualisation leads the audit indicators to have a
life of their own. It is only when the data are decontextualised, that it enables the next
approach to be taken: tracking connections of heterogeneous acts between people and the
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narratives, rather than comparing different contexts that simplify ethnographic data. Thus,
the data are approached in an open-ended way, avoiding the tendency to jump to the
conclusion (or reductionism) based on the context being pre-determined.
Here, the displacement of contexts becomes an important feature, that further suggests
abstractness is a crucial notion because (a) when contexts are decontextualised, the notion
of virtual becomes important because virtuality starts by referring to physical qualities of a
thing and (2) the effects of the qualities such as the virtual heat of sunshine. This suggests
virtual identity comes from internal rather than external efficacy (Strathern 2002).
In news studies, the allocation of news values itself can be considered as a process of
collection derived from internal efficacy rather than external effects of various contexts
assumed as influencing news production. In this instance, identification is then a form of
abstraction and constructs intensive contextualisation. In contrast to extensive
contextualisation, this abstraction is a form of sense making, of creating discourse, and of
enabling imitation by the journalists within the news organisations to perform certain patterns
in news making. These include similar patterns of actions and automatism in deciding on
news.
From these distinct ways of identifying, distinct perspectives of ideology emerge. In
the first instance of identification, or where identity is argued to be able to explain the local
through the external context, ideology is derived from existing meaning systems. These
include systems or contexts which are assumed to already exist in reality, and that define a
local ideology. This is when political, economic and cultural contexts that are assumed to
exist already out there are argued to determine what becomes news. From this view,
ideology is very much driven by an extensive and inherent meaning system.
On the other hand, when identity is a process of collecting or gathering (also
described as grouping (Latour 2005), the formation of ideology is much more local, when
even actions to allocate news values in news selection are accounted as meaningful
associations, and also taken into account in understanding ideology. Thus, ideology from this
view is not something out there or already existing and external to individual actions, but
rather internal, local and a continuous process that gains its meaning from the performance of
meaningful associations. Here, in contrast to the previous view, ideology is drawn from
intensive associations.

It is when identity and ideology are both scrutinised from the second (intensive)
perspective, the second question raised in the introduction becomes at stake. If news is not
limitedly viewed as influenced by the context or system where news organisations operate,
how do we understand if news is produced differently (or not) in Malaysia? This is where the
third position of studying news values in Malaysia becomes crucial.
Newsworthiness Construction in Malaysia
As stated earlier, the first position advocated by objectivists in understanding news is
derived from academic studies of newsworthiness criteria that argue that newsworthiness is
derived from the nature of events. This position has influenced studies of newsworthiness
construction in Malaysia, where scholars argue that there are distinct newsworthiness criteria
that determine the First World and the Third World. Jack Lule (1987) said that the First
World news can be explained by criteria such as timeliness, proximity, personality,
unusual events, human interest, conflict, ideological significance, party concerns,
social responsibility and education, whereas development, social responsibility,
education and national integration are commonly pertaining to the Third World
newsworthiness criteria. Particularly in Malaysia, newsworthiness has also been explained
from these criteria, for example as described by Masterton (2005) and Ramanathan (1995).
Murray Masterton (2005) found that newsworthiness criteria in Asian countries can
be divided into Oriental, South Asian, Middle Eastern and Pacific criteria. Diversity in Asia
itself suggests that even within Asian countries, there are distinct criteria that make news.
Malaysia is included in the Pacific region, together with Australia, Brunei, Fiji, Indonesia,
New Zealand, Philippines and Singapore. General newsworthiness criteria for these countries
include Consequence, Human Interest, Proximity, Novelty, Prominence and
Conflict (Masterton 2005: 43).
Furthermore, based on content analysis of eight Malaysian newspapers and
interviews with 91 gatekeepers from the NST, The Star, Utusan Malaysia (UM), Berita
Harian (BH), Nanyang Siang Pau, Sin Chew Jit Poh, Tamil Osai and Tamil Nesan, Sankaran
Ramanathan (1995) found that news in these newspapers highlights the least about conflicts,
violence and rebellion in both domestic and foreign news. From here, Ramanathan suggests
that this implies a more responsible way of reporting news practised by journalists in the East
compared to their Western counterparts because of the tendency to publish development news
rather than sensationalising bizarre events. Other newsworthiness criteria identified in
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Malaysian newspapers in this study are what sells the newspaper, religious importance,
cultural significance, social importance and needs of the nation (Ramanathan 1995: 20).
As the object-driven news values are considered rigid among the proponents of
subject-driven news values, newsworthiness in Malaysia can be seen as very much influenced
by the larger contexts (or identities) of where news is being produced. The proponents of the
subjectivist perspective on identity argue that by studying the larger socio-political and
cultural context of a particular country, one would be able to understand how certain events
become news. This has been among the most dominant view in studying news in Malaysia,
which is policy-oriented in nature (Zaharom 2000). They generally argue that political
context including the concentration of ownership in newspaper publishing (Kenyon and
Marjoribanks 2007, Wang 1998, Zaharom 2004) and controls from the state (Crouch 1996,
Herbert 2001, Hilley 2001, Lent 1975, Means 1996, Mohd Azizuddin 2009, Shome 2002,
Wang 1998, Zaharom 2002a) has shaped the way news is determined and examined in
Malaysia.
Again, albeit their distinct contribution in understanding news in Malaysia, these
studies also indirectly suggest that investigation is based on the subject-driven news values
approach. Here, the political context of the country is seen as the dominant factor that
determines newsworthiness in the country. This further suggests that, studying news in the
context of Malaysia has also been influenced by the assumption that the external context
determines what becomes news. This is one of the factors that continue to create the gap
between journalism and academia because the data do not emerge from the practice of the
actors involved in the exact process (Hemmingway 2007).
It is when news in Malaysia is studied through extrinsic contexts that it is insufficient
to really understand what makes news in Malaysia. In fact, such a view is criticised as being
Western-oriented and the findings are too influenced by the Western political, economic and
cultural values (McQuail 2000). Also, journalism syllabuses taught in Malaysian universities
are very Western oriented (Mohd Dhari 1995).
The Western dominance in studying newsworthiness construction shapes news studies
in other parts of the world too, with many countries dominated by the universal western
news values that Kalinga Seneviratne, an Eastern journalism scholar termed as one size fits
all (Seneviratne 2008a: 238). The problem is not only when the (general) notion of identity

has been scrutinised from the extensive contextualisation (for example the political context of
Malaysia defines newsworthiness and news practice in the country), but also when
knowledge from the West has been treated as the universal measurement of the
heterogeneity of news, such as in Malaysia. This then becomes the identity of news studies
around the world, based on the extensive inherent meaning systems (of the West) that
hamper the understanding of the actual complexity of newsworthiness in a particular country.
Therefore, there have been attempts to localise approaches to studying supposedly
non-Western developing countries, including the study of Asian media systems, which is
known as development journalism that is usually treated as the framework to understand the
general context of news production in developing nations (Daoreung 2008, Massey and
Chang 2002, Masterton 1995, Mohd Safar 2005, Mustafa 2005, Petersen 1992, Wong 2004).
This concept was created by a group of economists in the Philippines during a workshop held
in the late 1960s (Xu 2009), and has been a popular way of explaining news values in Asian
countries including Malaysia.
The normative paradigm such as development of journalism philosophy, proposes the
ideal features of developmental philosophy, highlighting the fact that we are dealing with a
normative paradigm, to include the following:
(1) That the role of the media should support the development in the developing
countries.
(2) That the Government should support the role of media as a stimulant for social
change.
(3) That the Government provides the funding for the media to operate, and actively
engage in social problems, for example, through education.
(4) That media freedom should be upheld, where media are supposedly independent
from Government control.
(5) As an exchange for the funding provided by the Government, the media should
become the watchdog of the Government, promoting the countrys culture to other
countries and exporting media content that can simultaneously reinforce the
sovereignty of the nation in the eyes of the international community (McKenzie
2006).
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In addition to this, particularly in producing development news suitable for

publications in a country like Malaysia, Masterton (1995: 1-2) summarises the principles of
development journalism into three major ways of reporting:
(1) The story must stress the positive, not the negative.
(2) The story must encourage development, not discourage it.
(3) The story must be in the national interest or the peoples interests.
Based on the ideal criteria of development journalism, it is quite clear that the label
development journalism acts as a grander context used to explain newsworthiness in
Malaysia, thus the identity of what makes news in the country. Furthermore, the separation
made between development journalism and non-development journalism is also based on
the extensive contextualisation point of view when news making in the East and the West is
distinguished based on this.
This brings us back to the difficulty of answering the question Does the focus on
Malaysian newspapers (as a non-Western case study) enable us to claim that newsworthiness
is a culturally specific phenomenon? When contexts are not treated as the framework to
inform the meanings of human actions, local action of a journalist becomes important. It is
the associations among these actions that give meanings to a particular action that determine
newsworthiness, taken from the voice of the journalists themselves, rather than based on the
given context. The advantage of examining news as such is that researchers are able to study
news based on the practices of journalists and thus understand journalists very own
ideologies. From this vantage point, apparently researchers appreciate heterogeneity in
understanding the complex process of news making, simultaneously avoiding the reductive
approach of simplifying complex processes into generalised findings. This view could serve
as the supplement of weaknesses of the aforementioned extensive contextualisation approach.
Taking up this approach, this also implies (to researchers) that although a journalist is
writing for a newspaper published by the State, it does not mean that his or her news practice
can be generalised as supporting the States policies without questioning. This is one early
step to bridge the gap between news studies from the view of the academics and journalists,
because the researcher is now examining news closer to reality, that researchers realise the
heterogeneity of practices carried out by each journalist every day that define the
newsworthiness of every single piece of news.

Moreover, it is crucial not to assume the reality of Malaysian journalists practices as

being out there, as this is a sweeping hypothesis, necessitating an empirical study on how
exactly newsworthiness construction in Malaysian newspapers can be investigated without
falling into the first way of talking about identity. Thus, this study poses the general research
question as the central question of the discussion: How is newsworthiness construction being
achieved in Malaysian newspapers?
Methodology
To study newsworthiness construction in Malaysia, I have first written application
letters to eight Malaysian newspapers ranging from mainstream newspapers to tabloids and
party newspapers. However, only six newspapers have granted me the permission to enter
their newsrooms to interview the journalists and to observe the process of newsworthiness
construction. These newspapers are of various political inclinations, some are partisan to the
State, and others are non-partisan and partisan to the opposition party. The newspapers
studied in this study are the NST, BH, TS, SH, Hh and XX. The profiles of these newspapers
are attached in the Appendix.
The specific methods chosen for this study are interview and observation. These
methods are to be explained in greater detail in Chapter 3. However, due to limitations of
access to conduct in-situ observation, this study adopts ethnographic interview as its main
method to provide in-situ data about processes involved in newsworthiness construction in
the newspapers. Data collection was conducted over the duration of three months in these six
newsrooms, commencing from February 2009 until the end of April 2009. Research
participants consisted of 29 journalists ranging from group editor, editors, sub-editor and
reporters. They are involved in the ethnographic interviews and observations of this thesis.
This study is influenced by Actor Network Theory (ANT) (Callon 1986, Latour 1987,
Latour 1988, Latour 1993, Latour 2005, Latour and Woolgar 1979, Law 2004, Law and
Hassard 1999), which informs both the methodological and analytical tools of the research. In
this study, ANT concepts are deployed to analyse qualitative data generated, to produce
intrinsic contextualisation type of knowledge, and serve as the supplement of previous
knowledge generated extrinsically. By investigating the data based on the concepts of ANT, I
pose the four research questions that this study seeks to answer.

Research Questions
This study asks four research questions pertaining to newsworthiness construction in
Malaysian newspapers. The first research questions asked in this study is: What is
newsworthiness and how is news value established? In Chapter 5, I will demonstrate that
newsworthiness is not autonomous, it is the result of the accreditation of various interests in
specific cycles of credit in each of the processes of newsworthiness construction in each of
the newspapers. The question asked is: What is newsworthiness and how is news value
established? It is by learning various parts of the cycles of credit in each of the newspapers
that enables one to understand that the collective identity of the newspaper is the result of
gatherings/collection of the process of what makes news, rather than the identity of the
newspaper that determine news values. Collective identity of the newspaper is the result of
reification of practice of the journalists. Here, when news values are established from the
various accreditation processes, the news values are not merely based on either object-driven
new values to explain newsworthiness that ignores contexts of news production, or subjectdriven news values that highlight contexts as external forces that makes news. It is in this
chapter that it is necessary to supplement these views with a more intrinsic way of
understanding the process of news values establishment, which is when news values are
generated as matters of concern by the journalists. The degree of matters of concern is
evaluated by the hybridity of news values established.
Based on the newspaper with the most hybrid news values, the next chapter (Chapter
6) discusses a distinctive way of performing identity, which is how news angle at Sinar
Harian (SH) is stabilised. This is a discussion that highlights the identity of SH as a virtual
object (Law 1996, Mol 1998), which means that identity changes in every specific
(discursive) practice. Here, the enrolment of non-human actors are important in stabilising the
news angle at SH, while the interplay between human and non-human actors remains
pertinent in the process of constructing news angle. Thus, this chapter seeks to ask: How are
news angles deployed as a means to trace identity?
Furthermore, the specific concept of virtual object also enables us to further
understand more complex associations of virtual objects. Readership for instance, is the
most popular concept stated by the journalists during the interviews in explaining
newsworthiness construction. However, it remains a slippery topic for analysis because it
remains to be studied in abstraction, in the sense that readership is usually examined in its
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generic form. How links between readership in the newsroom and readership at home is
connected remains ambiguous - whether there is an immediate or distanced objectification.
Thus, still to be known exactly is How are readers taken into account in newsworthiness
construction?, the third question asked in this study and will be explored in greater detail in
Chapter 7.
If the three questions deal with news value as hybrid object in each of the newspapers
in this study, then further examination of the identity formation at SH, followed by the
examination of readership as a virtual object and its objectification, all have implicitly
demonstrated the centrality of associations in achieving intrinsic contextualisation, rather
than merely depending on external contexts that make news. Thus, the last question posed in
this study exclusively demonstrates how associations are made in one particular opposition
newspaper in Malaysia by asking the question: How are associations between an opposition
newspaper and the state made, and to what extent do these interrelate with newsworthiness
construction? The analysis of the sub-question itself will take place in Chapter 8.
Thesis Outline
This study comprises nine chapters including the Introduction. Chapter 1 provides a
general overview of the political, economic and social context of Malaysia, including its
media system and general journalistic practices. Chapter 2 reviews previous literature on
what I like to refer to as object-driven news values; followed by Chapter 3 with subjectdriven news values. Both of these chapters provide the background of previous studies
including their distinct contributions to understanding news.
Chapter 4 discusses ANT as a supplementary of the previously discussed paradigms.
In this study, ANT concepts are deployed to analyse qualitative data in order to generate an
intensive contextualisation form of knowledge that the previous paradigms have mainly
neglected. The different ANT concepts used are further explored in the subsequent chapters.
Chapter 5 discusses the accreditation process as a way of understanding the
establishment of news values, arguing that newsworthiness criteria insufficiently explain the
complexity of newsworthiness construction. Various interests are accredited to form the
hybrid form of news value in each of the newspapers, and they can be examined in parts of
the specific cycles of credit that the news construction is involved in. The news values
become the collective identity of the newspaper.
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Chapter 6 extends the notion of identity as a virtual object. Here, identity of the most
hybrid new value newspaper, SH, is further examined to learn how the stabilisation of SH
identity occurs. The enrolment of non-human actors and the interplay between human and
non-human actors are important processes involved in the construction of the specific news
angle at SH, that enable the production of more distinctive news at SH than other newspapers
in this study, thus its unique selling point.
Chapter 7 examines the different degrees of the objectification of a virtual object,
where, in this chapter, the concept of readership is extended into a virtual object. It examines
the actualisation and subjectification of virtual readership (readership in the newsroom) and
actual readership (readership at home) in order to get the sense of immediacy/distance among
them.
Chapter 8 provides a case study of Hh by highlighting the central tenet in ANT, which
is associations, by examining the relationship between Hh and the State, and how a small
news organisation has triggered such a threat to the State.
As a whole, this thesis demonstrates complexity in newsworthiness construction
through heterogeneous news making practice among journalists in Malaysian newspapers.
Analysis and arguments in the empirical chapters suggest that it is inaccurate to generalise a
particular pattern of news practice in Malaysia by assuming that it is merely influenced by
the grander context of news production such as political, cultural and/or organisational
identities. There might be a so-called pattern in newsworthiness construction in Malaysia, but
it cannot be reduced to being caused by these contexts alone. Thus, to understand the
complex process of distinct newsworthiness construction in Malaysian newspapers, it is
useful to provide a supplementary view to understand various (individual) acts involved in
news making in Malaysia.

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