In this section of the study, I am interested in finding out the tendencies, if
any, with which each newspaper differentially covered the KANU government
and the Opposition. Coverage here simply means news reportage. I will make a comparison between the two newspapers to establish differences in their reportage. For each daily, and also between them, I will also make a temporal comparison between the period before and the period after the constitutional (political) change.
I will first look at a) all the news stories covering the democraiic-po/ftical change. For each newspaper, all the stories of a political nature concerned with the democratic change to multi-party politics will be included. These will be stories covering fndividuals or groups of people, andlor issues andlor events or happenings related to the political change. The findings here will be used to establish whether the political change had a significant impact on the volume of stories directly concerned with multi-party democracy. Because of the fundamental nature of the democratic-political change, it is assumed that the daily newspapers will give the process substantial publicity. However, because of the nature and extent of the KANU government's suppression of the press with regard to this issue, it is further hypothesised that it is only after the constitutional change that the performance of the dailies will change.
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From the above summations will be established b) what percentage of all stories about the democratic-political change focussed on the activities of a) the KANU government and b) of the Opposition. This is intended to establish what proportion of all the pertinent democratic-political change stories were primarily concerned with reporting about either KANU or the Opposition. This statistic will represent the extent of the publicity accorded by each daily to each of the contending political groups. I intend to compare between the two dailies to find out any possible party-favouritism or leanings for each newspaper. The above comparisons should help indicate whether any resultant party favouritism or its intensity was generated or influenced by the political change. In other words, by use of temporal comparison, I will establish whether the political change had any significant effect on the proportion of national news coverage accorded by each daily to each of the two political groups.
In the next step, I will then c) categorise the news stories according to the nature of the publicity, a) positive or b) negative, that they afford the KANU government, or the Opposition. For this purpose, all the news stories on the democratic-political change will be analysed so as identify those that have a publicity value for the two contending political groups. A decision will be made on whether the object of the news story (person(s), issue or event) is reported on in such a manner that the story "speaks· approvingly (positive publicity) or disapprovingly (negative publicity) of one of the political groups. This is meant to help infer the party sympathy, if any, generated by the news selection and processing values of the newspaper. Qualitative analytical tools will be employed in making these coding decisions (see 5.5 below). This statistic if important when one considers the fact that the two political groups each supported a different position with regard to the democratic change. A daily
newspape~s support for a political group may therefore be regarded as its support for that group's ideological position.
Lastly, d) I will consider a universe of party-political news only. For each daily newspaper, I will identify and sum up all those news stories that covered the activities of the two contending political groups, the KANU government and the Opposition. From these summations will be calculated the percentage frequencies of all those stories that:
1) reported on the Opposition criticising (or challenging) the perfonnance of the KANU government. This is meant to establish the effect of the political change on the incidence of party-political stories critical of the KANU government. This statistic will be taken as a measure of the extent to which the pertinent daily newspaper had or developed, with the change, a tendency to allow stories that helped build legitimacy for the Opposition thereby challenging the ideological position of the KANU government. Support for the Opposition at this stage in Kenya's political history will be regarded as a measure of support for a multi-party democratic dispensation.
2) reported on the KANU government defending itself against criticism from the Opposition. This is meant to establish whether the particular newspaper's overall party-political story content had a tendency to afford the KANU government the space within which to redress the negative image created by the Opposition's criticism. This may also be taken as a measure of the degree of support the newspaper had for the ruling party by helping to protect its legitimacy and public image. This statistic will also be taken as a measure of the daily's newspapers' support for the status quo.
A temporal consideration of the above results will highlight the role of the democratic-political change in the process. November and December 1991 will be collapsed to represent the period before the political change while January and February 1992 collapsed, will represent the period after the political change. The above process will then be repeated for these two
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periods to find out if the political change had any major effect on the press' coverage of the two political sides.
It is not expected to be easy to delineate all the categories listed above. For example, a long news item may end up covering both the opposition criticising KANU and KANU defending itself against the criticism. This type of problem will necessitate continual scrutiny of the news item over a number of times. In order to overcome the problem, I intend to begin by firstly determining the original object of the news item aside from the other information carried. I will do this by way of considering, following Tiffen (1989: 65), aspects of 'the inverted pyramid' style of presentation. This is in the belief that 'the main point of the story is encapsulated in a 'strong lead' implying, therefore, that 'a news story ... begins with a crisp statement of the most significant or newsworthy fact:
For the publicity and legitimacy categories of the individual news item, I will consider also, the ideological preferences in the headline, the lead and the subsequent sentences (see Dijk, 1991: 115; Gans, 1980: 5-7; 39-42). This will help in deciding which values were considered important by the newspaper;
whether it intended the publicity or legitimacy for KANU or for Opposition. In the end, where there is ambiguity, I will decide, by using the above guidelines, on which party or any other value dominates the news item.