The CONSUMER, The PRODUCER and the STATE: ANALYSIS of a TELEVISION NEWS ITEM

Abstract

This paper takes a detailed look at one news item, broadcast in March, 1981, by Channel 10 in Sydney. The item was part of the Actionline segment of Channel 10's Eyewitness News, a segment dealing with consumer affairs. It discussed a mail order company which, according to the then Minister of Consumer Affairs of New South Wales, Sid Einfeld, sold fake diamond earrings for a price far above their real value. The first part of the paper discusses the unedited text of the three interviews that formed part of the item. The text was transcribed from a cassette copy of the original soundtrack. In the transcription which follows below, the sections retained in the final edited version of the news item are in italics. Where a 'reverse angle question' (recorded after completion of the interview itself) was used, it has been added to the transcription in italics within brackets. The analysis of the unedited interviews focusses on three aspects: the types of process used to encode the reported events (d. Halliday, 1976); the kinds of question asked by the interviewer; and the construction of each of the interviews as independent texts, with emphasis on lexical and conjunctive cohesion (d. Halliday and Hasan, 1976).