Content Analysis of the Front Pages of Philippine Newspapers Published Before and During Martial Law

Rolade C. Brizuela and Gloria T. Sadsad

ABSTRACT

The front pages of 72 issues of Bulletin Today. The Reporter and Morning Times. representing the national, regional and local newspapers published in the Philippines, respectively, were content analyzed to determine the variations in prominence given to development and non-development news and photographs before and during martial law. The newspapers were chosen through random sampling. Results showed that newspapers published during martial law allocated more space to textual matters and contained more development news, but had lesser space for photographs than those published before martial law. There were 61 development news and 272 non-development news stories published in the pre-martial law issues of sample newspapers, while those published during martial law carried a total of 160 development and 271 non-development news. Business and economics news ranked first among the commonly published development news. News on elections and politics predominated among the non-development news. There was a highly significant difference in the number of development news stories published in the different newspaper categories before and during martial law.


Annals of Tropical Research 2 (4):(1980)
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