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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Lehendakari without the approval of Parliament, where at the time PP had an absolute
majority.
The plan is argued to be a direct consequence of a number of badly resolved or
unresolved disputes 81 such as the structure of the State, the definition of the Basque
collective identity– which includes different identities resulting from various degrees of
euskaldunization –, and an antagonistic model of left and right ideologies (Zallo, 1997:
110-115). The Basque proposal is a legal and political project which is presented as
overcoming the problems of an obsolete statute and which, according to nationalist
forces and some abertzale 82 groups does not correspond to the political aspirations of
most of Basque people.
Method
This study is based on the analysis of news stories published in six mainstream
European newspapers - El País, El Mundo, Le Monde, Libération, The Guardian and
The Irish Times – between December 31, 2004 –when Ibarretxe plan was approved by
the Basque parliament –, and February 6, 2005 – date of rejection by the Spanish one.
Even if these newspapers do not represent the view of all the national media in Spain,
France, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, they are considered a reference whose
influence is exercised not only over the general public (including mainly national and
international intellectual, political and economical elites) but also over other furtherreaching
media such as television, radio or the Internet. This stresses their importance
in spreading beliefs.
The corpus includes 79 news stories: 34 found in El País, 33 in El Mundo, 3 in
Libération, 3 in Le Monde, 2 in The Guardian, and 4 in The Irish Times which are
analysed following the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach, combined with
some theoretical postulates based on the sociology of conflict. The research departs
from the interest on the politically-active role of the mass media – particularly the
written press – in the social representation of conflict, whose nature can be stressed or
downplayed by the discursive representation of the communicative events which are
being reported (Borrat, 1989). A CDA-based analysis of newspaper discourse and its
stemming ideology aims therefore at understanding how and whether these texts
legitimise, reproduce, or oppose any domination or exclusion social relationship.
By analysing linguistic and discourse strategies which epitomise the beliefs of the
sender, this research studies newspaper discourse about the Ibarretxe plan understood
as a proposal aimed at solving the Basque conflict. Two elements have been identified:
81 Dispute is understood as any conflict or lawsuit which has been put before court (Zallo 1997).
82 This plan was approved by the Basque Parliament on December 2004. There were 39 favourable votes, one more
than the required minimum. The votes came from the tripartite government formed by the Nationalist Basque Party
(PNV), Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) and Ezker Batua- Joined Left (EB-IU). It was also supported by three of the six
representatives of Socialista Abertzaleak (SA).
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