A Content Analysis of Opinion Columns on the Government’s “War on Drugs” Published in Three Broadsheets

Abstract

This study is a content analysis of opinion articles which were published about the government’s anti-drug campaign by the Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Philippine Star during the period July 2016 to July 2017. Working on the theoretical framework that media uses framing to organize and categorize the ideas it wants to relay to the audience, the study compared the manner by which the three newspapers presented the anti-drug issue in terms of treatment, tone, and framing. The study included an analysis of 378 opinion articles taken from the websites of the three broadsheets. The results showed that the three broadsheets treated most of their opinion articles on the “war on drugs” issue in a critical/evaluative manner. Most of the Philippine Daily Inquirer articles were negative in slant, garnering 72.90%, while the Manila Bulletin articles were neutral with 44.90%, and the Philippine Star had more articles with positive tone (21.96%). The result could be attributed to the newspaper’s tradition and categorization as conservative, adversarial, centralized or decentralized in decision making. Based on framing typologies used in previous studies, the study categorized all opinion articles into one of five frames. Accordingly, the frames used by the columnists on the “war on drugs” in terms of rank were: attribution of responsibility, conflict, articulation of solution, morality, and human interest, respectively. Future researchers are encouraged to pursue more exploratory research on local punditry encompassing the different media platforms and to consider the political economy of the media outlets.