Policy-makers, the Press and Politics: Reporting a Public Sector Document

Abstract

News media often have to present public policies, originally articulated in technical civil service documents, to the public, and to contextualise and comment on them. Such situations result in ‘chains’ of intertextual texts, where, for example, a news report is based on a policy document and an editorial then comments on and evaluates the content of the report. The transformations that take place as the chain progresses are evidence both of media practice and of the strategies by which a policy document may be positioned within a specific historical context. This article examines a case study in Zimbabwe immediately before the June 2000 Parliamentary elections, when a housing policy document was reported on in the governmentcontrolled media and then became the subject of a lengthy editorial.