Abstrak
Media tendency in positioning Monica Lewinsky dealing with her sexual scandal narrated in www.nytimes.com and www.washingtonpost.com
Oleh :
Ika Nur Insani - C1306049 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa
Media is the most important medium to report information, especially in
reporting big issue such as sexual scandal which involves the former United States
President, Bill Clinton, with his aide, Monica Lewinsky. Theoretically, media will
pay attention and position man to be better than woman. The way media position
woman less than man is also influenced by the woman stereotype which says that
woman is voiceless and powerless in sexual matter. Then, this research’s aim was
to know the media tendency in positioning Monica Lewinsky dealing with her
sexual scandal with Bill Clinton narrated in www.nytimes.com and
www.washingtonpost.com in 1998.
This research was a kind of qualitative research in which it was focused on
the quality of the data from the sources of data which were taken from news
websites www.nytimes.com and www.washingtonpost.com on the length of time
from January 1998 until December 1999. Formerly, the data were collected by
browsing many kinds of articles from both the news websites, and then examined
it by using feminist approach, media approach, and semiotic approach. In this
analysis section, the data were classified into three periods and analyzed by using
relevant theories. Lastly, the analysis was done as detail as possible to answer the
problem statement.
The classification of the analysis into three periods such as pre-confession
period, confession period, and post-confession period of Lewinsky toward her
relationship with Clinton prove that there are two different tendencies of media in
positioning Lewinsky. Further, in the pre-confession of Lewinsky, media tend to
describe her differently; The New York Times (NY Times) positions her as a good
woman while The Washington Post (Washington Post) positions her as a bad
woman. But then this different tendencies both from NY Times and Washington
Post changes into positive in the confession period when she confessed the truth
of her scandal publicly. These positive tendencies of both media to Lewinsky also
occur in the post-confession period of Lewinsky. That is what has been called as
subjectivity and objectivity in media.