A Content and Reception Analysis of the Batangas' 50-year-old community newspaper "Sun Star People's Courier"

Title: A Content and Reception Analysis of Batangas' 50-year-old community newspaper "Sun Star People's Courier"

Citation: Blanco, Sunshine G. (2014). The key to survival: A content and reception analysis of Batangas’ 50-year-old community newspaper “Sun Star People’s Courier,” Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

ABSTRACT: This research probed how bias for the local government was instrumental to the survival of the 50-year-old Sun Star People’s Courier, Batangas’ leading and oldest community newspaper. Through cluster sampling of news articles it published from 2000-2013, in-depth interviews with the executive editor/assistant publisher, a reporter for the paper, and the former editor-in-chief of Sun.Star Daily Cebu, and a reception analysis among adult residents of Batangas City, this research provides a comprehensive account of how the Sun Star People’s Courier has failed in providing diverse viewpoints and in including people’s voice in its coverage. More important, it shows how the paper consciously published stories that were positively slanted to Batangas local government. As the reception analysis showed, this bias did not go unnoticed by the public. Although Batangas City adults believe that the Sun Star People’s Courier is an instrument of the people, they were generally dissatisfied with its performance as a medium of information dissemination.

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