Ideological underpinnings in party newspaper reports on doctors’ strike in Tanzania

This study makes use of news reports of the on-and-off strike by medical doctors from January to March 2012 in Tanzania to establish how journalists display their ideological viewpoints in the news reports. The reports are from two Swahili dailies namely Uhuru and Tanzania Daima. The findings show that Tanzania Daima makes use of lexical and grammatical constructions to describe the government negatively, and render a positive description for the striking doctors, activists and whoever happens to support the doctors. Supporters of the strike include officials from the opposition parties such as CHADEMA. Uhuru, on the other hand, renders a positive description of the government and officials from the ruling party “Chama Cha Mapinduzi” (CCM), presents negatively the doctors and those who support them. In the course of transforming texts to become news reports, both papers insert some expressions especially in headlines and subheadlines and transform sentences to favor the in-group and undermine the out-groups.