International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55

Needle and syringe programmes in the local media: “needle anger”

versus “effective education in the community”
Henrike Körner∗ , Carla Treloar
National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia

Received 24 February 2003; received in revised form 6 June 2003; accepted 20 June 2003

Abstract

The Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD) recently recommended that media organisations commit to balanced and accurate
reporting about the costs and benefits of needle and syringe programmes (NSPs), and recognise the harm of sensationalist reporting. This
paper is concerned with the newspaper reporting of syringes found in or near a Sydney primary school, which resulted in the closure of the
nearby NSP. Four news reports, one editorial and two letters to the editor in three regional papers dealt with this issue. We examined the
intertextual links between and within texts: which speaking subjects are included, whose messages are foregrounded or backgrounded, how
are these messages represented by the reporters, and how are alternative positions negotiated. Our analysis shows that in spite of an absence
of overt judgements and sensationalism by the reporters, representations are not value free. Choices made by the writers of news reports show
alignment with various convergent and divergent positions relating to NSPs in general and the closure of this needle exchange in particular.
© 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: NSP; Local news media; Critical Discourse Analysis; Australia

Introduction dia have had considerable influence on AIDS-related knowl-

Needle and syringe programmes (NSPs) were a major
element of the Australian government’s response in the
mid-1980s to the threat of the HIV epidemic spreading
from injecting drug users to the wider population. Unlike
in the US, where there has been strong resistance to nee-
dle exchange programmes at federal, state and local levels
(Broadhead, 1999), NSPs in Australia have been a public
health success (Orr & Leeder, 1997). In addition to clean
injecting equipment, they provide a range of information
and services relating to drugs, treatment, education, and
health generally, and have been described as an effective
harm minimisation strategy (Wodak, 1997). However, a
significant section of the Australian population objects to
either NSPs in general, or in their local area.
News media are sensitive indicators of social processes
and change (Fairclough, 1992a). The representation of AIDS
in the media in the 1980s has played an important part in
creating cultural meanings, and in western countries, the me-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +612-9385-6412/6959;
fax: +612-9385-6455.
E-mail addresses: h.korner@unsw.edu.au (H. Körner),
c.treloar@unsw.edu.au (C. Treloar).
edge, attitudes and beliefs (Lupton, 1994; Treichler, 1988).
With respect to hepatitis C, there has been evidence in
Australia that the media have contributed to providing inac-
curate information and to promoting stereotypes that cause
discrimination against people with hepatitis C. There has
also been evidence that media, especially regional print me-
dia, have contributed to undermining community support for
NSPs, and, on occasion, have created and reinforced commu-
nity fears about NSPs due to inappropriate syringe disposal
(Anti-Discrimination Board, 2001). To counter these prac-
tices, the Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD),
in a recent discussion paper, has made a number of recom-
mendations to improve relations between NSPs and local
communities. Acknowledging the importance of local me-
dia, the paper recommends: “That media organisations com-
mit to providing balanced and accurate reporting of drug use
issues, specifically in relation to costs and benefits of NSPs,
and recognise the harm of unduly sensationalising the topic”
(Australian National Council on Drugs, 2002, p. 5).
This case study follows the reporting in the local news
print media of syringes found in or near the grounds of a
primary school in north-western Sydney. The aim of the
study is to examine the reporting of this incident in relation
to the ANCD recommendations of “balance and accuracy”.

0955-3959/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0955-3959(03)00089-6
 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
To do this, we examined the intertextual links between
and within news reports to question: which speaking sub-
jects are included in the news reports, whose messages are
foregrounded and backgrounded, how are these messages
represented and integrated into news reports, and how are
alternative positions negotiated? We argue that in spite of
a lack of overt judgements and misrepresentation by re-
porters, representations in local news media are not value
free. Rather, the choices made by the writers of the news re-
ports show alignment with various convergent and divergent
positions.
Method
Data collection
The closure of an NSP in north-western Sydney in March
2002 following local media attention provided a case study
for investigation. The sample is a critical case sample, that
is, a case which is “particularly important in the scheme of
things” (Patton, 1990, p. 174).
Two weekly newspapers service the local area—the
Northern District Times (NDT) and The Weekly Times
(TWT). The February and March 2002 editions of these
papers were searched manually for news reports, editori-
als and letters to the editor about this specific incident or
about NSPs and injecting drug use generally. In addition,
we searched the metropolitan broadsheet the Sydney Morn-
ing Herald (SMH) and the tabloid the Daily Telegraph for
articles about this incident and related issues.
Theoretical foundations
The theoretical foundations for our analysis are Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999;
Fairclough, 1989, 1992a, 1992b, 1995b; Gee, 1996; Lemke,
1995) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL; Halliday,
1978, 1994; Martin, 1992, 2000).
CDA brings together ideas from linguistics about dis-
course as social interaction and understandings of discourse
as the social construction of reality. Its concern is the analy-
sis of texts in relation to sociocultural practice (Fairclough,
1995a). Thus, text analysis is situated within the broader
concerns of discourses as bodies of knowledge and the role
of language in constructing social identities (Poynton, 2000;
Poynton & Lee, 2000). Following Gee (1996, p. 128), we
understand discourse as the social positions or perspectives
from which people speak, listen, write, read, act, think, feel
and value in certain ways.
SFL is a social theory of language, where language is a
resource to make meaning, not a ‘container’ for pre-existing
meanings and ideas (Kress & Hodge, 1993). It shares with
CDA an emphasis on language as a social rather than an in-
dividual phenomenon, a dialectic relationship between lan-
guage and context, a view of language as choice, and the
47
claim that language forms are not arbitrary but determined
by and reflective of social relations (Halliday, 1978).
Central to this paper are Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of dial-
ogism and Fairclough’s (1992b, 1995a) notion of intertextu-
ality. A dialogic view sees each utterance as part of a social
dialogue:
Any speaker is himself [sic] a respondent to a greater or
lesser degree. He is not, after all, the first speaker, the
one who disturbs the eternal silence of the universe. And
he presupposes not only the existence of the language
system he is using, but also the existence of preceding
utterances—his own and others’—with which his given
utterance enters into one kind of relation or another (builds
on them, polemicizes with them, or simply presumes that
they are already known to the listener). Any utterance
is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other
utterances. (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 99)
In addition to utterances forming chains of texts, utter-
ances resonate with those of others, their tones and shades
of meaning:
Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative
works), is filled with others’ words, varying degrees of
otherness or varying degrees of “our-own-ness”, vary-
ing degrees of awareness and detachment. These words
of others carry with them their own expression, their
own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and
re-accentuate. (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 89)
The principle of the dialogic nature of text has been de-
veloped into the concept of intertextuality, to emphasise that
the meaning of a particular utterance arises from relations
between social viewpoints, not from the minds of individ-
uals. These social viewpoints can be integrated into a text,
either marked by explicit boundary marks or absorbed to
varying degrees (Fairclough, 1992b, 1995a).
Analysis
This paper is concerned with two kinds of meaning:
ideational and interpersonal. In any interaction, the interac-
tants construe experience, i.e. they make sense of the world
around them in terms of ‘what’s going on’: the processes
of doing, happening, thinking, feeling, saying and relat-
ing, the participant roles, and the circumstances (‘when’,
‘where’, ‘how’, ‘by what means’, etc.) associated with these
processes (Halliday, 1994).
At the same time as interactants construe experi-
ence, they enact social roles and relationships (inter-
personal meaning). One linguistic resource to make in-
terpersonal meaning is the system of appraisal. Within
appraisal, the subsystem of judgement is the resource
for evaluating human behaviour ethically along five cat-
egories: normality (‘outstanding’/‘abnormal’), capacity
(‘competent’/‘incompetent’), tenacity (‘resolve’/‘apathetic’),
veracity (‘honest’/‘deceitful’), propriety (‘right’/‘evil’)
48 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
(Iedema, Feez, & White, 1994; Martin, 2000). The
subsystem of affect construes emotions in terms of
‘happiness/unhappiness’, ‘security/insecurity’, ‘satisfaction/
dissatisfaction’ (Martin, 2000).
Alternative positions are negotiated through the system
of engagement. It has been proposed as an alternative to the
common-sense dichotomy of ‘subjective’ versus ‘objective’,
and acknowledges that all utterances can enter into rela-
tionships of tension with alternatives. The first distinction is
whether a proposition indicates a speaker’s/writer’s willing-
ness to acknowledge an alternative: ‘The needles were new’
(monogloss: alternatives not acknowledged) versus ‘The
needles were probably new’ (heterogloss: alternatives ac-
knowledged). Where an alternative is acknowledged, it can
be inscribed in a speaker’s/writer’s own voice (The needles
were probably new) or attributed to an external source (The
deputy principal said, “The needles were new.”). A further
distinction is whether an utterance acknowledges and fa-
cilitates alternative positions (The needles were probably
new) or whether an alternative position is acknowledged but
denied (The needles were not new) (White, 1998, 2000).
If an alternative position is attributed to an external source,
it can be inserted (quoted) or assimilated to varying degrees
(Fuller, 2000; White, 1998), for example, the issue of the
origin of needles could be represented variously as:
The deputy principal said: “The needles were new.”
The deputy principal claimed that the needles were new.
According to the deputy principal, the needles were new.
The deputy principal described the needles as new.
The principal’s claim that the needles were new has been
questioned.
The principal’s description of the needles has been ques-
tioned.
Texts in dialogue
A total of seven texts in three newspapers dealt with the
closure of the NSP and the incident leading to it: two boys
had found some syringes in or near the school playground.
It appears that the syringes were still wrapped in plastic and
unused. The school shares a boundary with a health centre
which features a needle exchange and a 24-hour syringe
vending machine. The boundary fence was in need of repair.
These seven texts are highly dialogic. Each text is a link
in a chain of texts responding to previous texts and integrat-
ing others into itself: On 6 March, NDT published a news
report on page one with the headline: “NEEDLE ANGER.
Parents fear for pupils in syringe find” (NDT 1). One week
later, on 13 March, TWT published a report “Parents protest
closure of Ryde needle exchange” in response to the health
minister’s decision to close the needle exchange (TWT).
On the same day, NDT published another report titled “Sy-
ringe reaction needled” in response to and critical of parents’
protests against the health minister’s decision to close the
exchange (NDT 2). This decision, in turn, was in response to
media reports. This edition of NDT also featured an edito-
rial “Children not reputation”, another response to parents’
criticism of the minister’s decision to close the exchange
(NDT 3). About a month later, on 24 April, the metropoli-
tan broadsheet SMH published a news report “Needle ex-
change shut after radio blast”, which highlighted the role of
a local radio talkback host after the first news report. There
were also two letters to the editor in the NDT. One was in
response to the initial news report and its accusations of the
school’s principal. The second was written by a student of
the primary school and dealt with a range of issues related
to this specific issue and IDU-related issues generally. Be-
cause this study is concerned with the role of the local print
media, analysis will focus on the four news reports and the
editorial. The Daily Telegraph did not report this incident.
The new reports are also highly intertextual, featuring
a total of 13 externally referenced sources in addition to
the reporter’s ‘voice’ (Iedema et al., 1994). The following
section will describe the interpersonal and, where relevant,
the ideational meanings made by these external texts, the
engagement values by which various alternative positions
are negotiated, and the social subject positions taken.
Interpersonal and ideational meanings
The mothers
The mothers of the two boys who found the syringes fea-
ture prominently and are quoted extensively in NDT 1, the
origin of this dialogic chain. They are neither represented
nor mentioned in any of the other reports. Their major in-
tertextual contributions are affect values (insecurity), both
inserted into the reporter’s text and assimilated:
“I was shocked” Mrs Webber said. (inserted)
Mrs Bibik said she was now facing three months of
“torment” while waiting for the results from the medical
tests taken by Tyler. (assimilated)
Also attributed to the mothers and inserted are judgement
values (negative capacity), evaluating the school principal’s
behaviour:
“You don’t expect to send your child to school only to
find he’s been playing with needles on school grounds.”
Tiffany Bibik . . . said she was not alerted by the school.
While the mothers’ position is either inserted as quoted
speech or assimilated as reported speech, the school prin-
 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
cipal is represented only through the words of the mothers,
including judgements (negative capacity):
Ms Webber claims he said he “didn’t understand what the
big deal was about.”
The principal’s words are further recontextualised from
the mother’s speech and assimilated into the reporter’s text
in the following example:
Despite no eduction programs about syringes, Mr Wil-
son said to Ms Webber the children “should have known
better” than to pick up the syringes and that the parents
whose children were involved had been contacted, Ms
Webber claimed.
Also represented through the mothers’ speech, recontex-
tualised and assimilated into the reporter’s text, are the staff
at the health centre:
According to Ms Webber, who spoke to staff from the
health centre, the fence dividing the school from the nee-
dle exchange has needed repairing since 1996.
The mothers’ speaking position can be described as a one
of fear and blame: fear in their emotional response towards
the syringes and the possible danger they may pose; blame
of the school principal for his shortcomings as an educator
by not protecting the pupils in his charge from potential
harm and for his lack of sensitivity towards the mothers’
emotional response. In this discourse, potential risk from
needle stick injury is highly personalised and characterised
by an absence of knowledge about the exact nature of risk
and potential harm. It is precisely this lack of knowledge,
it could be argued, which is the origin of the mothers’ fear
and insecurity.
The school
The school is represented in the media reports by the
principal and the deputy principal. In addition to indirect
reporting through other speakers, as discussed above, both
speak through a statement released by the Department of
Education. They feature in the three news reports of the two
local papers (NDT 1, NDT 2, TWT).
In addition to the dialogue between the principal and the
mothers mentioned above, further intertextual links appear
in the news reports: one between the Department of Educa-
tion and the principal, presumably after complaints by the
parents, and the principal’s apology to the parents. These
are not explicitly marked as other texts but highly recontex-
tualised and assimilated into the reporter’s text:
After being contacted by the Education Department, Mr
Wilson stated that he “deeply and sincerely regretted” the
situation and had since apologized to the parents. (NDT 1)
Through an Education Department spokesman Mr Wilson
said he was not opposed to paying the children’s medical
49
fees for tests, in principle, and invited concerned parents
to further discuss the issue with him. (NDT 2)
Where the principal’s text is either quoted or reported
from the Department’s statement, there are positive judge-
ment values (propriety): “deep and sincere regret”, and
“happy the parent’s concerns had been alleviated”. These
respond to the mothers’ judgement (negative capacity) of
the principal’s insensitivity.
The deputy principal’s main discursive work is to describe
and clarify the exact nature of the syringes found. This is
achieved through relational clauses, describing the syringes,
for example:
Ryde School Relieving Principal Steve Connelly said,
“The syringes the boys had found and shown the teaching
staff were wrapped in plastic and were unused.” (TWT)
Steve Connelly said three of the syringes found were still
in their wrapping . . . the remaining two were not con-
tained in plastic but the plastic was nearby. (NDT 2)
It is also achieved through logical relations of cause/effect,
in conjunction with a relational clause:
He said the needles could not have been used as the section
of the box used to hold discarded syringes was sealed.
(NDT 2)
All the deputy principal’s contributions are clearly marked
as external text, either quoted or reported.
Between them, the principal and the deputy principal re-
spond to the negative affect and judgement values of the two
mothers in NDT 1. Affect values of insecurity are countered
by the deputy’s factual description of the syringes, using
language choices resonating with science reports (Wignell,
Martin, & Eggins, 1993). Foregrounded in his words are
ideational meanings of describing and classifying. The
principal’s statement foregrounds interpersonal meanings.
His judgement values of positive propriety (‘deep and sin-
cere regret’, ‘paying the children’s medical fees’) respond
to the mothers’ judgement values of negative capacity. This
repositions the principal in convergence with his role as
an educator responsible for the care of young children and
accountable to their parents.
The community
Under ‘community’, we have gathered those individuals
who represent various community organisations. The local
community is represented by a spokesperson for the school’s
fundraising committee and Ryde Citizen of the Year. The af-
fected community (Hulse, 1997) is represented by a Family
Drug Support spokesman and drug educators, who usually
belong to community organisations. While they are repre-
sented as individuals, they speak from an institutional base.
They are represented in NDT 2, in the broadsheet (SMH),
and are given extensive coverage by the local TWT.
50 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
In NDT 1, community representatives are absent. Com-
munity representation becomes an issue for the local print
media only after the closure of the NSP, when community
organisations respond to this decision. Drug educators are
the most marginally represented group in all three news pa-
pers. They are represented in one news report only (NDT 2).
Their contribution has been limited by the reporter to one
clause, elaborating the health minister’s action:
Mr Knowles’ “knee jerk” reaction has been criticised by
drug eductors as they claim the needles, apparently not
used and still sealed, did not come from the centre.
Directly represented and inserted is only the educators’
evaluation of the minister’s decision as “knee jerk” reac-
tion (negative judgement). The remainder of this utterance is
highly recontextualised and heteroglossic. Alternative posi-
tions to those of the educators are acknowledged and denied:
“apparently not used” and “did not come from the centre”.
Furthermore, by choosing the word “claim” rather than the
more neutral “say”, the reporter fuses negative judgement
with her reporting; she casts doubt on the veracity of the
educators’ statement.
A second representative of the affected community, the
spokesman and CEO of Family Drug Support, is represented
in two news reports (NDT 2 and SMH). In NDT 2, he is given
four utterances, all clearly demarcated from the reporter’s
text. Three are inserted, one is assimilated:
[Family Drug Support spokesman Tony Trimingham] said
the needle exchange had operated for 10 years without in-
cident and to close the exchange as a response to the me-
dia was unbelievable. “The needle exchange is not there
to harm people,” Mr Trimingham said. “It would have
been better if the Minister suspended the exchange or con-
ducted an inquiry into the matter. I can understand the
concerns expressed but what is needed is effective educa-
tion in the community.”
A similar dynamic between assimilating and inserting the
spokesman’s utterances is found in the SMH:
Last night the founder and CEO of Family Drug Support,
Tony Trimingham, said intravenous drug users between
Hornsby and Parramatta were now without a primary nee-
dle exchange facility. “It is disappointing that a service
that has been operating in this community in a very un-
derstated way for over 10 years without incident becomes
a political football,” Mr Trimingham said.
In both news reports, positive judgement values (capac-
ity) relating to the functioning of the NSP are attributed
to the external text and inserted into the reporter’s (“with-
out incident”, “in a very understated way for over 10 years
without incident”). Negative judgement values (propriety)
relating to the handling of the matter are also attributed and
inserted (“a political football”). In NDT 2, in addition, en-
gagement values denying alternatives to the function of the
NSP are explicit in the external text (“The needle exchange
is not there to harm people.”). A monoglossic statement—no
alternatives are invited—completes this inserted text: “what
is needed is effective education in the community”.
The local community is represented by the Ryde Primary
School Funding Raising Coordinator and Ryde Citizen of
the Year. She features in TWT only, but there she features
quite extensively. Similar to the deputy principal, relational
clauses are used to describe the needles (“they were all new
and unopened”), countering the threat posed by the needles
constructed in NDT 1.
Similar to the mothers discussed above, negative affect
values are attributed by the reporter to the fundraising coor-
dinator and inserted into the news report (“Parents are hor-
rified that the centre has closed over one incident”). How-
ever, the object of affective evaluation has shifted from the
mothers’ reaction to the needle find to a reaction to the clo-
sure of the needle exchange.
Negative judgement values (impropriety) expressed by
the local community representative are in convergence with
those of the educators and focus on the health minister’s ac-
tion (“To jump up and down so quickly over one incident
without investigating it further was not right”). There is also
negative evaluation of the children’s behaviour (“The kids
who found the syringes were in an out-of-bounds area”).
This is not mentioned by any of the other speaking subjects
and in any of the other reports. Positive evaluation values
focus on the actions of needle exchange (“the needle ex-
change service used to check the school grounds three days
a week”). All utterances are direct representations, clearly
demarcated from and inserted into the reporter’s text.
In the community, there is convergence in the evaluation
of the minister’s decision (negative propriety). There is also
convergence with the deputy principal’s factual descriptive
discourse. Positive judgement values are made by the lo-
cal community representative about the competence of the
exchange. Harm minimisation is mentioned by the affected
community, however, there is acknowledgement of a possi-
ble alternative (harm).
However, there is a clear differentiation in the repre-
sentation of community representatives by different media
outlets. Educators are the most marginally represented and
most assimilated (NDT 2). The fundraising coordinator is
the most represented and most inserted (TWT), the Family
Drug Support spokesman is positioned somewhere in be-
tween: represented in two news reports by two papers, and
his contribution is both inserted and assimilated.
The politicians
These are represented in the news reports by the ministers
responsible for the two institutions involved: the Minis-
ter for Education (and local Member of Parliament), the
Minister for Health, and their media spokespersons, either
speaking directly or through press releases. They are the
only external speaking subjects represented in all four news
reports.
 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
In both local papers, there is very close alignment between
reporter ‘voice’ (Iedema et al., 1994) and external ‘voice’.
For example, in NDT 1:
Education Minister and Member for Ryde John Watkins
said he had asked that the fence be fixed as a matter of
urgency.
“I have sought an urgent report from the Department of
Health and they have acted promptly in advising me that
a new fence will be constructed as a matter of urgency.”
The same pattern is found in TWT:
The Minister’s media officer Ross Neilson denied the clo-
sure was an over-reaction.
“It was not a knee jerk reaction,” he said.
There is alignment between judgement values (negative
propriety): “over-reaction” and “knee jerk reaction” as well
as alignment between engagement values: Both reporter
voice and external voice close off alternative positions
(“denied”, “it was not a knee jerk reaction”).
The words of the education minister resonate (Bakhtin,
1986) with the principal’s words of reassurance and the
mothers’ negative judgement values relating to the disre-
pair of the fence. They also resonate with the fundraising
coordinator’s positive evaluation (capacity) of the needle ex-
change:
Mr Neilson acknowledged that “the needle exchange had
operated without incident for 10 years at 53 Blackland
Road, Top Ryde.”
However, this is balanced against and aligned with the
principal’s positive judgement values (propriety):
“However, the Minister wanted to reassure parents at the
primary school.”
Further reference is made to other issues expressed by
the minister’s constituents, completely assimilated into
the minister’s words: “the wishes and concerns of the
local community” and “complaints to Mr Watkins’ elec-
toral office” (SMH). There is no explicit or implicit refer-
ence to the actual content of “wishes and concerns” and
“complaints”.
Ideationally, both ministers prefer material processes, for
example, “fix”, “act”, “construct”, which foreground action.
There are also circumstances of location (“this close to the
school”, “next door to a school”) in conjunction with nega-
tive judgement (“inappropriate”) and circumstances of man-
ner (“as a matter of urgency”), providing the reader with
details about the proposed action.
With its focus on action and location, the ministers’
speaking position can be described as one of local plan-
ning and facilities management. The needle exchange,
the syringe find, and the closure are positioned as issues
which can be controlled through processes at the local
51
political level. This position, then, is a response to the po-
sition of fear and blame rather than a message of public
health and harm reduction. (This will be discussed further
below.)
The bureaucrats
In this category, we have grouped speaking subjects from
the state government department which is responsible for
providing and administering health services in general, in-
cluding NSPs: the Area Health Service and the District
Health Director. They are represented in all three papers
(NDT 2, TWT, SMH).
Their utterances respond to the mothers’ negative judge-
ment values in NDT 1 about the state of disrepair of the
fence between needle exchange and school:
A Northern Sydney Health spokeswomen said, in addition
to finding a new location, the Health Department was also
in the process of replacing the broken fence that divided
the school and the near health centre.
There is also resonance with the positive evaluation of
the needle exchange by representatives of local and affected
communities. In addition, there are further alternative posi-
tions inscribed into the spokeswoman’s text:
The spokeswoman defended the now closed needle ex-
change, saying the syringes found on Ryde Primary
School grounds were not property of the needle exchange.
“Equipment used by the community health centre is quite
distinctive,” she said. “Equipment found on the site at
the school, as shown to community health workers by
school staff, came from another source, possibly a local
chemist.” (NDT 2)
This pattern is also found in TWT and SMH:
According to Northern Sydney Health Director Execu-
tive Unit Lorna Dudley, “The Community Health work-
ers who had been advised of the incident and inspected
the needles and the Fit Pack containing the needles had
told the school that it did not come from their service. It
was a type that could be bought at any local pharmacy.”
(TWT)
According to senior [department of health] sources there
are doubts about the origin and the age of the syringe
pack, which appeared to be an old container that was not
from the Ryde facility but a local pharmacy. (SMH)
Similar to the health minister, ideational meanings fore-
grounded by the bureaucrats are circumstances of location
(“from another source”, “[from] a local chemist”, “from their
service”, “at any local pharmacy”, “from the Ryde facility”).
There is convergence in the social positions of the bureau-
crats and the health minister. They speak from a position of
health service management. The focus is on the origins of
the needles from a different source. The needle exchange is
not involved.
52 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
The media
In this category, we have grouped together the radio talk-
back host, the editor of NDT, and the authors of the news
reports.
The talkback host is represented only in the SMH news
report, which appeared about a month after the incident.
Similar to the external sources discussed above, he is in-
troduced into the reporter’s text as an externally referenced
source, inserted into the news report.
Similar to the mothers’ text discussed above, the talk-
back host’s text makes reference to other texts which
are integrated into his own: the health minister and the
education minister. However, in his representation of
the ministers’ speech, there are interpersonal meanings
which are not present where the ministers are quoted
or reported in the news reports: “the needle exchange
is to be moved immediately”; “the centre provides too
much of a risk”; “John Watkins said he was shocked and
appalled”.
There are also alternative positions inscribed in the talk-
back host’s voice which are not evident in the news reports:
“apparently there’s a hole in the fence, where presumably
addicts had managed to somehow access the school to use
drugs”; “we would never have known about it”.
Judgement values (negative propriety) are inscribed in the
talkback host’s speech and inserted into the reporter’s text:
“What the hell are they on about? A needle exchange next
to a primary school! They’re kidding.” Negative Judgement
values are also deployed for IDUs as “addicts” and as tres-
passers.
While in news reports judgement values are attributed to
external texts and integrated into a reporter’s text, in edito-
rials the writer can use explicit judgement values (Iedema
et al., 1994; White, 1998). In NDT 3 (editorial), the ed-
itor makes extensive use of this. The objects of his/her
evaluation (negative propriety) are the school’s parents as
a group for their objection to the closure of the exchange
and their defence of the school’s principal (“It seems that
some parents of Ryde Public School are more concerned
about the reputation of their school than the safety of their
children.”) and positive propriety of the mothers and their
construal of emotion in NDT 1 (“The story was about
parents who were naturally concerned when their sons
came home with the syringes they say were in the school
yard”).
Judgement values (negative capacity) evaluate parents’
actual actions in relation to actions requested by the editor:
Parents and school authorities should have been demand-
ing the fence to be fixed. They should have been con-
cerned about having a needle exchange on their boarder.
Any parent who thought we were criticising the school
missed the point of the story.
The editorial explicitly rejects the health services man-
agement discourse concerned with the origin of the needles,
aligns with the health minister’s discourse of local planning
(“The health minister acknowledges that such a unit should
not be near a school”), questions the deputy principal’s dis-
course of risk minimisation (“It is difficult to say where
the syringes came from and whether or not they were used
as we did not see them.”), and aligns with the mothers’
discourse of fear and blame (“parents who were naturally
concerned”).
Conventions of news reporting require that reporters avoid
explicit expression of judgements and emotions. In keeping
with that requirement, the reporters of NDT and TWT re-
frain from explicit judgements, but align with the positions
taken by some of the externally referenced sources. In the
case of NDT, there is alignment with the mothers of the
boys who found the syringes, in the case of TWT, it is with
representatives of affected and local communities. The ex-
ception is the writer of the broadsheet news report, who is
also the state political editor for that newspaper.
NDT and TWT positions are indicated clearly in their re-
spective headlines and lead sentences. NDT 1 (“NEEDLE
ANGER. Parents fear for pupils in syringe find”) highlights
fear and anger. Also highlighted are the negative judgement
values evaluating the principal’s behaviour (“school author-
ities tried to brush the matter under the carpet”). In NDT
2, the Family Drug Support spokesman’s contribution dis-
cussed above is also reconstrued as “anger”.
TWT’s headline and lead sentence runs “Parents protest
closure of Ryde needle exchange. Parents of Ryde Public
School have protested the closure of Top Ryde’s needle ex-
change by Health Minister Craig Knowles following an iso-
lated complaint that a child had come home with a needle
found in school grounds.” This provides the focus for the
whole article and is elaborated through representations of
local and affected communities.
The SMH’s headline and lead sentence construe the health
minister in the participant role of actor and makes an explicit
connection between his action and the talkback host’s speech
(“Needle Exchange Shut After Radio Blast. The Minister for
Health, Craig Knowles, has suddenly closed an 11-year-old
needle exchange and drug facility in the marginal ALP seat
of Ryde after the Government was attacked on the issue by
radio talk-back host Alan Jones.”)
In addition to the explicit intertextual links discussed
above, there are some highly assimilated references to ex-
ternal texts in the SMH report, all heteroglossically denied:
It was implemented without any formal paperwork or
investigation. There was no consultation with the chief
executive officer of the Northern Area Health Service,
Dr Stephen Christley, or other drug health specialists. No
formal complaint about the facility was made in writing.
The SMH also aligns with the positive judgements (capac-
ity) of the needle exchange. This is inscribed in the writer’s
own text (“The needle exchange and drug counselling ser-
vice had operated discreetly for more than a decade without
incident.”)
 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
Discussion
Intertextual complexity: a question of balance?
Similar to news reporting on complex and controversial
issues with strong and diverse positions, the four news
reports and one editorial in this study form a chain of
texts where each text responds to previous ones and pro-
vokes further textual responses. While there is a linearity
in this chain caused by the chronology of events, the chain
becomes more complex as it progresses, turning into a
complex intertextual fabric. An increasing number of speak-
ing subjects is integrated into the texts, interwoven with
each other, representing distinct social subject positions,
and each responding to other speaking subjects. There are
responses to ideational and interpersonal meanings, repre-
senting convergent and divergent social subject positions.
Speaking subjects align with and diverge with other posi-
tions in their construal of emotions and their judgement of
social behaviour. For example, there is convergence with
the discourse of fear in the editorial, but there is also a
counter-position constructed through positive judgement
values.
Speaking subjects do not appear in news reports of their
own accord but are chosen by the writers of these reports.
In addition, their utterances do not appear in news reports
unmediated but are represented, integrated and assimilated
to varying degrees. While in the news reports of our study
there is no sensationalism and vilification of IDUs as in
Broadhead’s (1999) study of an NSP closure in the US, our
intertextual analysis shows an alignment of the papers with
particular social subject positions. NDT aligns with those po-
sitions demanding the closure of the exchange. TWT aligns
with local and affected communities opposing the closure.
This is evident in their choices of headline/lead sentence,
and subsequent choices of speaking subjects, choices in fore-
grounding some speakers and inserting their utterances, and
backgrounding others and assimilating their utterances into
the reporter’s text.
There is a clearly discernible hierarchy of speaking sub-
jects as they are represented in the news report, both in terms
of quantity and quality of representation. In terms of quan-
tity, the politicians and their media officers are privileged.
They appear in all four news reports. They are also privi-
leged in the sense that their words are inserted into the news
reports and at the same time assimilated into the reporters’
own text, thus creating strong convergence between external
voice and reporter voice (Iedema et al., 1994; White, 1998).
The least represented are drug educators. They are given one
utterance only, responding to the health minister’s closure
of the exchange. This has been highly recontextualised and
assimilated by the reporter. Any education messages they
may have had have gone unheard. The Family Drug Sup-
port spokesman fares somewhat better in terms of quantity
of representation. However, his demand for education of the
public is left without elaboration in the report.
53
Choice of speaking subjects also involves choices of omis-
sion. Missing in this study are the speaking subjects most
closely involved with NSPs as a harm minimisation strat-
egy: staff and clients of the needle exchange. Despite IDUs
contribution in Australia to containing the proliferation of
HIV, their efforts have not been recognised adequately by
health authorities and policy makers (Hulse, 1997). Their
relevance to this debate is barely acknowledged in the texts
for this study.
The absence of explicit public health messages in these
news reports has two possible reasons. Either those in a po-
sition to do so, i.e. the health minister and the health bu-
reaucrats, did not say anything about it. Another possible
reason is that they did but the journalists chose not to in-
clude these messages into their texts. Where an allusion to
harm minimisation is raised by a spokesman of the affected
community, he is cut-off without further elaboration.
Further choices are in the ideational and interpersonal
meanings in headline and lead sentence. There is no com-
pelling necessity why a headline/lead should foreground
emotional responses invoking danger, even though it may
be accurate: “NEEDLE ANGER. Parents fear for pupils
in syringe find.” An alternative could have read: “Pub-
lic health threat. Community fears for harm minimisation
programme”, foregrounding an alternative position which
is equally accurate.
The question of choice also relates to the issue of accurate
reporting requested by ANCD. While some facts are indis-
putable (e.g. the location of the needle exchange next to the
school, the state of the fence), the issue whether the needles
were unused or used and whether they really posed a risk
for the transmission of blood-borne viruses remains unre-
solved. The newspapers rely on statements by others rather
than making their own inquiries. Another issue where accu-
racy is not established is whether the syringes were found
in the school grounds or out-of-bounds, which would put
the two boys who found them, and their mothers, in quite a
different position. Accurate reporting alone is not enough.
Referring to people killed in war as ‘casualties’ and ‘collat-
eral damage’ is no doubt ‘accurate’. However, it creates very
specific social subject positions for those who were killed,
for those who did the killing, and for the readers/listeners
of this reporting.
The rhetorical purpose of news reporting and reader
positioning
Our readings are determined by our social and institu-
tional positions. These are constructed by texts by provid-
ing a certain reading position from which a text appears
unproblematic or ‘natural’ (Fairclough, 1989, 1992b; Gee,
1996; Kress, 1985; Lemke, 1995), for example: “discarded
syringes + little boys = danger”. From the reading positions
constructed in the texts of this study, a reading of “discarded
syringes + little boys = harm minimisation” is almost im-
possible.
54 H. Körner, C. Treloar / International Journal of Drug Policy 15 (2003) 46–55
It has been argued that “hard” news reporting—typically
concerned with violence, reversals of fortune and breaches
of the social order, grounded in a material event—is inflected
with cultural and ideological meanings (White, 1997). In
this context, the key purpose of news reporting as a social
practice is the identification of points of maximal disruption
of the social order. A key element in this process is the “ide-
ologically informed nature of these processes of identifica-
tion and selection” (White, 1997, p. 125). There is nothing
natural or neutral about selection. It is affected by the social
and cultural experiences of those who make these selections
and their economic and political goals. They also rely on
assumptions about which behaviours are normal or deviant
and disruptive. In this scenario, the representation of needles
as dirty and dangerous sits more comfortably and appears
more ‘natural’ that needles as a means to reduce the spread
of blood-borne viruses.
Conclusion
Media are powerful institutions. By turning events into
public issues, they can influence regulatory agencies to
act, often out of concern for their public image (Lupton,
1994). As convention demands that news reporting is
‘neutral’ and ‘objective’, media influence has to work
through other means than overt judgement and persuasion.
It works through choice: who is included and excluded,
what meanings are foregrounded and backgrounded, how
are meanings represented, recontextualised, and assimi-
lated. The ANCD position paper asks for a commitment
to balanced and accurate reporting. While there is no
vilification of NSPs and their clients in our sample, mes-
sages about the benefits of NSPs are noticeably absent.
Whether these messages were not available to the journal-
ists or whether they chose to ignore them is impossible to
tell.
The aim of CDA is to make visible the interconnect-
edness of texts and sociocultural practice. Its theoretical
underpinning is the relationship between ‘micro’ events (in-
cluding verbal events) and ‘macro’ structures (Fairclough,
1995b). Content analysis of drug issues in the print media
can summarise issues, topics and themes: what did papers
write (Broadhead, 1999; Elliott & Chapman, 2000). The
value of intertextual analysis, grounded in linguistic anal-
ysis and making explicit language choices, shows what
alternative positions are available, how they are negotiated
and how the reader is positioned in the process. It shows
how, in spite of the absence of overt social judgements by
the newspaper writer, reading positions are created which
represent the interests of certain groups rather than the
mere nature of things and events. It also shows that the
demand for balanced and accurate reporting alone is not
enough, but institutional interests and affiliations need to
be made explicit, challenged and presented with alterna-
tives.
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