‘ Stranger in the Dark ’ : A Comparative Analysis of the Reporting of Rape Cases Against Minors in Malay and English Newspapers in Brunei and Malaysia

Journalists of Malay and English newspapers from Brunei and Malaysia are found to adopt different stances in terms of their inclusion of detail and their level of involvement or detachment in crime and accident reports. This study combines an analysis of online news reports of rape cases with interview data from journalists and editors of Malay and English newspapers in Brunei and Malaysia. Our original hypothesis is that Malay news reports would demonstrate a more restrained approach to crime and accident news compared to English news stories. Four parallel pairs of rape stories from four newspapers were analysed using Fairclough’s (1995) framework and van Leeuwen’s (2008) representation of social actors and social action approach. Critical case purposive sampling method was used to collect the news stories. The findings reveal clear differences in how rape cases are reported by the Malay newspapers vis-à-vis their English counterparts, with reports in the Malaysian Malay paper, for example, being longer and containing more details of the crimes while the opposite is found in the Bruneian Malay paper. Our findings suggest that differences in the reporting of rape cases are not just due to linguistic differences but are culturally, ideologically and politically situated.


INTRODUCTION
This study was prompted by the findings of our previous research on the genre of hard news reports in Malay and English newspapers in Brunei and Malaysia (Authors, 2016;Authors, 2017).We investigated parallel hard news reports dealing with royal/political events, crimes and accidents, and local events in both countries.One of our main findings was that the genre of hard news reports in Malay and English in both countries is, on the whole, quite similar as journalists in both contexts are aware of and often conform to the deductive inverted pyramid structure of English news reports (Bell, 2014;Thomson, White & Kitley, 2008).
However, when it comes to the reporting of crime and accident news in the matrix (that is, Malay/English/Brunei/Malaysia), we found some differences that prompted us to investigate this particular category of hard news reports further.We found evidence of different stances adopted by the journalists of both Malay and English newspapers from both countries in terms of their inclusion of detail and their level of involvement or detachment in crime and accident reports.The Malay reports in both countries tend to include more details and demonstrate more involvement, compared to English news reports.This was contrary to our original hypothesis that Malay texts would demonstrate a more restrained approach to

RELATED PREVIOUS STUDIES
The majority of studies on the reporting of crime news against women focus on the reporting of sexual crimes against them (Reiner, 2002).A recent study by Nagar (2016) investigated how a highly-publicised rape case of an upper-middle class young woman in 2012 in India was reported in English and Hindi language newspapers.Using a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework, she argues that the victim's social class was a factor which influenced how the case was reported.Nagar's (2016) study is also one of the relatively few studies that focus on comparative media discourse.Previous studies on media discourse have primarily focused on English media texts only.Studies that utilise a cross-linguistic comparative approach to media texts are relatively few in number.Among the few are studies by Knox and Patpong (2008), Scollon, Wong-Scollon and Kirkpatrick (1998) and Wang (1993) who all conclude that differences in the reporting of similar events are not just due to linguistic differences but were culturally, ideologically and politically situated.Our previous research on hard news reports in Malay and English newspapers in Brunei and Malaysia supports this finding (Authors, 2016;Authors, 2017).Although the English and Malay newspapers we investigated are published by the same news organisation, there are distinct differences in the news reporting that can be attributed to other factors besides language.
Most previous studies on media discourse that focus on textual analysis do not incorporate interview data from the producers of the texts.We feel that in order to have a thorough understanding of the processes surrounding the production of texts, it is highly valuable to incorporate an analysis of news texts with interview data from editors and journalists.Thus, this study is novel in two ways: it is one of the few studies on media discourse that utilises a cross comparative approach; and unlike many other studies in the area, interviews from the media practitioners are included with the analysis of media texts.The interviews can provide valuable insights about the news-gathering and reporting process which according to Richardson (2007, p. 39) 'remains the most-undeveloped' aspect of CDA.We believe that this is still the case now, based on our literature review.

ABOUT THE NEWSPAPERS
The newspapers that were analysed for our study are the Borneo Bulletin (English) and Media Permata (Malay) in Brunei.The Malaysian newspapers we investigated are the New Straits Times (English) and Berita Harian (Malay).These newspapers were chosen as they are published by the same news organisation in their respective countries.All four newspapers share the same editorial policies in the sense that they uphold what can be perceived as a mainly conservative agenda.The Malaysian newspapers are categorised as broadsheet newspapers while the distinction between broadsheets and tabloids are more difficult to determine for the Bruneian newspapers due to the relatively underdeveloped media landscape in the country.
The Borneo Bulletin (henceforth BB) and Media Permata (henceforth MP) are published by Brunei Press Private Limited Company, a company with links to the ruling Royal Family.The BB is the leading English daily in the country and with the closing of the other English daily paper, the Brunei Times in November 2016, it is now the only English newspaper in Brunei.It currently claims to have more than 100,000 daily readers (http://bruneipress.com.bn/).From our previous research, we discovered that the BB perceives its readers to be not just Malay-English bilingual Bruneians but also expatriates residing in Brunei.As a result, we found that BB journalists feel that it is necessary to provide background information when drafting their news reports, especially when there are local, Malay or Islamic references in their reports that they assume will not be familiar to non-Malay and non-Muslim readers.MP, on the other hand, was launched by the Brunei Press in 1995, 'focusing on local news and features for the Malay literate'.Thus, the paper is clearly targeted at Malay-speaking Bruneians, unlike the BB.It is currently the only Malay language daily in the country.
The New Straits Times (henceforth NST) is regarded as Malaysia's oldest newspaper still in print.It was first established as The Straits Times in 1845.In 1974, it was renamed as the New Straits Times.It currently has an estimated readership of about 224,000.Interviews with the editors revealed that although the majority of the NST readers are Malay-Muslims, as they form the largest ethnic group in Malaysia, the paper targets Malaysians of all races (http://www.nstp.com.my/new-straits-times).On the other hand, Berita Harian (henceforth BH), established in 1957, targets primarily Malays and Muslims, although Malay or Bahasa Melayu is the official language for all Malaysians.Its current readership figure is approximately 1,225,000 (http://www.nstp.com.my/berita-harian).Both papers are printed by the NST Press and owned by Media Prima, a leading media group in the country with strong links to the previous National Front government.

DATABASE AND RESEARCH METHODS
This study utilises qualitative data.Parallel corpora of similar hard news reports about sexual crimes in both countries were compiled from the websites of the four newspapers.The parallel Malaysian news texts are on the same stories, as are the parallel Bruneian news reports.As we focus on local news reports written by Malaysian and Bruneian journalists, it eISSN: 2550-2131 ISSN: 1675-8021 20 is not possible to find the same story in the newspapers of both countries.Except for the NST news reports which are taken from Bernama, for the Malaysian national news agency, all of the texts are written by journalists employed by the respective newspapers.We have included the Bernama texts in our study as many of the NST reports on local news are taken from there.None of the news reports are translated texts.
Using a critical case purposive sampling method, we eventually selected four pairs of parallel texts (two from each newspaper).Texts 1A and 1B report the same story from Malaysia, as do Texts 2A and Texts 2 B. Likewise, Texts 3A and 3B report the same story in Brunei, as do Texts 4A and Texts 4B.
All the articles were from 2016 and reported rape cases involving minors.Although it was not our original intention to focus only on cases involving minors, our sampling method led to a corpus of reports which happened to involve minors only.According to Strewig and Stead (2001), this type of sampling is particularly useful because even though a small number of cases are sampled, they are likely to yield rich data when studying a few cases in depth.Even though the sample size is small, we believe that studying a few texts in depth as in most CDA studies, in addition to our interview data, can allow us to make some conclusions about the norms and conventions of news reporting of rape cases in English and Malay newspapers in Malaysia and Brunei.
The parallel texts were then placed side-by-side to enable comparison of length and depth of coverage of the news reports (see Appendix A for the full texts).Fairclough's (1995) framework of critical discourse analysis which comprises three components or levels of analyses (textual, discourse practices and social practices) was adopted in this study.van Leeuwen's (2008) analytic method of social practices and representation of social actors and social action is also considered for the analysis of the data in this study as it can be useful in revealing how the social actors involved in such cases are represented by the media texts.According to van Leeuwen, these social actors can be endowed with either active or passive roles.'Activation occurs when social actors are represented as the active, dynamic forces in an activity, passivation, when they are represented as 'undergoing' the activity or as being 'at the receiving end of it' (p.72).Other CDA researchers (Fairclough, 1989;Fowler, 1991;Fowler et al., 1979;Hodge and Kress, 1979;van Dijk, 1991) use the terms 'agent' and 'patient' to describe the representation of people in an action or event in much the same way.The representation of social actors and their activities can either be foregrounded, backgrounded or suppressed through various linguistic strategies, most notably the use of active and passive sentences or passive deletion.The choices that producers of texts make with regard to how actors, actions and events are represented through these linguistic choices reflect their ideological stance.
In order to discover the discursive practices of production and consumption of media texts, interviews were also conducted with the journalists covering the crime beat as well as editors of the newspapers.In Brunei, the journalists who produced the news stories in our database were interviewed, thus giving us an opportunity to capture a rare glimpse to the workings of the minds of the actual media texts producers and the factors they have to consider when producing such texts.In the case of Malaysia, we were not able to obtain interview data from the writers of the texts that were analysed, but we were able to interview journalists and editors on a number of issues including the reporting of crime news on two visits to the NSTP in Kuala Lumpur in 2014 and 2015.We also obtained written replies to our interview questions for this study (see Appendix B) from the Malaysian media practitioners.

FINDINGS FROM TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
When analysing the data, we examine the headlines of the texts first before analysing the rest of the text for ideological implications linked to the difference in linguacultural norms in Malay and English news report texts.

HEADLINES
Headlines are the most noticeable parts of news reports due to their large font printed in bold and often occupying several columns.van Dijk (1988avan Dijk ( , 1988bvan Dijk ( , 1991) ) states that headlines have a cognitive function as readers use the information in headlines to construct the overall meaning of the text.But more importantly, headlines also serve an ideological function because they 'define the overall situation and indicate to the reader a preferred overall meaning of the text' (van Dijk, 1988b, p.40).Thus, a certain perspective is cast on the story that may frame the understanding process and influence the interpretation made by the readers.As headlines are written by editors or subeditors rather than by journalists, they give a good indication of the paper's policies and ideological stance.Table 1 shows the headlines of the 4 parallel texts in the matrix: There is a considerable difference in the focus of the headlines for Texts 1A and 1B.The 13-year-old victim who was raped by her 'Wechat acquaintances' is foregrounded in the Malay headline (Text 1A).She is represented as the passive social actor following van Leeuwen's (2008) categories of social actors.The use of the word 'kenalan' or 'acquaintances' rather than the word 'rakan' or 'friend' is significant as it implies a certain value-judgement is made about the victim and her perceived lack of morals in going out to meet casual encounters made online.On the other hand, the police action in capturing and seeking the men involved in the crime is foregrounded in the English headline (Text 1B).The authorities, that is, the police, are represented as the active social actors.The verbs 'nab' and 'seek' in the headline are perhaps rather 'mild' words to use for a story that is about the gangrape of a minor.
The headlines of the next two parallel reports (Texts 2A and 2B) are, on the other hand, is quite similar.In both headlines, the four male students who allegedly raped the victim were foregrounded.They were constructed as the active social actors in the report.The only difference is that for Text 2A, there is no form of hedging used whereas for Text 2B, the use of the word 'alleged' indicates less certainty about the role of the males involved, perhaps due to the fact that the accused have yet to be formally charged in court.
In Text 3A, the Malay headline has been truncated and distilled.The verb 'confessed' is not preceded by naming the subject.Pro-drop (null subject) structures are grammatical in Malay, but this is not generally so in English (Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo 2001, p. 216).Our previous research (Authors, 2016) finds that this is a common feature for the headlines in the Malay language MP in Brunei.However, it is not a common feature in BH, the Malay language paper in Malaysia, as evidenced in Table 1 above.While there is clearly a need for brevity in headlines, this non-usage of pronominal reference signals a degree of vagueness as the filler of the slot, that is, 'a man' is absent.The headline also contains information that the victims are 'dua adik-beradik' or 'two siblings' which the English Text 3B reports as 'two minors'.Thus, the Malay headline gives some information which is not in the English one, despite the fact that it has been truncated.Text 3B highlights the subject or the agent involved in the crime as a 'local man'.In both headlines, however, the focus of attention is on the agent or the active social actor, that is, the rapist rather than the patient or the passive social actor, the victim, as in Text 1A above.
The headlines for both Text 4A and Text 4B refer to an incest case involving a father and his three daughters.Text 4A uses a Malay idiom 'Haruan makan anak' that refers to the crime of incest.This idiom can be viewed as a euphemism to downplay the very disturbing act of incest as the writer could have used more direct language such as 'Bapa rogol anak' (Father rapes child).Charteris-Black (2010, p. 264) states that idioms and proverbs are often used in Malay culture as a way to achieve 'indirectness' or making criticisms or giving advice 'without offence being taken'.The headline of the English Text 4B also uses a euphemism 'stranger in the dark' to refer to the agent involved in the crime.The headline of the Malay Text 4A is even vaguer than the English headline as there is no mention at all of either 'rape' or 'incest' in the headline although a 'deterrence' element of '14 years' is included.The headline of Text 4B is more complete, despite the headline which topicalises the vague expression 'stranger in the dark', before the predicate 'jailed for repeated rape of daughters'.The findings above show that there are some differences in how headlines are constructed by the newspapers in the matrix.

NEWS TEXTS
The main texts of the reports were investigated for the following features which we believe can provide some indication of the ideological stance of the newspapers, despite the small size of our data:

DELETIONS AND ADDITIONS
According to van Dijk (1988avan Dijk ( , 1988b)), deletions can sometimes occur due to the impossibility of verifying a source but they may also occur when the facts or details of a particular news event are not aligned to the values or beliefs of the journalists, news organisations or the society at large.Thus, they are associated with a subjective selection of facts, as details that are not congruent with a newspaper's perspective could be downplayed or omitted.Additions, on the other hand, are used to provide further information about previous events, contexts, or historical background, and thus have the function of explanation and embedding (van Dijk, 1988b).It also serves an ideological function as a news story with more details can be seen in a different light as opposed to one in which fewer details are provided.
Table 2 provides information about the length of the actual body of the text (excluding the headline, bylines and photo captions) for the news reports analysed: With regard to the first set of reports (Texts 1A and 1B), the Malay language (Text 1A) is more than twice as long as the English language Text 1B.Text 1A contains far more details about the case of a gang-rape of a minor than the English text.The details include how the victim 'claims' (mendakwa) that she was raped by four male 'friends' (rakan), one of whom she 'confessed' (mengaku) she met only ten days ago on the online social platform Wechat before agreeing to meet him, about how she told her mother that she was going to a friend's house to study, but instead went on an 'outing' (bersiar-siar) with her new-found male friend on his motorcycle before meeting three of his friends at an oil-palm plantation.In addition, the District Police Chief was also quoted as saying that the victim confessed that she has engaged in sexual intercourses with other men before this incident.The additions in the Malay text can be seen as an attempt to maximise the news value of the story but it can also be also viewed as providing a coverage that is biased against the victim as the additional details have the effect of representing the victim as a promiscuous and unruly teenager.The English text, on the other hand, has a far more restrained tone and it downplays what could be a sensational news story through omission of the salacious details of the case.
Similarly, the Malay Text 2A for the next set of parallel news reports is longer than the English Text 2B but the difference is not as great as in the first pair.Text 2A includes information that the medical examination that the victim had to undergo showed some signs of tears in her vagina (pemeriksaan mendapati ada kesan koyakan pada kemaluan mangsa) as well as 'confessions' from the victim that she had sexual intercourse with all the men involved at various places for the past few months.All these intimate details are not found in the English text.Thus, the BH Text 2A is very similar to BH Text 1A in terms of the reporting of the rape cases.In both cases, the victims are represented as promiscuous and outof-control young girls.
Unlike the Malaysian texts, the length of the English Text 3B from the Brunei data is significantly longer than the Malay Text 3A.This is due to the addition of four paragraphs (paragraphs 7-10) which are not found in the Malay version.The additions refer to details about the 'mitigating factors of the case' as well as details about the 'aggravating factors'.These factors include the fact that the two underage rape victims saw the defendant as a 'trusted person' as they had lost their mother who had passed away.All this information was missing from the MP Text 3A which instead focused on the criminal acts committed by the defendant, his confession and his plea to be sentenced to a fine rather than a prison sentence.The additional paragraphs in the BB Text 3B about the factors surrounding the crime and the subsequent court-case give the impression that the report is more thorough and balanced in presenting the story than the Malay version which mainly foregrounds the details of the crime and the defendant's confession and plea.
Texts 4A and 4B refer to a multiple incest case involving a father and his three daughters.The crimes were reported to occur over a 14-year period.The BB Text 4B is more than three times longer than the MP Text 4A, as shown in Table 2.Text 4B is structured in a chronological order narrative with many details of the crimes committed by the defendant.Text 4A, however, is substantially shorter as most of the salacious and personal details of the crimes are omitted.Instead, the report focuses on the remarks of the presiding judge, presented in direct quotes, on the serious nature of the crime and the recent increase in incest cases.The omission of many details of the crimes in the Malay texts suggests that the topic is a taboo one, as reported by Nurkhalisah Mustapa (2013), cited earlier.

SYNTACTIC CHOICES (PASSIVE/ACTIVE VERBS AND NOMINALIZATIONS)
There are various syntactic choices available to portray how actors, actions and events are represented and the choice of one over the other alternatives available is often a conscious decision made by the producer of a text to represent a certain reality.These syntactic variations include the use of active and passive verbs.Passive verbs can be used to downplay the role of one of the social actors as reference to them will be backgrounded.Reference to a social actor can even be omitted or suppressed through the use of passive deletions.The active verb, on the other hand, is used if one chooses to highlight the actions of a social actor.Another syntactic feature is the use of nominalizations, i.e. verbs, adjectives or adverbs that are turned into nouns.It can also be used to manipulate how actors, actions and events are represented.Another related concept used by CDA scholars are transitivity choices.Johnstone (2002, p. 46), for example defines a 'transactive' sentence as one in which an action is represented as having an origin and a receiver, an agent and a patient while in a 'non-transactive' sentence, 'the semantic agent and patient are both absent'.
The use of active/passive forms to represent a particular reality is illustrated in BH Text 1A.The passive form is used in the headline ('13-year-old student raped (by) Wechat acquaintances'/ Pelajar 13 tahun dirogol 4 kenalan Wechat) and repeated in the first paragraph of the report ('A 13-year old student was raped by four male friends'/ Seorang pelajar berusia 13 tahun mendakwa dirogol empat rakan lelaki).The passive form is thus, clearly used to downplay the role of the criminals and instead highlight the victim in the story by placing her in the grammatical subject position.Even though there is still a reference to the former, it is backgrounded.In paragraph 7, a passive deletion is detected: 'The victim was invited (diajak) to a hut on an oil palm plantation'.Active verbs, on the other hand, is used in the text to highlight the role of the victim in causing the crime to occur.She confessed (mengaku) that she knew one of the suspects only 10 days ago, through Wechat (paragraph 3).She told (memberitahu) her mother that she wanted to study at her friend's house but instead she met (bertemu) a male acquaintance for an outing (paragraph 5).In paragraph 6, she followed (mengikut) her male acquaintance and rode (menaiki) a motorbike with him.
In contrast, in NST Text 1B, the active form is used both in the headline ('Police nab two, seek two others over rape of teen') and the first paragraph ('The police have detained two teenagers in connection with the rape of a form one pupil').This has the effect of highlighting the role of the Police in investigating this case.In paragraph 4, a passive deletion is found -('…the 13-year-old victim -….-was gang-raped in the hut').The focus of the story for the two parallel texts is thus very different.Text 1A focuses on the victim and her role in the crime that was committed against her will while the focus of Text 1B is the role of the Police in handling the case.Neither text focuses on the criminals and their actions in the story.
In BH Text 2A, the active verb is once again used to highlight the role of the victim in causing the crime to occur, as in BH Text 1A.In paragraphs 6-7, the victim was reported to have confessed (mengaku) that she committed (melakukan) sexual intercourse.She was also reported to have said (memberitahu) that she had committed (melakukan) sexual intercourse with the males involved in the past.With regard to Text 2B, the word 'rape' has been turned into a noun in the headline and the lead paragraph.Johnstone (2000, p.47) states that 'choices such as these are choices about whether to turn rape as an event (by making it a noun) or as an action (by making it a verb).The choices made by the producer of the text can reflect an ideological stance, as Johnstone (p.47) further notes that 'choices involving the assignment of semantic roles and nominalization can represent people as being out of control of their destinies'.Thus, although the active agent is foregrounded in the headline and lead paragraph of Text 2B, the consequence of 'rape' being represented as an event rather than an action has the effect of downplaying the crime.The English texts 1B and 2B, on the other hand, both switch the focus to the police as agent.Thus, they report a different event -the police action in solving the crime rather than the crime itself.They turn a negative, the crime, into a positive, the solving of the crime.
In Texts 3A and 3B from the Brunei papers, the headline of MP Text 3A places the verb 'confesses' (mengaku) as the grammatical subject thus avoiding reference to the agent involved, that is, 'a man', as stated earlier.In the headline of the BB Text 3B ('Local man sentenced for rape of two minors'), although the agent 'local man' is present, the word 'rape' has been turned into a noun as in Text 2B.With regard to the body of the news reports, both Texts 3A and 3B contain mostly active verbs to describe the actions of the agent.Thus, both reports seemed to highlight the negative actions of the agent through the use of the active form in contrast to the headlines which appear to downplay the direct involvement of the agent (as in Text 3A) or represent the crime 'rape' as an event rather than an action (as in Text 3B).
Text 4A uses a Malay phrase sumbang mahram to describe incest.The word sumbang means 'deviant' while mahram refers to unmarriageable kin with whom sexual intercourse would be considered incestuous.As stated in section 4.1, we argue that the phrase can be viewed as a euphemism to mean 'incest', a taboo.In Text 4A, the phrase is twice used in a non-transactive form which results in both the semantic agent and patient being absent: '….the court does not view (the matter) lightly, in fact, (it) takes a serious view about the crime of rape, especially those involving sumbang mahram' / '…mahkamah tidak memandang ringan malah mengambil serius akan kesalahan rogol terutamanya yang melibatkan perbuatan sumbang mahram' .
(paragraph 4) By using the non-transactive form, the link to fathers raping their daughters is not made very clear unless one reads through the whole report.In Text 4B, the word 'rape' is used as a noun in the headline ('Stranger in the dark jailed for repeated rape of daughter'), as in Texts 2B and 3B.As discussed above, this has the effect of representing the crime 'rape' as an event rather than an action.Turning the word 'rape' into a verb rather than a noun in the headline would not make it any longer, but it has the effect of representing 'rape' as an action that is linked to the agent.However, as stated by Fowler (1991, p. 98) 'often in headlines, an action is expressed with a noun rather than a verb'.The syntactic choices made by newspapers thus, may be the result of international media reporting norms but there are variations in how actors, actions and events are represented in media texts.

LEXICAL CHOICES AND STYLE
van Dijk (1988b, p. 81) states that 'the choice of specific words may signal the degree of formality, the relationship between the speech partners, the group-based or institutional embedding of discourse and especially the attitudes and hence ideologies of the speaker'.Thus, as reiterated by Fowler (1991, p.80) 'vocabulary or lexis is a major determinant of ideational structure'.In the following section, we will analyse the texts for lexical choices which include naming and reference of social actors, overlexication, re-lexication, emotive verbs and adjectives and lexical style.
In Text 1A, there are some examples of overlexicalization or overwording: the use of many synonyms or near synonyms which have ideological significance.The term kenalan lelaki (male acquaintance/s) was repeated several times in the text while the term rakan lelaki (male friend/s) was used twice to refer to the men who were alleged to rape the pelajar 13 tahun (13-year-old student).This has the effect of placing an element of blame on the victim as the perspective that the reader has is that the incident was caused by mutual consent as the victim 'was invited' (diajak) to the hut where she was raped by her 'male acquaintances/ friends', an invitation which she accepted.Another example is the use of the reporting verbs mengaku (admits or confesses) and mendakwa (claims) which was used several times when reporting the victim's statement.In contrast to the overt judgmental tone of the Malay report, the NST Text 1B shows a detached and seemingly objective reporting through the frequent use of the passive forms and lexical items such as 'suspects' and 'accomplices'.However, the use of terms 'teenagers' and 'accomplices' to refer to the alleged rapists and the verbs 'nab' and 'seek' used in describing the police efforts in tracking them has the effect of downplaying the seriousness of the crime.
As in Text 1A, there are examples of overlexicalization in both Texts 2A and 2B.In Text 2A, the words pelajar (students or pupils), rakan sekolah (school friends) and rakan sekelas (classmates) are used several times whereas for Text 2B, the words 'students' and 'pupils' are repeatedly used.By repeatedly using these terms to describe both the victim and the alleged rapists, the reader is constantly reminded that the victim is well-acquainted with her attackers.
In the Brunei data in the MP Text 3A and BB Text 3B, the accused rapist is referred to as a 'local man' (lelaki tempatan).This term is often used in crime reports in the Brunei papers as a form of distinguishing criminals who are often 'seen' as foreigners but are sometimes locals.Text 3A also has a few examples of overlexicalization.The English loanword 'sex' (seks) is used numerous times throughout the text as in aktiviti seks (sexual activities) and hubungan seks (sexual relations).In addition, the words lucah (obscene) and tidak senonoh (indecent) are repeatedly used to describe the photos the man took of his victims.Text 3B uses the formal term 'unlawful carnal knowledge' which can also be seen as a form of euphemism to describe the illicit sexual act.
In the headlines of both Texts 4A and 4B, a rewording strategy is used.In 4A, a euphemism is used to describe an incestuous parent (haruan makan anak) while in 4B, another euphemism 'stranger in the dark' is used.In 4A, yet another euphemism is used in the text to refer to the act of incest i.e. sumbang mahram.The taboo nature of the case is further reinforced through the absence of the word 'sex' (seks), unlike in Text 3A.However, despite the reluctance of the MP to give a very detailed account of the case due to the taboo topic, the stance of the paper in condemning the act is evident through the use of emotive adjectives kejam (cruel) and keji (despicable) to describe the crime.These words are used without quotation marks or reporting verbs, thus it implies that they are the words of the journalist herself (from the interviews in the following section, it is later revealed that the BB reports are often copied verbatim from the official court proceedings).Similarly, in 4B, the emotive adjective 'heinous' was used by the journalist to describe the incestuous father's acts.However, the term 'sow his wild oats' (paragraph 17) seems to downplay the actions of the father.The term is defined as going through 'a period of wild and promiscuous behaviour while young' (Oxford dictionary of idioms).Based on this definition which is associated with youth and reckless behaviour, we feel that using this idiom in the story has the effect of representing this most disturbing of crimes in a rather cavalier fashion.The linguistic style or register of 4B, however, is rather formal and detached despite reporting the case in greater depth than the MP report 4A.

FINDINGS FROM INTERVIEW DATA
With regard to the interviews, the data obtained from the Malaysian journalists and editors seem to contradict the findings from the textual analysis.One BH journalist states that 'for Malay newspapers like BH or Utusan, we are concerned about the sensitivity of our local society', unlike non-Malay newspapers which he feels often report 'all the details'.Another BH journalist states that the paper is 'very careful about language' and avoid using 'gory photos' in their reports in order 'to avoid sensationalism'.A gang-rape case that occurred in Kelantan a few months prior to the interviews was brought up as an example.According to the BH journalists, the paper did not mention the name of the village where the crime took place in order to protect the identity of the victim and to avoid shaming those villagers who had nothing to do with the crime.However, they noted that the non-Malay newspapers "reported all the details".This belief seems to be supported by at least one NST journalist who states firmly "I try not to self-censor as much as I can, because I believe that a story is a story.So, you have to honour the story, for me personally.You try not to exclude…" The written interview data obtained from the Malaysian newspapers confirm that the BH is very careful in reporting rape cases, especially those involving minors.When reporting such cases, only general details like the name of the district as opposed to the name of the village where the crime took place are provided.This is similar to what our previous informants state.One BH staff member adds that media ethics pertaining to rape cases are closely adhered too as gazetted in the Women and Children's Act "yet at the same time newspapers should reveal such news to the public as a lesson and a reminder".
However, based on the findings of our present study, the NST rape reports demonstrate a more restrained and detached attitude than the BH ones.This is consistent with the findings of our earlier research (Authors, 2017).This distinction may arise from the respective newspapers' identification of the main target readership, as disclosed in the interviews with the editors.The NST sees itself as more of an upmarket paper compared to BH as statistics show that NST readers come from a higher-income bracket than BH readers.The fact that the NST reports are sourced from Bernama, the national news agency, is, eISSN: 2550-2131 ISSN: 1675-8021 28 perhaps another reason for the difference in the reporting style of these cases compared to the BH.
With regard to the Brunei papers, the reverse situation is observed.The reports of rape cases in the English language BB paper are longer and are more detailed.The Malay language MP, on the other hand, publishes shorter reports with few details provided.The MP also uses linguistic devices such as euphemisms, idioms and general expressions such as lucah (obscene) and tidak senonoh (indecent) rather than providing specific details in their reports.This finding is similar to Nurkhalisah Mustapa's (2013) study in which she found many omissions in the Malay texts which she feels are due to the nature of the cases reported including incest cases.Our previous research on Brunei papers (Authors, 2016), on the other hand, found that Malay crime reports are longer with more detailed reporting, but our corpus for the earlier study did not include rape and incest cases.
Our interviews with the journalists and editors of the Brunei papers provide some answers as to why a certain form of presentation is preferred over others.The journalist who wrote both the MP reports informed us that of late, a more detached and restrained style of reporting 'is encouraged' by her editors when reporting 'sensitive' cases.The Malay language MP paper, we have been informed, is subjected to 'certain expectations' by the relevant authorities to adhere to a more 'sensitive' style of reporting.As the readership of the MP is perceived to be almost exclusively for the Malay people of Brunei who are Muslims, it is expected to adhere faithfully to ciri-ciri KeBruneian or Bruneian features in which politeness and decorum are highly emphasised.This 'expectation', however, was not reported to us by the English language BB whose readership comprises bilingual Bruneians and foreigners residing in the country.
The interviews also reveal that the reporting of crime cases in Brunei is based almost exclusively on court documents written in English which are provided to journalists, unlike in Malaysia where the police give regular briefings to the media to disseminate information.The BB journalist who wrote the rape reports in the data informed us that all the facts including the words used in his reports are based on these official documents.In the words of one of the BB sub-editors, 'we follow the script very carefully when reporting crime cases', the 'script' here being the official court documents.We have also been told that these documents are often very long and detailed and the journalist and the editor can decide on how much to re-produce from these documents for the BB reports.However, they informed us that with regard to cases involving minors, universal media ethics pertaining to naming victims and perpetrators are always adhered to.As these documents are in English, the MP journalist has to translate them into Malay and this fact coupled with her editors' preference for more 'sensitive' reporting have resulted in the MP reports being brief, with few details provided.

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Using a modified CDA approach, we have compared reports of rape cases in Malay and English newspapers in Brunei and Malaysia, through an investigation of the textual product and of the processes by which the news reports came into being.Despite the small size of our data, we believe that the findings of the textual analysis in our study show some patterns in the reporting of rape cases in the matrix.The Malay language BH rape reports in Malaysia are much longer and contain more details of the crimes compared to the English language NST.However, it must be emphasised that the details included are those pertaining to the circumstances of the crimes but not personal information linked to the victim's identity.
The findings in the present study confirms the findings of our earlier research on Malaysian newspaper texts (Authors, 2016;Authors, 2017).Although the rape cases in the data are particularly heinous as they involve minors, there is some evidence of 'victimblaming' in the BH texts, as shown in Section 4.2.There are numerous studies which confirm that when sexual crimes are committed against women, there are often attempts made by the media to either justify the crime or emphasise the role of the victim in the incident while deemphasising the role of the perpetrators (Alat, 2006;Bonnes, 2013;Coates and Wade, 2004;Nagar, 2016).This appears to be the case for the BH newspaper too, based on the textual analysis of their news reports.However, the interview data reveals that the construction of these news reports is also motivated by a desire to serve as "a lesson and a reminder" to the public.This fact explains the rather didactic tone of the BH texts, as shown in our study.
The findings from this study provide evidence that an analysis of rape cases in Malay and English papers from two neighbouring countries with relatively similar values and beliefs is complex, as the explanation as to why a certain form is preferred over other available alternatives goes beyond language and culture as previously hypothesised.Instead, it is situated and informed by other social, political, historical and economic undertones.Brunei and Malaysia are both Muslim-majority countries with Malay as their official language but beyond this, many differences exist as far as the media contexts are concerned.Brunei is a very small country with only one newspaper company currently -the Brunei Press.On the other hand, Malaysia is a much bigger country with a greater number and diversity of media outlets including online news portals.Competition among media outlets is certainly keen, unlike in Brunei where there is virtually no competition.In addition, being a much larger society has resulted in a greater diversity of styles of personal expression in Malaysia as compared to Brunei which remains very conservative and tightly-controlled.As stated by Milner (2009), differences between the Malay peoples have become more pronounced in the post-colonial era due to the emergence of nation states with distinct socio-political ideologies.These facts can perhaps contribute to an understanding of the differences in the reporting of rape cases in these two countries.The differences in the reporting style of these news reports can also be due to technical factors such as time and space constraints but, based on our interview data, this appears to be less of a consideration in the news reporting practices of these newspapers.
This study is admittedly based on a limited set of data, but we believe that the insights obtained can enhance knowledge in a relatively unexplored area of research -cross-cultural and cross-language comparative studies of media discourse.Our findings demonstrate that whilst language may normally reflect cultural thought patterns (Kaplan, 1966;Fowler, 1991;Phillipson, 1992) this may not necessarily be the case in the reporting of sexual crime news by newspapers of different languages, as argued above.Our analysis shows a range of factors influencing the production and processes of news reporting in this particular subgenre in the Brunei-Malaysia-Malay-English matrix.These factors may include journalistic practises as well as commercial motivations to sell more papers due to intense competition.It may also include issues linked to censorship imposed on newspapers by higher authorities as in the case of the Brunei Malay newspaper or a desire to educate and remind the public of the dangers present in society as in the BH paper.Thus, it appears that differences in the reporting of rape cases involving minors in the matrix are not just due to linguistic differences but are culturally, ideologically and politically situated.The same conclusion was made by researchers investigating cross-cultural and cross-linguistic media discourse, as cited in our previous section (Knox and Patpong, 2008;Scollon, Wong-Scollon and Kirkpatrick, 1998;Wang, 1993).
Future research can perhaps be done using a larger corpus of news reports and focusing on other types of newspaper reports and other media subgenres such as editorials, feature articles, advertorials.Another area of future research can be conducted on the construction of 'good' and positive news reports in the matrix; an often neglected area in current research on media discourse.Local man sentenced for rape of two minors on: July 13, 2016 In: National 1.A LOCAL man was sentenced to jail for 23 years and six months with 16 strokes for 15 charges of raping two minor girls, possession of obscene photos of the girls, sexual grooming of the girls and unlawful carnal knowledge of one of the girls.2. Norin bin Pungut, 32, raped 13-year-old Miss X twice in a bedroom at a house in the Brunei-Muara District sometime in April and May 9. 3. Three charges stated that the defendant possessed three obscene photos of Miss X in a pen drive on April 6. 4. Two charges stated that the defendant raped 15-year-old Miss Y in March and April in a bedroom at a house in the Brunei-Muara District.5.One charge stated that the defendant had unlawful carnal knowledge of Miss Y on two or more occasions sometime prior to April in a bedroom at a house in the Brunei-Muara District with an intention to sexually groom Miss Y by luring her into meet-ups in the bedroom.6.Seven charges stated that the defendant possessed seven obscene photos of Miss Y inside a pen drive on May 6. 7. Judge Pengiran Masni binti Pengiran Bahar considered the mitigating factors of the case, having said there was not much in favour of the defendant, but his clear record and instant guilty plea in saving the court and prosecution time and expenses as well as saving the victims from going through a full trial and having to go through the ordeal of testifying the whole incident.8.The aggravating factors, put forward by the prosecution and taken into account by the judge, were the fact that the defendant was put in the position of trust by the victims, the defendant having taken advantage of the victims at their tender ages and had taken advantage of the victims' bereavement of the loss of their mother where they had started to see the defendant as a trusted person.9. Judge Pengiran Masni said that the court gives no tolerance to such an abhorrent crime and a sentence must be passed bearing in mind the order to punish the defendant and deter others from committing it.10.The judge also believed that the defendant would have continued committing the offences had it not been discovered.11.Deputy Public Prosecutor Sharon Yeo informed the court that the offences came to light when Miss X's schoolmate reported to a teacher that she was bringing a flick knife to school.12. Miss X was interviewed by the teacher who also found scars on her wrists.Miss X told her teacher that she and her sister had been having sex with the defendant.13.The teacher filed a police report which led to the defendant's arrest.

TABLE 1 .
Headlines of four parallel rape news reports

TABLE 2 .
Word count in four parallel rape new reports