Penggunaan Gaya Penulisan Berita Kriminal Dalam Surat Kabar Radar Garut

Abstract

The rapid transformation of digital journalism has pushed local media to balance the demand for speed with the necessity of maintaining ethical accuracy. In Garut, this dynamic is influenced by deeply rooted religious and social values within the community. This study aims to analyze the construction of criminal news writing styles in Radar Garut's online portal during 2025 using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This research using this qualitative descriptive study utilized purposive sampling of ten selected criminal news articles and in-depth interviews with a crime journalist as primary data sources. Based on this research, can be known that at the micro-level reveal the use of active transitivity to emphasize police heroism and evaluative modality to reflect the media's alignment with local morality. At the meso-level, a strong reliance on official institutional sources serves as a strategy to maintain credibility against the rise of unverified citizen journalism. At the macro-level, the criminal discourse functions as a sociocultural instrument to preserve social harmony and religious values in Garut Regency. This research implies that local journalism plays a strategic role in negotiating digital information speed with the preservation of communal moral standards.