Can Oracle Text query return the terms found?
You might want to look into the MARKUP or HIGHLIGHT functions of the CTX_DOC package. An example of how MARKUP can be used for your query (this assumes your index is called idx_news and you have an ID column):

declare
  MARKLOB   clob;
  MARK1     number;
  MARK2     number;

  cursor NEWS_SEARCH is
    select * from NEWS;
begin
  for REC in NEWS_SEARCH loop
    CTX_DOC.MARKUP('idx_news', to_char(REC.ID), 'people OR country', MARKLOB);
    MARK1 := instr(MARKLOB, '&lt;&lt;&lt;');
    MARK2 := instr(MARKLOB, '&gt;&gt;&gt;');

    if MARK1 + MARK2 &lt;&gt; 0 then
      dbms_output.
       PUT_LINE(
        REC.ID || ',' || substr(MARKLOB, MARK1 + 3, MARK2 - MARK1 - 3));
    end if;
  end loop;
end;
/


What it does is mark up your text (surround the found items with &lt;&lt;&lt;&gt;&gt;&gt;) and outputs that new text to a clob which is then searched for the markup. All text that is found in your query will be marked up but my PL/SQL will only display the first result; it can be adapted to find them all and display only the unique ones. This is a simple example and perhaps can become too complicated for your original query but it's here to point the way.



Alternatively, a simple SELECT may suffice if all you have is an OR in your text query:

select decode(sign(SCORE(1))
             ,1, decode(sign(SCORE(2)), 1, 'both', 'people')
             ,'country')
         as WHICH
      ,TITLE
  from NEWS A
 where CONTAINS(TITLE, 'people', 1) &gt; 0 or CONTAINS(TITLE, 'country', 2) &gt; 0;


This checks the score for individual searches on 'people' and 'country' and works out which ones were positive, returning 'both' if both search terms were found.