orderby=date doesn’t orderby=date

This is starting to drive me insane!! I’ve got an amended index.php to show just the posts from a certain category, date sorted – so I have the following code before “The Loop”:

<?php if (is_home()) {
query_posts( ‘orderby=date&category_name=news&showposts=4’ );
} ?>

So firstly, it displays the correct posts, just from the news category, and it shows only 4. It doesn’t sort them by date however, they are alphabetical.. Any help would be seriously appreciated!