A Study of Reporting about Terrorism on Two Pan-Arab Television News Channels

This study examined TV coverage of terrorism from Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya using media framing analysis. The study attempted to address two main objectives. These objectives are exploring the terrorism issues in both Arabic news channels under the period of study and the extent to which the two networks differ or agree; and identifying the factors that might have influenced each of these two news providers’ news selection processes and the framing of terrorism on broadcast networks. Using a framing approach, this study initially used content analysis to examine a number of framing devices based on past literature such as types of news frames, framing perspective, geographical location of terrorism coverage, sources used, perpetrators of terrorism, victims of terrorism, episodic versus thematic frame, and responsibility frames. Furthermore, discourse analysis was applied to understand the link between discursive practice and the broader social and cultural developments and structures. Language extracts taken from both TV networks’ broadcasts were compared, taking into consideration different contextual factors that contribute to the production and consumption of news discourse about terrorism. This study found that the stereotype that ‘the terrorist is a Muslim’ prevailed in the news coverage that was analysed. Furthermore, contrary to the pattern among western news sources, both networks were consistent in at least implying that the majority of terrorism victims are Muslims. In addition, the findings reveal that too much media focus was placed on disseminating and supporting official positions and decisions, and that humanitarian suffering from terrorism is seldom brought to the attention of the public.