Propagated media bias in the coverage of Khashoggi's case in the Saudi newspaper Arab news : a systemic functional grammar perspective

الملخص EN

According to the references included in the research, the Middle East area is exposed to a set of crises that may cause instability, including killing some public figures, stirring up public opinion, or escalating some international problems through media to direct societies' opinions.

The disappearance and then the killing of Jamal Khashoggi caught the attention of the whole world since October 2018 up till the moment.

Saudi writers are propagated biased against Jamal Khashoggi in worldwide media.

Thus, the purpose of the present research is to investigate the rhetoric stance of Saudi writers towards the issue of Khashoggi.

The present research adopts Halliday's (2014) systemic functional grammar framework which is based on the linguistic analysis of six processes, i.

e.

material, mental, verbal, relational, behavioral, and existential.

The data of the research consists of eight articles written by renowned Saudi journalists during the period from October 11, 2018, to November 1, 2018.

The results of the research revealed that the writers of Arab News are not biased against the case of Khashoggi but rather they are defending the stance of Saudi authority.