News bias and determining the mechanism used for international events and their coverage of using Egyptian case as a precedent

Abstract EN

The international arena witnessed lots of controversies about the role of the Anglo-American press in covering the controversy after what Egypt witnessed on the last 30th of June, 2013.

In this context, the research problem tries to find out the extent of the contribution of the news sources in the Anglo-American press in shaping trends in press coverage to the events that took place in the Egyptian domain since June 30 till now.

In addition, it tackles the factors affecting these sources, whether related to editorial policy in the newspaper or to the agenda interests in international relations and attitudes of state policies towards the events taking place in Egypt.

The four newspapers that are included in this study are The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Independent and The Guardian Weekly.

The research depend on two theories which are Framing Theory and International News Flow Theory.

The study use both quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to fulfil the goals of the study.

Results found that these newspapers use the bias intentionally in covering news related to Third World countries events including Egypt to establish a stereotypic image of this world.

Therefore, they concentrate on the negative events and ignore positives.

They also intentionally use informative sources giving a false balance in coverage.

The study reveals a schizophrenia showing in the contradictions between professional ethical basics adopted by these newspapers as a processing approach and a tool of presenting the other and between the actual approaches used by these newspapers especially with Third World countries like Egypt.

This is what they tell us.

Results showed that the newspapers can violate the profession standards.

Although media claim to be objective, bias inevitably finds its way into the news.