Terrorism news coverage has received much criticism for being irresponsible, problematic, and biased in terms of how attacks, perpetrators and victims are framed and reported on by journalists (Norris et al., 2003; Morin, 2016; Powell, 2018; Betus et al., 2020). This study makes a unique contribution to these debates by comparing the coverage of two news organisations (CNN / Al-Arabiya) in both their English and Arabic services to capture the differences and similarities between them in terms of framing, narration, and domestication, familiarisation, globalisation, and homogenisation. The thesis presents both quantitative and qualitative news analysis of various terror attacks perpetrated in 2017 by different actors (e.g. Islamist/jihadist perpetrators, right-wing perpetrators, and left-wing perpetrators), as categorised in the Global Terrorism Database. News framing and narrative analysis are complemented with interviews with journalists and editors from each of the news outlets.
Specifically, this study explores how journalists represent perpetrators and victims around the world in different cultural contexts. It argues that even though the media coverage of terrorism in 2017 has changed since the September 11 terrorist attacks, from the War on Terror and global threat framing to a framework of international cooperation and counter-terrorism, a continuing sense of biased narratives in the storytelling of terrorism still exists, particularly for CNN international. Additionally, this study foregrounds the importance of examining the different language services of the same news organisation. News services, even those under the same parent organisation, conceptualise their audiences and their preferences differently, thus demonstrating different journalistic practices and approaches to storytelling the news.
