Politics and Society

Cronicle:

New York Times
In New Middle East, Tests for an Old Friendship-18 minutes
Blair Urges U.S. to Seek Help from Syria and Iran-9 minutes
Iraqi Prime Minister Promises Government Shake-Up-6 minutes
Influence Rises but Base Frays for Iraqi Cleric-12 minutes
As Hezbolah Seeks Power, Lebanon is Feeling Edgy-10 minutes
Military Team Undertakes a Broad Review of the Iraq War and the Campaign Against Terror- 5minutes
(video) U.S. Confronts Iran-8 minutes
Various blog postings on Middle East-20 minutes

BBC ( UK Version)
Array of articles about the Middle East: from Lebanon to Iraq (19 short articles)
About 56 minutes.
Various blog postings.-20 minutes

ii.

The BBC, or British Broadcasting Company, started in 1922. It started out as a national radio station. Jon Reith became the first general-director when the company formed into a corporation in 1926. BBC television hit the community in 1936 but was suspended after 1939 because of the outbreak of the war. Eventually BBC evolved branching out in the next forty years with multiple channels, a new community within colleges, and more radio offshoots of the original corporation. Recently, this past decade saw the BBC take on a new role in launching into new media such as the internet and channels for kids, teens, etc.
The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City. It is an international newspaper going back to 1851. It was a local/national newspaper until 1910. Then in 1910, it made its first trip to London, becoming an international newspaper. After which, many new facets of daily life such as travel, style, business, and others began appearing and expanded the newspaper to it’s now today’s standards. The company who owns this newspaper also owns the Herald Tribune and the Washington Post.

iii.

I wanted to look at the differences in viewpoint on Middle East affairs from an American viewpoint and an international viewpoint. I looked at the New York Times online articles and the BBC World News online as well. I looked at how the articles were reported in the sense of; is it bipartisan? Is it representative of what the country seems to be politically? Is it trying to appeal to a specific audience? I also looked at whether or not the online articles were from journalists or from bloggers. Then I also looked at some blogs just to get an idea of differentiation in the viewpoints of the papers versus the bloggers.
I found some interesting and good differentiation in some things and not so much in others. To begin, the articles that were from the journalists/anchors were all walking on the line of being bipartisan. Sometimes you could tell if they were leaning little one way, but for the most part, they are pretty legit in being neutral. However, the British side seemed harsher than the American articles in general. The British articles were very
To the point and blunt in their writing. They got right down to the gritty side of the story. They also had less sympathetic stories than American articles. What I mean is that the articles themselves seemed less sad, but more consequential according to the outcome of the article. They’d state who was at fault rather than mourn the deaths of whoever was killed. The British news articles also had more of a wider range of topics on the Middle East and didn’t focus on any one topic too much in particular. They did focus more on Iraq, but not by much. Some reasons for this might be because of relations with Iraq. They simply aren’t as involved with Iraq as much as we are though they did aid us for some time. So, there are more articles are about Israel and situations in Upper Africa/Middle East. Yet, the New York Times reported a lot on Iraq. All of the articles below the ones in the main headlines were almost all related to something dealing with Iraq. The only other topic that was mentioned a little more than usual was the incidences with Israel and Lebanon. This is probably because we are one of Israel’s only allies and most Americans feel as though Israel is a pretty good ally for the US. The reason for more Iraqi articles is very evident because we’re still involved with that country very intimately as of 2003. The fact that Saddam’s sentence for his crimes also was finalized sent lots of attention recently to this as well.
The next part I looked at were some blog postings by both British and American citizens. The recent posting I assume would be very Republican or a similar ideology in Britain. This would be the case because of the recent sentence for Saddam. However, I didn’t know if that would totally wrong seeing a show he was sentenced to hang, so maybe more liberal views would speak out. I did read skim a few liberal postings, but the majority is just an overwhelming majority in favor of getting rid of Saddam. Whether it is by hanging or whatever, people just wanted Saddam gone (the posting were all mixed up on this topic). Still, some blog postings weren’t even about Iraq. I didn’t read those but I saw their headlines. The British postings kind of fell in line with the article voices, though. It was more a harsh reality and more vicious in their words. They didn’t sugar coat a lot of their entries. Some did, but the majority agreed with the American views in the sense that they wanted Saddam gone. However, they didn’t agree on their ideologies, with the British blog postings being more liberal. A couple postings described that America shouldn’t even be in Iraq now that they have to think about it since Saddam’s sentencing. Whatever the case may be, the reason for this is probably a more liberal world view toward the war, but still a disliking politically for Iraq and Saddam. The postings were also more ranged than American postings. Seeing as how they covered more topics than the New York Times., it’s natural to see more reactions to other articles than just one topic.