Weekly News (29/02/2016)
Sunday, March 06, 2016
Accused of fraudulently pocketing around two billion pounds, Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani was recently sentenced to death after a long trial that resulted in his conviction on counts of corruption. Zanjani denies the accusations of his wrongdoing and insists that he only owes money to Iran’s government - from oil sold on behalf of the oil ministry - as sanctions prevented the transfer of the money he tried to pay.
It is interesting to note the differences between the Middle Eastern News and the UK news account of the same story and how the distribution clearly affects it. For example, it is instantly evident from looking at the difference between the titles of the Metro’s and Haaretz’ reports of this news story that the distribution and context of the papers have major impacts on the story.
For example:
Metro:
Haaretz:
In Haaretz' account of the event, words such as ‘accused’ have been used to suggest that his sentence is something wrongful, and words such as ‘helped’ have been used to show Zanjani in better more positive light. It is interesting to note that Haaretz is a newspaper from Israel making it a Middle Eastern paper reporting a story concerning a Middle Eastern man, suggesting an immediate bias.
In contrast to this, Metro used words such as ‘restitution’ to express the seriousness of Zanjani’s crimes, and ‘fraudulently’ to reflect Zanjani in a negative light. Metro is a British tabloid with a typically right-wing, Conservative political stance. This explains the harsher stance that the paper took, with it’s political ideologies leaning more towards the current Islamophobia that many of the British right-wing media employ, and it’s tabloid status also suggests the reasoning behind the sensationalist language within the article.
Moreso than finding the actual story relevent, I found the different ways it was represented most relevant as it highlights the bias that the British media appears to have in regards to Middle Eastern countries, stemming from the recent rise of Islamophobia. Whilst subtle, it is clear that there is a difference in the way that a British paper reports this story than to the way that a Middle Eastern paper has.
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