The ‘terrorism’ frame in ‘neo-Orientalism’: Western news and the Sunni–Shia Muslim...

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MCP 10 (1) pp. 7–24 Intellect Limited 2014

International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics Volume 10 Number 1

© 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/macp.10.1.7_1

Keywords

framingIslammedia discoursesterrorismpropagandaOrientalism

Aziz douAiUniversity of Ontario Institute of Technology

shAron LAuriceLLAUniversity of Ontario Institute of Technology

The ‘terrorism’ frame in ‘neo-

orientalism’: western news

and the sunni–shia Muslim

sectarian relations after 9/11

AbsTrAcT

Sunni–Shia relations have become a topic of significant media attention; this atten-tion is largely due to the tendency of these groups to engage in sectarian strife as well as the Islamic Shia sect’s influential rise in world politics. The inter-Islamic sectarian relations are part of extensive reporting on upheaval events currently taking place in the Greater Middle East in the post 9/11 decade. This study analyses ten years of news coverage of the Sunni–Shia relations in the Canadian Globe and Mail and the US-based Washington Post. Results indicate that rather than contextualizing sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Islam, this media coverage overwhelm-ingly frames the tensions from the ‘war on terrorism’ perspective. This article argues that ‘neo-Orientalist’ discourses and propagandist perspectives have become routi-nized and more prevalent in the manner in which Western media represents Islam, privileging dominant discourses and ‘war on terrorism’ frames.

MCP_10.1_Douai_Lauricella_7-24.indd 7 6/3/14 11:55:00 AM

Aziz Douai | Sharon Lauricella

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The post-9/11 ‘war on terrorism’ has directly led to Western media’s greater attention to Muslim countries, issues related to religious extremism and radicalization and, more generally, the salience of Islam and Muslims in international news coverage (e.g. Karim 2003; Palmer 2003; Tumber and Palmer 2004; Richardson 2004; Artz and Kamalipour 2005; Saeed 2007). The salience of Sunni–Shia relations in Western media’s coverage of Islam and terrorism is part of this extensive reporting on the Greater Middle East. For media professionals and reporters of international news, a host of reasons warrant such increased media scrutiny of Sunni–Shia relations and the Sunni–Shia ‘divide’ in Islam (Nasr 2006), not least due to the threat of ‘terrorism’ and al-Qaeda (Schwartz 2002). On the one hand, Sunni Islam has become inextricably embroiled in the debate about how Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi tradition instigates extremism (Delong-bas 2004). The fact that al-Qaeda emerged out of Wahhabi Islam’s teachings, with its leader Osama Bin Laden born into the tradition, further cemented Sunni Islam’s supposed relationship to terrorism (Schwartz 2002). For international media organi-zations, highlighting the apparent rift between the Sunni and Shia Islamic teachings could provide a way of gauging the underpinnings of religious extremism.

On the other hand, Sunni–Shia relations have become a hot topic of media coverage in large part due to these groups’ potential to engage in sectarian strife, but also because of the Shia sect’s influential rise in world politics (Nasr 2006). In addition to the evident geopolitical importance of the Khomeini-led Shiite Iran in the region, the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent overthrow of Saddam’s Baathist regime shifted the balance of power in Iraq as its Shiite majority has become more vocal and the coun-try’s de facto governing regime. While violence raged in Iraq, particularly in the years between 2004 and 2007, Iraq’s Sunni minority identified with the ‘resistance’ and the attacks targeting the US military, including the much-publicized battle of Fallujah (Baram 2005). Moreover, the Lebanese Israeli war in 2006, which was essentially a confrontation between Shiite Hezbollah fighting Israeli forces, signalled the pre-eminence of Shia Islam in the region (Snow and Byrd 2007).

The Sunni–Shia rift in Islam is rooted in the historical development of Islam itself and the struggle over power. After the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, two different perspectives regarding the succession of the prophet, and who should become the Caliph (the Muslim commu-nity’s leader) emerged, and subsequently clashed. While one perspective on succession claimed that Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, was the rightful heir, the second perspective believed that the prophet’s companions, Sahaba, had a rightful claim (Behuria 2004). Ali’s consent to be the fourth Caliph would have put the conflict to rest, but his assassination and the murder of his two sons led to a bloody conflict between his supporters and the oppos-ing factions led by Muawiya, Muhammad’s brother-in-law. The political struggle had religious ramifications with the decision of Ali’s supporters to follow the teachings of ahl-ul-bayt (or the house of the prophet), and they became known as Shia. The Muawiya-led faction decided to solely follow the Hadith and Sunnah, the teachings and acts of Muhammad, and therefore assumed the label Sunni. While the bitter rivalry between the Shia and Sunni religious communities has ebbed and flowed, some contemporary scholars suggest that the current tensions are emblematic of a deep transformation in the Muslim world (Nasr 2006).


The ‘terrorism’ frame in ‘neo-Orientalism’

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wesTern MediA frAMing of isLAM: MuLTipLe TheoreTicAL Lenses

Violent Shia–Sunni sectarian conflicts have flared up in a number of Muslim countries where the two sects coexist, such as Pakistan (Behuria 2004) and Lebanon, but such geographical areas have rarely captured Western media’s attention. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, this sectarian tension had become enmeshed in the media’s coverage of the ‘war on terror’ and the politics of Islam. Such prominence has predictably led to a considerable body of academic research that has sought to analyse how Western and global media cover terrorism and Islam. Academic research on this topic has shown varying levels of rigour and focus. For instance, some studies have focused on international media’s framing of terrorism (e.g. Norris, Kern and Just 2003), the fears and threats engendered by the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ (e.g. Altheide 2006) or how governments used the ‘war on terrorism’ to clamp down on political and civil liberties or what David Cole describes as ‘new McCarthyism’ (e.g. Cole 2003; Ackerman 2006).

Given the complex nature of news, multi-theoretical lenses are required to grapple with news construction of such sectarian tensions. In this respect, framing theory is helpful in deconstructing the rhetorical and ideological underpinnings of news. In broad terms, research on news framing has focused on four empirical goals:

(a) to identify thematic units called frames, (b) to investigate the ante-cedent conditions that produce frames, (c) to examine how news frames activate, and interact with, an individual’s prior knowledge to affect interpretations, recall of information, decision making, and evaluations, and (d) to examine how news frames shape social-level processes such as public opinion and policy issue debates.

(D’Angelo 2002: 873)

The identification of news frames in media coverage necessarily requires researchers to unpack the ‘key words’ and other symbols that make up the ‘news narrative[s]’. Entman (1991) explains that

News frames are constructed from and embodied in the key words, metaphors, concepts, symbols, and visual images emphasized in a news narrative. Since the narrative finally consists of nothing more than words and pictures, frames can be detected by probing for particular words and visual images that consistently appear in a narrative and convey thematically consonant meaning across media and time.

(pp. 6–7)

Moreover, these news frames promote certain interpretations of reality and events through ‘selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters’ (Gitlin 1980: 6). Some scholars have explained that the privileging of certain news frames, ‘news narratives’ and interpretations in mainstream media coverage is due to various professional and institutional traditions informing the practice of journalism (e.g. Tuchman 1978; Shoemaker and Reese 1996). Additionally, since ‘frame building’ does not occur in a vacuum, dominant ideologies and elites have a decisive role in influencing the way issues are framed in the news to shape public opinion (Entman 2004). As Entman’s work and other research on the



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ways the US invasion of Iraq was framed in US mainstream media demonstrate, powerful elites, specifically the Bush administration, the Republican Party and right-wing pundits, were so successful in using the media to advance their claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that many American citizens believed Iraq had the WMDs despite factual evidence to the contrary.

The ideological and hegemonic interpretation of reality that framing theory has uncovered calls into attention Herman’s and Chomsky’s longstanding description of the mainstream media as a ‘propaganda’ tool at the hands of the powerful. In their seminal Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Herman and Chomsky argue that US mainstream media (MSM) are inherently part of the ideological superstructure of capitalism and are thus unable to offer a critical coverage of foreign affairs. As a tool of propaganda, the mainstream media ‘mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity’ (1988: xi). Herman and Chomsky proposed a ‘prop-aganda model’ to dissect US elite media’s coverage of foreign affairs, specifically US interventions in Latin America and other parts of the world, and revealed how MSM’s coverage was biased in favour of US official policies. According to their ‘propaganda model’, five ‘filters’ constrain and condition MSM’s behaviour and news content: (1) corporate ownership undermines the media’s independ-ence because corporations’ primary self-interest/profit motivation overrides the public’s interest; (2) the media’s dependence on advertising implies a focus on stories that do not alienate corporate advertisers and audiences; (3) over-reliance on official sources means that reporting will not reflect dissenting views; (4) fear of criticism coming from right wing and corporate flak restrains reporters’ inves-tigations and pursuit of ‘fair and balanced’ narratives; and (5) the media estab-lishment shares the US government’s anti-communism ideology. In Rebooting the Herman & Chomsky Propaganda Model in the Twenty-First Century, Goss (2013) offers a useful and updated take on how these filters and structural factors continue to influence the production and content of contemporary news.

While the ‘propaganda model’ has indeed received unceremonious recep-tion and labelled as ‘conspiracy theory’ type of analysis, this ‘macro-level’ critique of media operations has continued to demonstrate its explanatory power and relevance to non-US media and the post–Cold War world political environment. For instance, Boyd-Barrett (2004) applied the model to the coverage of the Iraq War, specifically to the work of Judith Miller, a promi-nent New York Times correspondent. He argued that the ‘NYT’s own apologia strongly suggests that an overall “corporate” point of view was imposed on Iraq war coverage’ (2004: 444). Additionally, over-reliance on (anonymous) official sources and fear of flak contributed to the debacle of the paper’s reporting on the Iraq War, concluding that

There is more than a suggestion, in the case of NYT coverage of Iraq, of a cosy relationship between individual journalists and official sources, including intelligence sources, for example between Judith Miller and Ahmad Chalabi, or between Judith Miller and the Pentagon, such that the relationship seemed to work very clearly to promote the perspec-tives, not to say the lies, of the administration as to the reasons it advanced for the invasion of Iraq.

(p. 447)

In fact, such implicit ‘collaboration’ between journalists and officials under-scores the significant ‘ideological convergence’ between mainstream media



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and the ruling elites that inflects the news framing of foreign affairs. Similarly, Goss’s (2013) revisit to the ‘propaganda model’ provides ample evidence and critical assessment of the ‘infrastructure’ surrounding news produc-tion. Commenting on the ‘frequent pattern’ of co-dependence between offi-cial sources and journalists, Goss (2013: 88–89) explains that official sources supply reporters with information and quotes that significantly shape the way stories and news narratives are told.

The attempt to bring together the ‘micro-level’ analysis that framing theory yields and the ‘macro-level’ insights gleaned from the ‘propaganda model’ to the study of Western media coverage of the Sunni–Shia tensions should not obscure the persistent ‘Orientalist’ treatment of Islam in the West. As Said (1978) argued, the tendency to construct Islam as the uncivilized and savage ‘Other’ has been a historical hallmark of Western encounters with the East since the Middle Ages, evidence of which is widely dispersed in travel writings, literature and news media. The ‘Orientalist’ discourse draws on the asymmetrical ‘relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony’ between the Occident and the Orient (1978: 133). Contemporary manifestations of Orientalist discursive construction of Islam and Muslims as the ‘Other’ have been discussed in analyses of Western media coverage of the War on Terror. For instance, Cloud (2004) demonstrated how images of veiled Afghan women circulating in US media constructed ‘binary oppositions of self and Other, [evoked] a pater-nalistic stance toward the women of Afghanistan, and [presented] modernity as liberation’ in order to justify the military intervention in Afghanistan in 2002.

In this article, we argue that an investigation of Western media’s news coverage of the Shia–Sunni tensions offers an opportunity to revisit the deep-seated Orientalist treatment of Islam as ‘Other’. Drawing on the large research work on framing, we further argue that news frames are deeply embedded in the complex institutional, professional and cultural contexts in which they exist. In other terms, while news frames help media audiences to make sense of reality, that is, social construction of reality, they are in turn shaped by the social, cultural and institutional forces in society. For these reasons, this research study deploys insights from framing theory, Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model, particularly reporters’ reliance on official sources, and Said’s critique of ‘Orientalism’ to analyse Western mediated discourses regard-ing the Shia–Sunni tensions. Additionally, despite abundant literature on media, Islam and terrorism, a notable gap in the literature on Sunni–Shia rela-tions exists. Scholarly research has not yet examined how mainstream media in the West has covered these two dominant sects of Islam, nor has it analysed how Western media have framed the Sunni and Shia relations/divide. This research seeks to fill this gap by studying a decade’s worth of media coverage of the topic. We attempt to answer the following research question (RQ1):

RQ1: How have Western media framed the Sunni–Shia relations after the 9/11 attacks?

Specifically, we focus on (1) the tone of media coverage (positive, nega-tive or neutral); (2) the type of sources used to in the coverage and (3) the ‘geopolitical’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘religious’ frames constructed by Western news media reports about Sunni–Shia relations.

An investigation of how Western media cover Islam and Sunni–Shia relations remains warranted because of media frames’ discernible effects on audiences,



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including policy-makers and opinion leaders (Entman 2004). Our research seeks to draw attention to other questions about contemporary Western media’s fram-ing of Islam, including: Does such coverage enlighten Western readers regarding the theological/religious differences between these two sects of Islam? What sort of contextual information does such coverage impart to Western readers? How does such coverage enhance audiences’ knowledge of Islam and the Muslim world? How would such coverage enhance non-Muslim Western audiences’ awareness of the differences between these two sects and thereby contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of Islam? These important questions motivate this study and its goal to contribute other attempts to provide a fuller understanding of the Western perspective on Islamic cultures and politics.

We examined media coverage of Sunni–Shia relations through a close analysis of related news coverage published in two influential newspapers, the US-based Washington Post (WP) and the Canadian Globe and Mail (G&M). These two daily newspapers were selected because they reflect ‘mainstream’ journalism and they focus on political and international news in their respective nations. Unlike popular tabloids, these newspapers target an educated/elite readership and thus remain an important conduit for communicating dominant ideologies in international politics (Herman and Chomsky 1988). The decision to include a Canadian newspaper was based on the fact that Canada decided against partici-pation in the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ war on Iraq in 2003. We reasoned that Canada’s lack of involvement could potentially offer a different perspective on Iraq’s ensuing sectarian tensions than British or Australian newspapers.

MeThod

Published in two different nations with divergent levels of involvement in the ‘War on Terror’, these two newspapers are influential in terms of circulation and policy impact. The WP has a long history as an investigative, political newspaper that broke stories ranging from the Watergate scandal to the recently award-winning series on the ‘national security’ industry spawned by 9/11 (Wolfsfeld 2011; Priest and Arkin 2010). In Canada, the Globe and Mail has been in print for more than 165 years and, as an influential mainstream publication, espouses a similar traditional journalistic paradigm of both inves-tigative reporting and ‘balanced’ and ‘objective’ reporting. According to its website, the G&M ‘continues to be recognized for its dedication to excellence and high journalistic standards’ (Globelink.ca 2012). Reporters from both papers routinely garner journalism prizes, including the US Pulitzer Prize and the Canadian National Newspaper Awards. For instance, the G&M’s award-winning multimedia feature, Talking to the Taliban, achieved a News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2009. The WP’s Pulitzer award-winners Dana Priest and William Arkin exposed the mushrooming national security cottage industry in the US intelligence community in the aftermath of 9/11 (Wolfsfeld 2011). Based on the Audit Bureau of Circulations (2012), the circu-lation numbers of these newspapers are comparable in terms of reach, regard-less of the huge difference in their countries’ population size (Table 1).

Data collection procedures

To answer RQ1, we analysed data collected from the two newspapers described above. The unit of analysis in this study is the individual article. The data retrieval procedures were designed to capture the largest possible pool of related coverage and news articles in both newspapers. Employing



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the Lexis-Nexis database to search within each newspaper, the researchers used the general search terms, ‘Sunni’ OR ‘Shia’, to collect all stories related to the topic that were published between 9 November 2001 and 9 November 2011. The initial search yielded N = 891 news articles from the G&M and N = 1245 news articles from the WP that had ‘Sunni’ or ‘Shia’ in their head-lines, abstracts or the lead paragraphs.

After a careful consideration of retrieved data, we eliminated all opinion columns, editorials and articles from news agencies, including Reuters, Associated Press, Canadian Press and all irrelevant news items (e.g. reviews for films starring actor Shia Leboeuf, which were captured by the search given the name ‘Shia’ but were irrelevant to this study). We deemed that material from other newspapers or press agencies, as well as editorial or opinion articles, would reflect the editorial decisions and reporting practices of other journalistic organizations or independent individuals, but not the ideologies of the news-papers included in the study. Furthermore, opinion columns and editorials are clearly associated with ‘opinion’, rather than the ‘objective’ reporting of these organizations (Ryan 2004). Elimination of such items ensured that our selected data include only well-researched and well-reported in-house-produced arti-cles that reflect the mainstream values of news reporting that these newspapers espouse. With the above criteria in mind, the researchers ended up with N = 157 news articles from the G&M and N = 882 from the WP with a combined total of N = 1039 news articles (see Table 2). Among other explanations, the discrep-ancy in the number of articles between the two newspapers can be ascribed to the fact that the Washington Post’s proximity to US political elites contributes to greater coverage of the ‘war on terrorism’ and the Islamic world.

Frames and coding categories

Framing theory has guided much of the research seeking to analyse and comprehend the ways that news media privilege certain ‘frames’, or vantage points, in their coverage (e.g. Goffman 1974; Entman 1991; Pan and

Sources: Circulation data for the Globe and Mail is drawn from Globelink.ca (2012).

Table 1: Circulation numbers of The Globe and Mail and Washington Post.

Newspaper Country Owner 2011 daily circulation [Monday to Friday]

The Globe and Mail Canada Globe Media Inc. (Woodbridge & Bell Media)

307,482

The Washington Post USA The Washington Post Company

507,465

Newspaper Database Coverage period # Articles

The Globe and Mail Lexis-Nexis 9 November 2001 to 9 November 2011

157

The Washington Post Lexis-Nexis 9 November 2001 to 9 November 2011

882

Table 2: Retrieved news articles.



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Kosicki 1993; Reese, Gandy and Grant 2001). Following previous research employing framing analysis as a method (e.g. Dimitrova and Connolly-Ahern 2007), we focused first on article ‘tone’ regarding each religious sect and posed the question, ‘Does the article’s overall tone frame Sunni and/or Shia Islam as “negative”, “positive” or “neutral”?’ For instance, if an article asserted that Sunni Islam was more ‘peaceful’, ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ than Shia Islam, that article was coded as having a positive tone regarding Sunni Islam. Similarly, if an article’s overall tone seemed to indicate that Shia Islam was less violent, or more tolerant in direct comparison to Sunni Islam, such an article would be coded as ‘negative’ toward Sunni Islam. During data coding, a ‘positive’ tone was associated with descriptions of a sect as ‘faithful’, ‘devout’, ‘nonviolent’ and ‘respected’. A ‘negative’ tone was associated with descriptions of a sect as ‘extremist’, ‘radical’, ‘threatening’ or ‘aggressive’ activities. A ‘neutral’ tone referred to cases in which a news article did not clearly impart a ‘negative’ or a ‘positive’ attitude vis-à-vis one of the sects, or did not explicitly blame it for violence or conflict. In other words, an article’s tone reflected the evidence supported or value-judgement imparted in the news article.

The second stage of the analysis considered the distribution and type of sources used in newspapers’ coverage of the Sunni–Shia tensions. Specifically, we analysed each newspaper’s reliance on official government sources versus media sources in their reporting. Moreover, we distinguished between Western versus Muslim sources, whether they be official/government or media sources. Accordingly, we examined the frequency of all direct and indi-rect statements attributed to sources and coded them in one of the follow-ing categories: Western official/government sources would include any direct or indirect statement attributed to a US, Canadian or European government official, like the US Administration and the Canadian Prime Minister‘s Office. Official/government Muslim sources would include any statement directly or indirectly attributed to a Muslim official of a Muslim majority country such as the Iraqi Prime Minister or a Saudi government official. Similarly, we distin-guished between Western media sources (e.g. Reuters, CNN, Associate Press, the Canadian Press, etc.) and Muslim media sources (e.g. Al Jazeera Television and other media based in a Muslim majority country). Sources that did not fit in one of these categories were coded as ‘other’.

The final stage of the analysis focused on over-arching frames used to ‘organize’ the various stories covering the Sunni–Shia relations/divide in Western media. The research investigated the frames used in these two newspapers’ coverage; articles were analysed according to whether they used a ‘geopolitical frame’, a ‘terrorism’ frame or a ‘religious frame’. As a coding category, the ‘geopolitical frame’ was a general, overarching frame that addressed the Sunni–Shia relations/divide in secular and explicitly non-theological terms. For instance, when an article framed the resurgence of Shia Islam as a result of a shift in the balance of power between Saudi Arabia and Iran and their attempts at regional influence, it was considered a ‘geopolitical frame’. A ‘geopolitical frame’ would also describe a news story that discussed Sunni–Shia relations in the region within the context of the US invasion of Iraq, or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. A ‘geopolitical’ framing’ of Sunni–Shia relations includes a military, ‘conflict’, political and economic supplemental/subframes.

The ‘geopolitical frame’ was distinct from what we labelled a ‘terrorism frame’. The terrorism frame addressed the Sunni–Shia divide that situated such tensions within the context of the US-led ‘war on terrorism’ after 9/11.



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For instance, stories involving incidents of organized, politically motivated violence – that is, terrorism – in Iraq were coded as part of the ‘terrorism frame’. If a story mentioned how Shia or Sunni Iraqis were plotting or attacking US forces, it would be coded as a ‘terrorism frame’. Also, if a story discussed the sectarian conflict as the outcome of US invasion of Iraq, it would qualify within the terrorism frame. However, if a story discussed how the sectarian conflict that ensued after the US invasion was clearly giving Iran the upper hand in the region, we coded it as ‘a geopolitical’ frame. Our distinction between the ‘terrorism frame’ and the ‘geopolitical frame’ is that the former was more likely to involve violence rather than geopolitical calculations—and thus the ‘terrorism frame’ would include non-state actors’ use of organized violence and/or the response to such violence. Given that the Bush adminis-tration ‘sold’ its Iraq invasion as part of its ‘war on terrorism’, it seemed logical that we consider it as part of the ‘terrorism frame’.

While the ‘geopolitical’ and ‘terrorism’ frames encompassed more contem-porary and secular implications, the ‘religious framing’ of Sunni–Shia rela-tions unambiguously discussed the issue from a theological and/or historical vantage point. If a news article sought to contextualize the tension in Shia–Sunni relations as rooted in the theological underpinnings of Islam, it was coded as a ‘religious frame’. When a news article mentioned the ‘history’ of the strife within Islam that pitted Shia Muslims against Sunni Muslims, for instance, it also would be coded as a ‘religious frame’.

A randomly drawn 10 per cent of the articles from the G&M and the WP were coded to assess inter-coder reliability. After two trained coders coded this random sample, we found a high degree of agreement between the coders at 94.25 per cent.

resuLTs

In the present study, we examined how the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail covered the Sunni–Shia sectarian tensions during the post-9/11 decade. The study analysed a total of N = 1039 news articles that addressed Sunni and/or Shia Islam, including 157 and 882 news articles from the G&M and the WP, respectively. In accordance with previous studies of news media frames (e.g. Entman 1991; Pan and Kosicki 1993; Dimitrova and Connolly-Ahern 2007), we argue that understanding each newspaper’s framing strategies must involve consideration of both the tone and the dominant news frames gleaned from the overall coverage. Tone refers to the overall ‘neutral’, ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ tone of the article regarding the Sunni or Shia sects. The second part of our research examines the type of sources that journalists rely on when reporting on the Sunni–Shia tensions. We mainly looked at four sourcing categories: Western official/government, Muslim official/government, Western media and Muslim media sources. The final part of our research question focused on how the WP and the G&M framed the internecine tensions between the Sunni and Shia Islamic sects in the decade after 9/11.

Tone of coverage

For both the G&M and the WP, a clear majority of news reports covering the Sunni–Shia sectarian divide in the post-9/11 decade had an unambiguously ‘negative’ tone regarding both Islamic sects. In the G&M’s overall coverage, 59.37 per cent (N = 133) articles had a ‘negative’ tone about the Sunni and/or Shia Islamic sects. In the WP, the number of articles with a ‘ negative’ tone



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toward these Islamic sects was 53.47 per cent (N = 724). Looking closely at these numbers, we discovered that the G&M’s coverage of the Shia sect was more frequently covered in a ‘negative’ tone (62.4 per cent; N = 83) compared to the Sunnis (56.18 per cent; N = 50). In the WP, results indi-cated the converse: Sunnis were more frequently covered in ‘negative’ terms (58 per cent; N = 503) compared to Shia (45.38 per cent; N = 221).

Part of both papers’ coverage strives to take a ‘neutral’ tone regarding the Sunni–Shia sectarian divide with differences similar to those observed above. On the one hand, the G&M took a ‘neutral’ tone when mentioning the Sunni (41.57 per cent; N = 37) compared to the Shia sect (34.81 per cent; N = 47). On the other hand, the WP’s ‘neutral’ tone was more frequent when mentioning the Shia (51.75 per cent; N = 252) rather than the Sunni sect (40.7 per cent; N = 355). Finally, while ‘positive’ tone coverage was limited to very few articles, both papers had more ‘positive’ tone articles on the Shia than the Sunni sect. In the G&M, ‘positive’ tone stories represented only 2.25 per cent (N = 2) and 3.7 per cent (N = 5) for the Shia and the Sunni sects, respectively. The WP’s articles with a positive tone represented only 2.87 per cent (N = 14) and 1.3 per cent (N = 9) for the Shia and the Sunni sects, respectively. The statistical findings regarding the tone of news coverage discussed above are presented in Tables 3 and 4.

Reporting sources

We explored how reporters’ use of sources inflected the coverage of the Sunni–Shia relations in both newspapers. Analysis of all direct and indirect quotes and statements shows that official and government sources dominate both newspapers’ coverage. As reporters overwhelmingly relied on officials, they first turn to Western official and government sources in their reporting of the issue, constituting 37 per cent (N = 1876) of the WP and 26 per cent (N = 116) of the G&M. Muslim official and government sources come a close second in both newspapers at 30 per cent (N = 1521) of the WP and 20 per cent (N = 88) of the G&M. While media sources are less frequently used compared to official/government sources, the G&M is more likely than the WP to use Muslim media sources at 7 per cent (N = 32) and 2 per cent (N = 96), respectively. Table 5 summarizes the results showing the distribution of sources in both newspapers.

Table 3: Articles’ tone in the Globe and Mail’s coverage.

Table 4: Articles’ tone in The Washington Post’s coverage.

Positive Negative Neutral Total

Per cent N Per cent N Per cent N Per cent N

Sunni Islam 2.25 2 56.18 50 41.57 37 100 89Shia Islam 3.7 5 61.48 83 34.81 47 100 135

Positive Negative Neutral Total

Per cent N Per cent N Per cent N Per cent N

Sunni Islam 1.3 9 58 503 40.7 355 100 867Shia Islam 2.87 14 45.38 221 51.74 252 100 487



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Framing Sunni–Shia relations

A framing analysis of the G&M’s and the WP’s coverage revealed strik-ing similarities in both papers’ coverage of the Sunni–Shia sectarian divide. A preliminary reading of the retrieved data led us to focus on three perti-nent news frames: the ‘geopolitical’, ‘religious’ and the ‘terrorism’ frames (as detailed above). Data analysis demonstrates that the ‘terrorism’ frame most frequently dominated coverage of the Sunni and Shia sectarian tension in both papers, representing 75.16 per cent and 81.07 per cent in the G&M and the WP, respectively (see Table 6).

The ‘geopolitical’ frame represented the second most frequent news frame through which the newspapers report on Islamist sectarian tensions, consti-tuting 21.02 per cent and 16.78 per cent of the G&M’s and the WP’s coverage, respectively. The ‘religious’ frame was the least frequent of the three news frames, representing only 3.82 per cent and 2.15 per cent in the G&M and the WP, respectively.

discussion

Analysis of the tone, the sources and the news frames employed in the coverage of the Sunni–Shia tensions reveals a negative coverage that distinctly lacks context in reporting relative to Islam. First, coverage of the Sunni–Shia sectarian divide in both papers leaned primarily toward a ‘negative’ tone. A ‘neutral’ tone was sometimes employed, though it was overshadowed by the prominence of ‘negative’ coverage. Given that the overall analysis showed very little ‘positive’ coverage of either sect in both papers, the WP reserved the bulk of its negative coverage to the Sunni sect while the bulk of the G&M’s negative coverage was directed at the Shia. Some potential explanations are in

The Globe and Mail The Washington Post

Per cent N Per cent N

Western official/government sources 26 116 37 1876Muslim official/government sources 20 88 30 1521Western media sources 3 14 5 241Muslim media sources 7 32 2 96Other 43 191 27 1379Total 100 441 100 5113

Table 5: Source distribution in the Globe and Mail and the Washington Post.

Table 6: News frames in the Globe and Mail and the Washington Post.

News frame The Washington Post The Globe and Mail

Per cent N Per cent N

Terrorism frame 81.07 715 75.16 118Geopolitical frame 16.78 148 21.02 33Religious frame 2.15 19 3.82 6Total 100 882 100 157



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order. We suggest that the differences in how each Islamic sect was treated in the paper were due to the fact that Sunni Islam was tainted by its association with al-Qaeda and Wahhabi Islam in US political discourse. The Shia sect was portrayed in more ‘neutral’ terms because it was perceived to be the enemy of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and as such this sect was considered to have an important stake in post-Saddam Iraq. The fact that the WP neatly reflects such discourse should not be surprising given that previous media research on agenda-setting and framing demonstrates that news frames constantly draw on elite/mainstream discourse (e.g. Entman 2004).

The second main finding of the present study is that official and government sources play a pivotal role in Western media’s coverage of the Sunni–Shia issue. An overwhelming number of quotes and indirect statements in the coverage appear to have been drawn from official and government sources. Moreover, Western official and government sources are more likely to be quoted than Muslim sources. Over-reliance on these Western official sources indicates that news reports about this topic are likely to continue privileging the perspectives and narratives of the West about the Orient. Such finding supports the conten-tion of Herman and Chomsky’s model about the ‘filters’ used in MSM’s report-ing of international politics. More significantly, these sources scaffold the type of news frames that emerge from the coverage of the Sunni–Shia tensions.

The third important finding from the data concerns the overwhelming prev-alence of the ‘terrorism’ frame in how both newspapers present the Sunni–Shia sectarian divide to their readers. We expected the ‘terrorism’ frame to be an important news frame in the post-9/11 decade, given that the United States and its ‘Coalition of the Willing’ engaged in two wars in the Muslim world during this period. Indeed, one of this study’s motivations is to document how the ‘war on terrorism’ affected Western media coverage of Islam during the last decade. However, we did not anticipate that the ‘war on terrorism’ would influence non-US media coverage of the Sunni–Shia sectarian conflict. It is surprising that the prevalence of the ‘terrorism’ frame is consistent and similar in both news-papers because Canada was not part of the second Iraq war US-led coalition. The weak presence of ‘alternative’ frames indicates that both papers failed to ‘enlighten’ their readers about the religious and cultural roots of Islam’s sectar-ian conflicts. This lack of religious, cultural and historical frames implies that misreading and misunderstanding of Islam is likely to continue.

The above findings demonstrate the ascendancy of the ‘war on terrorism’ frame as an overarching one which influences journalists and news organiza-tions’ coverage of Islam and the Muslim world. A decade’s worth of reporting reveals that the terrorism frame has expanded beyond a short-hand, journal-istic tool to describe classic terrorist acts, or the al-Qaeda breed of terrorism; it has become a familiar window through which Islam’s sectarian tensions are explained to Western readers. Other researchers have observed that media’s coverage of Islam tends to shift the meanings of even benign, or neutral, terms to endow them with a more ominous connotation (e.g. Vultee 2006; Ismail 2010). Arabic words with religious meanings, like sharia, fatwa or jihad, have been over-simplified, erroneously used, abused and mal-appropriated in Western news media discourse. In tracing the convoluted meaning of the term fatwa in US news accounts, Vultee (2006: 1) asks, ‘How did fatwa, once an unambiguous, simple term for a ruling on a question of Islamic religious law, come to mean “death sentence” in U.S. news language and popular culture?’ Vultee concludes that the popularization of the ominous meaning of fatwa from the political realm to popular culture discourse, like ‘Energizer bunny’



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ads, cannot be simply due to ‘a series of gatekeeping failures’. Instead, Vultee indicts a journalistic culture that largely feeds on ‘an ideology of difference’; that is, these reporting ‘errors’ re-affirm a deep-seated Orientalist bent in Western news discourse. Further, our investigation opens up several lines of inquiry about journalistic independence and the ideological leanings of mainstream news media. We explore the viability of two entry points to understanding Western news discourse in the post-9/11 era: the ‘terrorism’ frame as ‘neo- Orientalist’ discourse (Said 1978) and the hegemonic/propaganda model (Herman and Chomsky 1988).

Terrorism frames as a ‘neo-Orientalist’ discourse

The dominance of the ‘terrorism frame’ in the WP’s and G&M’s coverage of the Sunni–Shia sectarian tensions in the post-9/11 decade does not in itself consti-tute a shocking finding because many studies have observed the prevalence of the ‘terrorism frame’ in US and Western coverage of international conflict during this period (see Entman 2004). Expansion of the ‘terrorism frame’ beyond US news media includes other Western news outfits and transforms them into what might be described as a larger ‘neo-Orientalist’, discursive narrative that organizes, explains and informs Western audiences’ under-standing of Islam. As a theoretical construct, the ‘neo-Orientalist’ discourse reflects how ‘terrorism’ has coloured the ‘ideology of difference’ informing traditional, Orientalist attitudes. Said’s (1978) thesis contended that Western-centred political and media discourses have treated the world of Islam from an Orientalist perspective that emphasizes the irrationality and violence of the ‘other’. Our findings largely support such contention. For example, a 2004 article from the Globe and Mail reported, ‘The attack [a grenade attack on Shia worshippers] was a bitter reminder of the threat still posed by Islamic extrem-ists, despite President Pervez Musharraf’s pledge to eliminate militant groups’ (3 March 2004). Similarly, the Washington Post, in 2006, reported,

Shiite Muslim militias pose the greatest threat to security in many parts of Iraq, having killed more people in recent months than the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, and will likely present the most daunting and critical challenge for Iraq’s new government, U.S. military and diplomatic officials say.

(8 April 2006)

In such cases, reporting indicates that Muslims are threatening to peace, and are, even further, the cause of violence and terrorism. Representations of Shia and/or Sunni groups as anathema to political or religious peace suggest a narrow perspective on Islamic social, cultural, geographic or religious contexts.

While largely based on an ‘ideology of difference’, which puts Islam in a binary opposition to the West, the ‘neo-Orientalist’ discourse associates the whole world of Islam with breeding terrorism and violence. Even when dealing with topics that may have little to do with terrorism, the ‘neo-Orientalist’ discourse finds it easy to explain and organize them from such a ‘terrorism’ frame.

The propaganda model revisited

The ‘propaganda model’ offers another meaningful entry to comprehend the ways in which mainstream media treat Islam after 9/11. While our findings highlight the rise of a ‘terrorism’ frame couched in ‘neo-Orientalist’ discursive



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practices, this frame’s prominence in the media’s approach to Islam lends support to the claim that ‘the war on terrorism’ has become a new ideological ‘filter’ in Western/US media’s treatment of international conflicts. Drawing on Herman and Chomsky’s original ‘propaganda model’, structural forces and a market-driven news media business paradigm continues to inhibit Western news media from realizing its full democratic, ‘watchdog’ potential. In the realm of foreign policy, Herman argued in 1985, the news media tend to be too cooperative with the government in the service of the ‘national interest’, operating as a propaganda tool that disseminate the dominant ideology and build consensus (Herman and Chomsky 1988). The US media’s uncritical coverage of how the Bush administration sold the Iraq War to the American public transformed the venerable ‘Fourth Estate’ from a fierce ‘watchdog’ to a subservient and collaborative ‘lapdog’ (Altheide 2006).

Non-institutional factors should not be marginalized from how the propa-ganda model works. In assessing how journalists ‘go against the call of duty’ in propagating the ruling elite’s views, Boyd-Barrett (2004) alerts scholars that journalists might engage in ‘non-routine’ abuses of professional procedures that lead to their collaboration with power brokers and disinformation agen-cies. Ample evidence can be easily gleaned from the case of Judith Miller, who used the bully pulpit of The New York Times to advance the neo-conservatives’ Iraq War talking points (2004). As this study demonstrates, over-reliance on Western official and government sources in news about the Sunni–Shia tensions scaffolds the framing of Islam in Western media. Western official and government sources would offer reporters perspectives that are largely in sync with the ideological underpinnings of the ‘war on terrorism’. The sheer domi-nance of official sources obscures alternative sources, and both frames and naturalizes the dominant ideology.

If ‘national security’ and ‘patriotism’ were mindlessly used to rationalize ‘getting in line’ behind the Bush administration’s official ‘weapons of mass destruction’ war excuse, coverage of the Sunni–Shia tensions became hostage to the ‘terrorism’ frame because it got lumped with the so-called ‘Islamic peril’ as a source of danger. Another force seems at play in the media’s propagandistic role: an unconditional submission to what Altheide (2006) describes as ‘the politics of fear’. The journalistic mind-set that best describes how the US media are blindsided and pushed into submission can be simply framed as ‘anything that emanates from “there” threatens those who belong and live “here”’. The ‘mind-set’ was exhibited in the use of ‘meaningless’ generalizations about Sunni and Shia sects, rejecting any nuanced and well-informed explications of the conflict. For example, a WP article from 2006 reported that,

A previously unknown Sunni insurgent group in Mahmudiyah, calling itself the ‘Jihadist Soldiers,’ asserted responsibility for the assault, saying in a statement posted in a mosque in the center of the city that Shiite families and the Mahdi Army militia had a week to leave the city.

(22 October 2006)

Similarly, a Washington Post article from 2003 reported that, ‘For much of the summer, this deeply traditional Sunni Muslim city on the Euphrates River has been regarded by U.S. troops as the most hostile place in Iraq. Grenade attacks and drive-by shootings were a daily occurrence […]’ (29 July 2003). These reports provided no background information regarding the sectarian



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strife other than a focus on terrorist attacks and/or insurgent activities engaged in by these sects’ members, without hinting at the colonial context that abets sectarian divisions. Moreover, the ‘terrorism frame’ was noted in the data in instances where it was arguably unnecessary. For example, in an article enti-tled ‘Iraq faces deadlock on charter’ from the Washington Post (31 July 2005), the report focuses upon the political climate surrounding Iraq’s new consti-tution. However, two final statements at the conclusion of the article report on terrorist attacks in Iraq which injured and killed innocent civilians. This structure was typical of WP reports on Iraq, and the addendum of terrorist activity with no explanation of the link to the political or religious climate clearly exemplifies the notion of ‘Islamic peril’ and the concept of danger in Muslim communities as reported by Western journalists.

concLusion

The goal of this study is to contribute to theory building and to offer a critical assessment of the professional journalism paradigm. At the theoretical level, the article illustrates how framing research programmes can account for institu-tional variables. Dominant frames, such as the ‘terrorism’ frame discussed here, provide journalists with a tailored narrative to describe an internecine Islamic tension that actually has little to do with the ‘war on terrorism’ unleashed after 9/11. The omnipresence of the ‘terrorism’ frame is part of a larger historical legacy in which the Muslim world was represented as ‘different’ and ‘other’. We therefore labelled this as ‘neo-Orientalist’ discourse. The ‘terrorism frame’ in media reporting has thus become the ‘master narrative’ describing the region’s religious sects in negative terms. This narrative prevents a rational reckoning about the geopolitical stakes involved in the Sunni–Shia strife and indirectly demonizes the world of Islam. That is the ultimate goal of propaganda.

Given that the readership of the newspapers analysed in this study is presumed to be educated and intellectual, we suggest that there is a missing link in current news reporting relative to Islamic culture, and to the Sunni–Shia sectarian strife in particular. We suggest that mainstream news media, in general, and newspapers, in particular, must pay greater attention to both the political and religious history of Islamic nations, and provide the political context to the reporting of contemporary Muslim issues. Results of this study show that both mainstream newspapers reported on Sunni–Shia rela-tions within the context of a ‘terrorism frame’, and that such reports were overwhelmingly negative to Sunni and/or Shia Islam. We argue that reports on violence, terrorism and sectarian issues have not occurred in a political and religious vacuum; in order for Western readers – and indeed, Western citizens – to have an informed view of the geographical, political and religious events in Muslim countries, Western media holds responsibility for reporting that is more transparent and less propagandistic.

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SuggeSted citation

Douai, Aziz and Lauricella, Sharon (2014), ‘The “terrorism” frame in “neo-Orientalism”: Western news and the Sunni-Shia Muslim sectarian rela-tions after 9/11’, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 10: 1, pp. 7–24, doi: 10.1386/macp.10.1.7_1

contributor detailS

Dr. Aziz Douai (Ph.D. in Mass Communications, Pennsylvania State University) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada. He is the co-editor of New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa (IGI-Global 2013). Focusing on ICTs, new media activism, global media and international conflict, Dr. Douai’s research and publications have appeared in a number of international journals and books. His article, ‘Commenting in the online Arab public sphere: Debating the Swiss minaret ban and the “Ground Zero” mosque online’, has recently appeared in The Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.

Contact: Faculty of Social Science and Humanities University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) 2000 Simcoe Street North Oshawa, Ontario Canada L1H 7K4.E-mail: [email protected]


mailto:[email protected]


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Dr. Sharon Lauricella is Assistant Professor at UOIT in Oshawa, Canada. Her doctoral degree was awarded by Cambridge University (UK). Sharon is keenly interested in the interplay between spirituality and communication, and has published work on rap and religion, prayer, and meditation.

Contact: Faculty of Social Science and Humanities University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) 2000 Simcoe Street North Oshawa, Ontario Canada L1H 7K4.E-mail: [email protected]

Aziz Douai and Sharon Lauricella have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.


mailto:[email protected]

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