The Credibility of Transnational, English-Language News Media in the Middle East: from the Al Jazeera Effect, to the PressTV and the TRT World Effect?

Since its foundation in 1996, Al Jazeera and its English subsidiary Al Jazeera English, established in 2006, have revolutionized the Middle Eastern news media landscape by critically reporting on events in the immediate region and by emphasizing the experiences of people from the Global South. This lead to the coining of the term ‘the Al Jazeera effect’ by Philip Seib. However, the only directive issued by its main sponsor, the Qatari government, is that it should not put the monarchy in a negative light. While different countries in the Middle East have begun following Qatar’s footsteps by establishing English-language news media of their own, an issue that is materializing in parallel is the worldwide declining trust in the news media. As various news networks around the globe are seeing their credibility—the quality of being trusted—questioned, this thesis ties these two developments together by asking how Al Jazeera English, as well as two of its English-language competitors in...Show moreSince its foundation in 1996, Al Jazeera and its English subsidiary Al Jazeera English, established in 2006, have revolutionized the Middle Eastern news media landscape by critically reporting on events in the immediate region and by emphasizing the experiences of people from the Global South. This lead to the coining of the term ‘the Al Jazeera effect’ by Philip Seib. However, the only directive issued by its main sponsor, the Qatari government, is that it should not put the monarchy in a negative light. While different countries in the Middle East have begun following Qatar’s footsteps by establishing English-language news media of their own, an issue that is materializing in parallel is the worldwide declining trust in the news media. As various news networks around the globe are seeing their credibility—the quality of being trusted—questioned, this thesis ties these two developments together by asking how Al Jazeera English, as well as two of its English-language competitors in the region, being PressTV from Iran and TRT World from Turkey, go about establishing their credibility. More particularly, how do these three networks fare when they report on a conflict in their proverbial backyard, the Syrian Civil War, the outcome of which concerns Qatar, Iran, and Turkey alike? By borrowing from the existing scholarly literature on the analysis of news media credibility, this thesis looks at YouTube material on the Syrian Civil War in the first five months of 2019 from the flagship current affairs discussion program on each network, Inside Story on Al Jazeera English, The Debate on PressTV, and The Newsmakers on TRT World in order to demonstrate whether the latter two networks cater for their own ‘effect’ in the Middle Eastern news media arena. Moreover, this thesis hopes to expand our understanding of how we should view the three news outlets: as critical watchdogs of political institutions, or as mouthpieces for their respective governments.Show less

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The Credibility of Transnational, English-Language News Media in the Middle East: from the Al Jazeera Effect, to the PressTV and the TRT World Effect?