Who's Under Attack?: An Analysis of News Presentation of Sept 11 by Malaysian News Network

Abstract

Based on alternative perspectives of news as ideological constructions or even postmodern phenomena, this paper presents the 'Third World' view of the suicide bombing of the WTC and the Pentagon on that fateful morning on September 11th 2001. The author attempts to do a comparative analysis of the approaches to news coverage and presentation via discourse analysis of the prime time news on the government and private Malaysian television stations. It would be interesting to reveal the intersection of political interests and religious affiliations in influencing the style of Malaysian news coverage and presentation on the Incident. This is in light of the occurrence of the Incident just before a state election where the 'moderate' ruling party was pitted against the formidable and 'fundamentalist' opposition that succeeded to erode its majority votes during the 1999 General Elections. Thus, via this paper, the researcher attempts to shed light on the dialectics between news text and social-cultural, political and, perhaps, economic contexts that contribute to the construction and representation of 'reality' via the news media.