Official Enemies in Commercial and Soft Power Media

Abstract

This article analyzes the transitivity processes associated with different actors in news media coverage of the conflict between Iran and the United States and its allies. It explores this by examining how agency is ascribed; that is, which mental, verbal, material, and relational processes are associated with which agents. The study compares the January 2012 coverage from the New York Times, Guardian, Fars News Agency, Tehran Times, and Xinhua News Agency, and finds a national bias, naturalizing or underplaying the paper's own nation's negative processes and highlighting and overemphasizing the processes associated with the “official enemy” for American, British, and Iranian news organizations. Xinhua is more neutral, also mimicking the foreign policy of the Peoples’ Republic of China. This questions the difference between domestic commercial new organizations, such as the New York Times and Guardian, and government-sponsored internationally oriented soft power instruments, such as the Iranian media and Xinhua, concerning their “independence” from government influence.