Australia Media Coverage Essay

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Australia has a number of notable newspapers and news websites including: The Australian (national daily newspaper), The Sunday Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, News.com.au {News Corp Australia), abc.net.au (ABC Online), The Age, and so on. (Press Reference, 2016) All these major newspapers and news websites have rather contributed coverage on the Bali Bombings in 2002.

4.2. Prime Minister Influence on Media Coverage
On 12 October 2002, a series of bombs were detonated in the Kuta area of Bali, a popular nightspot packed with tourists. Many Australians were killed in the blasts. Terrorism was immediately expected with strong links with Al-Qaeda (Davies, 2005). The event occurred during the war in Iraq was happening in the Middle East. It has been argued that Australia’s then Prime Minister John Howard framed the bombings in a way that would increase support for the war on terror and Australia’s role in it. The examination of Australia’s leading newspapers following the attack found images of the …show more content…

(See Table 2) The content analysis showed the Daily Telegraph’s (DT) coverage of the bombings was largely biased towards Australian victims, which attracted 62.2% of the articles coverage, almost 10% more than Sunday Morning Herald’s (SMH). In their October 15th front page, they captioned their photographs: “The victims of an act of war which has plunged our nation into mourning.” It significantly addressed its readers as ‘Australian mourners.’ It used the word ‘victim’ on countless of occasions in their publication. The term ‘victim’ as oppose to ‘casualty’ carried connotations that invited empathy to the readers, as the latter would be a more neutral term to use. Victimhood is evident beyond the DT’s journalists and editors, however appeals less to the SMH. (Crofts,

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