Exploring the relationship between international news and foreign policy : how the New York Times, The Xinhua News Agency and Itar-Tass differed in their coverage on the Ukraine crisis?

Abstract

Throughout the research component of my master's professional project, I sought to effectively capture the relationship between international news coverage and foreign policies of a country through studying the sourcing patterns and valence of news coverage of The New York Times, Xinhua News Agency and ITAR-TASS on the Ukraine crisis. Each paragraph of the three news organizations' news coverage was coded by both the source it cited and its tone toward Russia's intervention in the crisis. The stories were randomly selected from the LexisNexis database and the time period of news coverage was limited to February 2014 to December 2014. Results showed strong clear differences in sourcing patterns and tone of coverage of The New York Times, Xinhua and ITAR-TASS' news stories on the Ukraine crisis. The impact of sources on the tone of coverage of the three media, however, was not proved significant. The tone of coverage of the three media also coincided with the foreign policies of three countries. Through my research, I hope to demonstrate the difference in the way media of different countries portrayed the same international event, and that difference could be tied back to the foreign policies of those countries. Since my research compares news coverage of media with different backgrounds, it has the potential to be incorporated into the current field of international journalism.