Mediating terror

Abstract

This chapter explores coverage of terror-related news in the Bangladeshi press, focusing on the Dhaka attack of July 1, 2016. It explores the framing of news around the incident in three Bengali-language dailies, analyzing the dominant themes and how they compare between newspapers. It also includes interviews of journalists who covered the event and cover the topic of terrorism in their work, toward identifying the challenges in writing news on the subject. The chapter provides an understanding of media framing of terrorism in Bangladesh, providing a comparative analysis of news outlets and their perspectives on and processes of news reporting. The findings revealed that episodic framing in the immediate aftermath of the event was based on official statements, focused on the incident, and initial identification of the perpetrators and victims. Longer term, thematic framing moved to a political blame game, some investigation and analysis of the incident, and extensive focus on the perpetrators as “the Other” – perverted youth from rich families and English-medium educational backgrounds. Almost all news was based on official briefings from law enforcement agencies and government sources. The journalists interviewed, too, spoke of their reliance on official sources and limitations to reporting on terrorism. The study found that despite the wide media coverage of the terror attack and the combination of episodic and thematic framing of the incident in the news, there were no comprehensive investigative news stories, and stressed on the need for reduced reliance on official sources and a greater need for investigative journalism on terrorism.