Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Internet emergence has caused huge changes in the level of media services, including the appearance of news sites. Now almost all TV channels have news websites. The spread of news channel sites has clearly led to increasing the public’s reliance on them to obtain political information. Hence, the research problem of this study focuses on a major question which is: “How do the news channels sites treat political issues and their credibility?” The research is very important because it is focusing on studying media credibility as one of the most important variables that affect the public exposure to the media, in addition to identifying the availability of credibility factors in the websites of news channels. This study is based on survey method; and the researcher conducted a content analysis of the BBC Arabic, CNN Arabic, and Al Arabiya websites in relation to the Syrian issue, the Palestinian issue, the Yemeni issue, and the Iranian issue, as well as the case of the death of Gamal Khashoggi for a cumulative eight weeks. The study reached that, according to the BBC Arabic website, the news was attributed to its sources, the most important content which was highlighted in the news is political crises between countries. Then for the CNN Arabic website was in most of the times provide a single point of view in the news, and the news was negative many times. Al-Arabiya’s website focused largely on Arab news, especially the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.