Global Diffusion with Local Dimension: A Study of Iraq War News in South Asia

The reporting of war has always been a tough challenge for journalists. Restricted access to information, lack of consensus about journalists' role during wartime and the process of news production make the task daunting. The media's vulnerability is manifested in the pattern of war coverage, which is directly related to a country's historic, social and cultural perspectives. This content analysis of the 2003 Iraq war coverage in the Bangladesh press shows that, despite the publications’ dependence on Western sources for war news, they rejected the Western definition of the war and echoed the opposing version of it harboured by the country's elite.