Manufacturing consent: Framing the liberation war of Bangladesh in the US and UK media

Abstract

This study examined how The New York Times and The Times (London) framed the liberation war of Bangladesh. This study looked comprehensively at the framing, the tones, and sources of news in the newspapers. The results suggest that both newspapers used three frames most frequently: military-conflict frame, prognostic frame, and human-interest frame. The findings also show that both newspapers published news stories with more neutral tones than with positive and negative tones. The New York Times and The Times (London) relied mostly on official sources as their primary sources.

Keywords

Bangladesh framing liberation war

War and media

Conflict is one of the elements of news. Over the years, the media have accorded great importance to the coverage of wars within or between nations. Hiebert (1999) stresses the role of the media in any warfare and how propaganda is an integral part of the media during war time. His (1999) contention is that ‘mass communication is today an essential part of modern warfare, that public relations is a primary weapon of war – increasingly for all sides … There is nothing new about that. Propaganda has always been a part of war’ (p. 318). Some scholars (Allan and Zelizer, 2004; Carruthers, 2000; Herman and Chomsky, 1988; Tumber and Webster, 2006) argue that media play a key role in forming public opinion in favor of or against any war. The use of media as tools of propaganda during the First and Second World Wars has been widely discussed and analyzed by journalism and communication scholars and professionals. Moreover, the trend toward using media as propaganda tools during wars is a common practice. In this respect, Allan and Zelizer (2004) argue that war reporting is a challenge for the journalist in terms of allegiance, responsibility, truth, and balance. The authors added that war reporting is a litmus test of sorts for journalism.

Carruthers (2000) finds a relationship between the US defense industry and television networks in collecting news. She (2000) also points out the role of media in Serbia and Rwanda and asserts that an unquestioning media system is sought by the state in any war situation, arguing that ‘an examination of media-state relations before war suggests that governments often expect unquestioning compliance from news media during periods of tension, behaving during pre-war hostilities in much the same way as during war itself’ (p. 52).

Herman and Chomsky (1988) also blatantly criticize the role of the US media in framing and choosing content during the Indo-China war. According to the authors (1988: 37), A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy. Althaus (2003) points out criticism in the US media about American involvement in conflicts, that are related to the interest of the country:

A number of scholars have pointed out that news coverage of foreign affairs often (and perhaps usually) contains ample press criticism of a tactical or procedural nature, but few fundamental criticisms of U.S. policy or the legitimacy of the U.S. interest in international conflicts. (p. 386)

To underscore the role of US media in war situations, Downing (2009) says even though the Iraq War is identified as Gulf War II and 1990–1991 war as a Gulf War I, the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War is not acknowledged as a Gulf War. So, it is clear from his argument that the US media represent certain issues in line with the supposed national interest of their country. As wars in foreign lands are beyond people’s access, media play a role in informing people about wars. Writing on the role of the media during war time, McCombs (2005: 159–160) says ‘… the press is the citizenry’s principal source of information and enjoys considerable influence’. Overall, the media have been used by parties involved in wars to propagate and justify their positions on the wars. The media frame wars and countries involved in those wars in line with their purposes. So, it is appropriate at this juncture to discuss framing.

Framing literature

Politically and ideologically biased media always try to motivate people in line with ideological and political positions of the media. There are many ways for the media to represent any event. Framing is one of the most important techniques that the media use to shape any event to meet the purposes of the media. Framing comes with the perspectives of the person who frames. In this way, framing could be understood as shaping some parts of reality and molding those to be noticed while avoiding other issues. Framing is a way of conceptualizing how media define social reality. Scheufele (2000) mentions that by framing media put emphasis on attributes such as values and facts of any event. The sender of any message has a particular aim of seeking interpretation from the receivers. In this regard, Cooper (2006) says that comprehension of facts is related to the interpretation of those facts by the senders. This process of interpretation is an undeniable part. He also asserts that facts remain neutral until they are framed and, by framing, the press actually creates a specific outlook for their readers. Scholars define frames in various ways. According to Goffman (1986), any event can be reported in different manners and there is no particular theory on how people will describe the particular event. It is a matter of perspective that varies from person to person. The perspective of any person regarding any issue might be completely opposite to another person on the same issue. He argues that the differences in perspectives and descriptions occur because of different people use different spans and focuses for the same event. Therefore, different characterizations might be assigned to the same event. Referring to the frame as ‘organization of experience’, Goffman (1986) says,

I assume that definitions of a situation are built up in accordance with principles of organization which govern events – at least social ones – and our subjective involvement in them; frame is the word I use to refer to such of these basic elements as I am able to identify. That is my definition of frame. My phrase ‘frame analysis’ is a slogan to refer to the examination in these terms of the organization of experience. (p. 11)

However, the notion of framing is related to news presentation in media studies. Gamson and Modigliani (1989) note three determinants in the framing package: cultural resonances, sponsor activities, and media practices. Reese (2007) views framing as an organizing principle that connects media content to broader issues related to political and social power. Sometimes, powerful forces in the society and state would attempt to influence the news media to frame a particular issue in a particular way. According to Reese (2003), a frame begins as a simple plan, generally propagated in the media, as journalists seek to define an event, issue, or product, and endorse its meaning. Ultimately, as the frame is shared and expands in intricacy and consistency, it tends to be reutilized, leading, and unrelenting. Nelson et al. (1997) mention that framing is a form of influence in which a source (mass media or individual) influences the content of a communication text, describes the essential problem underlying a particular issue, and draws a set of contemplation pertinent to that issue. Sometimes, journalists invent certain frames and sometimes they also use already existing frames in their reports and narratives. For example, during the Iraq War, journalists in the United States used existing frames of brutality in Saddam’s regime in their news coverage.

In terms of inventing frames, the right-leaning media in the United States, such as Fox News, have been portraying the idea of health-care reform as a socialist agenda of the Obama administration. Entman (1991) shows how the US media selected a portion of reality by using specific words and images in reporting the events. He says the media, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, framed the two incidents differently. Even though the shooting of the Iran Air destroyed more lives (290), the US media framed that as a problem of technology. In contrast, the destruction of the Korean Airlines cost fewer lives (269) yet the US media attributed negativity (‘moral bankruptcy’ and ‘guilt of perpetrating nation’) to the Soviet Union. Entman (1991) observes,

Aside from the magazines use of ‘attack’, their levels for the incidents implied 39 times that the Soviets acted with deliberate cruelty and only twice that they made a mistake (the most frequent words were ‘atrocity’, ‘crime’, ‘kill’, ‘massacre’, and ‘murder’). The magazine stories implied twice that the United States acted deliberately (both times quoting hostile foreign sources) and 13 times that it acted mistakenly. (pp. 18–19)

In another study, Entman (2003) says that the Bush Administration framed the Al-Qaeda attack with the notions of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam’s regime’s brutality to show how the Administration’s hierarchy influenced framing the news about those issues. Dimitrova and Stromback (2005) conducted a comparative content analysis on the framing of the Iraq War in elite newspapers in Sweden and the United States. The scholars say that the US newspaper, The New York Times, mostly used the military frame in reporting the war, whereas the Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, relied more on the anti-war frame. After discussing these uses of framing, it becomes obvious that framing is a way for the media to characterize the news. One can therefore conclude that the media try to frame stories to get their audiences to consider the stories in a given manner.

Case study of Bangladesh

The liberation war of Bangladesh was one of the important events in world politics during the Cold War era. With the liberation war, the people of Bangladesh achieved their independence based on Bengali nationalism. This period was a critical moment in the socio-political history and sovereignty of Bangladesh. East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan) were the two main parties directly involved in the war, while other world powers such as the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, India, and China also became part of the political hostilities. The war broke out at midnight of 25 March 1971, when the Pakistani government launched a military operation (known as the Operation Searchlight) in the capital of East Pakistan, Dhaka (it used to be spelled Dacca). The attack by the Pakistani military was a planned, massive genocide in East Pakistan. In terms of military support, the central Pakistan government was backed by the United States and China, while the Bangladesh movement was supported by the Soviet Union and India. However, the media and civil society in countries like the United States and United Kingdom protested against the operation launched by the Pakistani military. Nonetheless, it was not easy for people around the world to get information about the war from the media in Pakistan. Some local media, which were published by freedom fighters in areas of Bangladesh and were not occupied by the Pakistani army, as well as in camps in India, covered the war but with limited access to areas outside their enclaves. So, it is understandable to point out that since those journalists had to cover the war, they only reported a bit of the hostilities in restricted circumstances. However, people around the world came to learn about the situation in Bangladesh from some leading media in the United States and United Kingdom. Mamoon (2002) highlights how significantly international media covered the liberation war of Bangladesh and says ‘ … it was Bangladesh’s war of Liberation which had aroused the conscience and sensibilities of people the world over. Almost every newspaper in the world … published news dealing with the evolving course of the nine-month war in Bangladesh’ (p. 5).

Research questions and hypotheses

Overall, this study will primarily focus on one research question (RQ). Given that the media use a variety of frames in the coverage of wars, the RQ in this study asks,

What are the prominent frames used by The New York Times and The Times (London) in their coverage of the liberation war in Bangladesh?

Prominence here refers to the three most frequently used frames. As mentioned earlier, Dimitrova and Stromback (2005) not only developed the war frames that are relevant to this study but also came up with equally relevant hypotheses, some of which have been modified in line with the purpose of this research. As the main focus of the study is to examine the coverage of the liberation war of Bangladesh in two Western newspapers, a brief discussion on the objectivity and biased reporting in those countries would be helpful in posing the hypotheses of the study. The Western (e.g. the US and UK) media enjoy the advantages of the freedom of the press, and generally try to be balanced in covering issues. The notion of objectivity in reporting the news is highly discussed and regarded as important in those countries. It is expected that reporting will be impartial to any party related to the story. In those cultures, media strive to maintain accountability by being ethical in news coverage because journalists are considered watchdogs of the society, and they need to maintain neutrality in reporting. The reporter should be ethically obliged to report any event fairly and there are certain duties that should be followed by the reporters. However, biased reporting is common in Western news media and journalists can convey ideas or information on which they would like to focus. There is a tendency for audiences to see, perceive, and conceive the world through the lenses that journalists provide.

The media take various strategies and techniques in providing biased and slanted news. Framing is a common technique to provide biased information to the audience. According to Scheufele (1999), framing is a continuous process and many socio-structural/organizational and individual/ideological variables are involved at the media level. In certain political and social power issues, the frames of media are indexical indicators. He says that journalists are influenced by five factors in framing an issue. The factors are social norms and values, organizational processes and constraints, pressures of interest groups, journalistic routines, and ideological and political orientations. Bovitz et al. (2002) also mentioned the influence of ideological and political factors of the journalists. Moreover, studies also examined the influence of socio-ideological factors in biased reporting. Altheide (1985) finds that there is an interrelationship between the ideologies of the networks and their news formats. The influences of the ideologies over the formats are obvious. Miller and Sack (2010) mention that newspapers exert an immense power in representing any event. Therefore, it might be predicted that journalists of The New York Times and The Times (London) were also influenced by the existing frames regarding the liberation war of Bangladesh in their respective countries. As mentioned in earlier discussion, the US administration opposed the liberation war of Bangladesh. However, the war of independence got sympathetic support from Congress. On the other hand, the British government played a neutral role and people in the United Kingdom supported the liberation of Bangladesh. These arguments should be taken into consideration in posing hypotheses regarding the coverage of the liberation war of Bangladesh in The New York Times and The Times (London). Therefore, my first hypothesis is about the tone of the coverage:

H1: The tone of the coverage of the war in The New York Times and The Times (London) will be more positive than negative or neutral.

The involvement of world powers in any war tends to draw the international media toward covering the hostilities, and media, in turn, tend to embark on their coverage more from the broader perspective of super-power rivalry. We can therefore expect that The New York Times and The Times (London) will cover the war as something involving rival world powers than the actual participants in the war. Consequently, the second hypothesis in this study predicts that

H2: The New York Times and The Times (London) will report the war from the prognostic frame (broader discussion of possible consequences and involvement of the big world powers) more than any other frame.

A source is important in any news article, because the source is used not only to get the information about any event but also to make the news appear authentic to the audience. In any news story, the primary sources are usually cited at the very beginning. This study examined the primary sources of news about the war from two perspectives:

The official sources are officials who work with the government.

The unofficial sources are all other sources other than government officials.

Bennett’s (1990) press indexing hypothesis says that the media portray events in line with information they obtain from people in authority or government. As mentioned earlier, Scheufele (1999) also argues on the influence of the existing frame regarding an issue. In this regard, it is reasonable to expect The New York Times and The Times (London) to rely on government officials and people in authority (sources) for obtaining information about the war. So, the third hypothesis predicts that

H3: Both The New York Times and The Times (London) will be more reliant on the official sources as the primary sources of information about the war.

These hypotheses will collectively address the RQ discussed earlier.

Method

The present study is quantitative, which uses content analysis as an instrument and framing as a theoretical framework, in looking at the coverage of the liberation war of Bangladesh in The New York Times and The Times (London). In this research, I have studied stories published in newspapers because they were the major sources for information in the 1970s when television was still relatively new and the Internet was virtually non-existent as it is known today.

All news stories published on the front pages of The New York Times and The Times (London) from 26 March 1971 to 17 December 1971 were selected. The reason for choosing this time period is that the war started after the Pakistani military attacked East Pakistan at midnight on 25 March 1971, and surrendered to the Joint Forces of India and Bangladesh on 16 December 1971. News published on front pages are generally considered the most important issues of the day and those news stories tend to draw readers’ attention more than those in other pages. The news stories published by The New York Times were collected from the database of the Pro-Quest Historical Newspaper. The news stories of The Times (London) were collected from online archives of the newspaper.

The New York Times was chosen because it was the largest metropolitan newspaper and was also considered as the ‘national newspaper of record in the United States’. McCombs (2005) says that The New York Times often sets the agenda for other newspapers. The Times (London) was chosen because it was respected in the United Kingdom, and it covered the liberation war of Bangladesh starting from the war’s early stage. The Times (London) is also one of the oldest newspapers of Britain, and it is known as being center-right in British politics. It was also a newspaper of record in the country, although it is no longer as influential as it once was.

In this study, the units of analysis are individual news stories published in The New York Times and The Times (London). A news story provides a full context and offers readers more in-depth information on the issue in focus. Two graduate students – this researcher (M.D.H.) and a non-declared graduate student of a mid-western research university in the United States, who is from Bangladesh, knows about the liberation war of Bangladesh, and is proficient in written and spoken English – independently coded those news items. The coders had three training sessions and did a pilot coding in order to test and strengthen their coding skills in February 2010. The actual coding was conducted in March 2010. During the training sessions, the definitions and examples of frames, tones, and sources were explained to the coders. Then, the coders independently coded some news items and compared with each other to evaluate the disagreements in coding. In this process, the operational definitions and examples of relevant variables of this study were more clearly understood by the coders. Since framing is at the bedrock of this research, it is pertinent to examine how the media use frames in their reports about wars. This, then, sheds some light on how the US and UK media framed the Bangladesh war of independence. In this regard, this study has adapted some of the relevant war frames and tones used by Dimitrova and Stromback (2005) in their study of the news coverage of the Second Iraqi War that ended in toppling Saddam Hussein. In their study, both scholars set out the parameters of framing by referring to Pan and Kosiciki (1993) and explaining that framing theory deals with the ‘central organizing theme in the news story and operationalized by the presence of certain syntactical structures (word choices), script structures (evaluation and interpretation of the unfolding event) thematic structures (multilayer subtopics), and rhetorical devices (metaphors and catchphrases)’ (Dimitrova and Stromback, 2005: 409).

As already indicated, the specific war-frames developed and used by both scholars in their study are relevant to this research, hence their adaptation. Generally, a frame tells readers about the overall nature of attribution of issue(s) in a story. The definitions of story frames as used by Dimitrova and Stromback (2005) have also been modified and adopted for this study. They are (a) the military-conflict frame, which focuses on the conflict or military action, troops, and equipment; (b) the human-interest frame, which focuses on the human participants in the event, the suffering of involved parties, the civilians, the issue of displacement and refugees, soldiers in the Pakistani army, Bengali freedom fighters, and Bengali refugees in India; (c) the responsibility frame, which focuses on the party/person responsible for the war; (d) the diagnostic frame, which focuses on the broader discussion or what caused (reasons) the event; (e) the prognostic frame, which focuses on broader discussion of the possible consequences of the event such as involvement of the big world powers, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, China, and India, with emphasis on possible outcomes of events; and (f) the violence of war frame, which focuses on the destruction caused by the war, including statements about the aftermath of any military operation and casualty totals. Also, the researchers used the element of tones in determining the direction of the frames. Generally, a tone tells readers how the reporter presented the story – whether the story is reported in a positive, neutral, or negative manner. In this study, a ‘positive’ report means that the news report is favorable or complimentary toward the subjects of the story; a ‘negative’ report means that the news report puts the subjects of the story in a bad light; a ‘neutral’ report means that the news story is neither clearly complimentary nor against the subjects.

For the purpose of clarity, it is important to note that,

The positive tone in news reports refers to news stories that are overall complimentary toward the liberation war of Bangladesh;

The negative tone in news reports refers to news stories that are overall against toward the liberation war of Bangladesh;

The neutral tone in news reports refers to those news stories that are overall neither clearly complementary nor against the liberation war. Therefore, news stories were coded for their tone, frame, and source, all of which are related to the hypotheses and the RQ.

Cohen’s Kappa was used to measure the inter-coder reliability. In this study, 29 news stories (10% of data) were used to measure the inter-coder reliability and gave the following findings: frame .82, tone .71, and source .78. The agreement between the two coders for tone is lowest (.71) compared to the agreement for frames and sources. To examine the hypotheses and RQ in this study, I used Chi-Square tests as my main testing instrument. The Chi-Square test was done with the computer software, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Results

The RQ in this study asked what were the prominent frames used by The New York Times and The Times (London) in their coverage of the liberation war in Bangladesh. To answer this RQ, a frequency analysis was conducted and the results show (Table 1) that both newspapers used three frames most frequently: military-conflict, prognostic, and human-interest. Both newspapers mostly published news with the military-conflict frame (34.0%). The prognostic frame was second in prominence with 30.5 percent and human-interest frame followed with 16.8 percent.

Table 1.

Frame in the news.

Frame	Newspaper
	The New York Times	The Times (London)	Total
Military-conflict	50 (35.7%)	47 (32.4%)	97 (34.0%)
Human interest	18 (12.9%)	30 (20.7%)	48 (16.8%)
Responsibility	11 (7.9%)	6 (4.1%)	17 (6.0%)
Diagnostic	4 (2.9%)	4 (2.8%)	8 (2.8%)
Prognostic	49 (35.0%)	38 (26.2%)	87 (30.5%)
Violence of war	8 (5.7%)	20 (13.8%)	28 (9.8%)

df: degrees of freedom.

χ²(df = 5) = 11.01, p > 05; n = 285.

A more detailed analysis of Table 1 shows that while The New York Times (35.7%) published more stories with the military-conflict frame than the Times (London), the reverse was the case in the use of the human-interest frame, where The Times (London) had 20.7 percent and The New York Times framed 12.9 percent of its stories from the human-interest perspective. However, The New York Times (35.0%) again led in the use of prognostic frame with The Times (London) having only 26.2 percent.

The first hypothesis predicted that the tone of coverage of the war in The New York Times and The Times (London) would be more positive than negative or neutral. To test this hypothesis, a Chi-Square test was conducted. The results show (see Table 2) that both The New York Times and The Times (London) reported news stories with more neutral tone than positive or negative tones. The Pearson Chi-Square value is .54, degrees of freedom (df) = 2, p = .763. Therefore, the first hypothesis is not supported. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that more stories have neutral tones than positive and negative tones.

Table 2.

Tone in the news.

Tone	Newspaper
	The New York Times	The Times (London)	Total
Positive	52 (37.1%)	48 (33.1%)	100 (35.1%)
Negative	20 (14.3%)	21 (14.5%)	41 (14.4%)
Neutral	68 (48.6%)	76 (52.4%)	144 (50.5%)

df: degrees of freedom.

χ²(df = 2) = .54, p > 05; n = 285.

The differences in the use of tones between the newspapers are as follows: The New York Times published 4.0 percent more with a positive tone than The Times (London) published. In terms of negative tone, the difference between the newspapers is not significant, and The Times (London) published slightly more (0.2%) news stories with a negative tone than The New York Times published. Even though the neutral tone was highest in number in the news of both newspapers, The Times (London) published 3.8 percent more news stories with a neutral tone than The New York Times published.

The second hypothesis predicted that The New York Times and The Times (London) would report the war from the prognostic frame (broader discussion of possible consequences and involvement of the big-world powers) more than any other frame. To test this hypothesis, a Chi-Square test was conducted, and it showed that the newspapers published more stories about the war from the military-conflict frame than any other frame. The Pearson Chi-Square value is 11.01, df = 5, p = .051 and the Fisher’s Exact Test value is 0.049. Consequently, this result does not support the second hypothesis. Table 1 shows that prognostic frame is the second highest (30.5%) frame used by both newspapers in reporting news about the war. The difference between The New York Times and The Times (London) was 8.8 percent. The New York Times published 35.0 percent of its stories from the prognostic frame and The Times (London) published 26.2 percent of news with the prognostic frame.

The third hypothesis stated that both The New York Times and The Times (London) rely more on official sources as the primary sources of information about the war. To test this hypothesis, a Chi-Square test was conducted and the results (see Table 3) show that both The New York Times and The Times (London) relied more on official sources than unofficial sources as their primary sources. The Pearson Chi-Square value is 6.05, df = 1, p value = .014. Therefore, the third hypothesis is supported. In the news stories, official sources were used in 75.8 percent of the news stories and unofficial sources were used in 24.2 percent of the news stories as the primary sources. Thus, both newspapers used nearly three times more official sources than unofficial sources.

Table 3.

Source used in the news.

Source	Newspaper
	The New York Times	The Times (London)	Total
Official	115 (82.1%)	101 (69.7%)	216 (75.8%)
Unofficial	25 (17.9%)	44 (30.3%)	69 (24.2%)

df: degrees of freedom.

χ²(df = 1) = 6.05; p < .05; n = 285.

A detailed analysis of Table 3 shows that The New York Times used official sources four times more (82.1%) than unofficial sources (17.9%), whereas The Times (London) used official sources more than double (69.7%) than unofficial sources (30.3%). The differences are also noteworthy between the newspapers. The New York Times used official sources 12.4 percent more than The Times (London) used. The case was reversed in terms of using unofficial sources. The Times (London) used unofficial sources 12.4 percent more than The New York Times used.

Discussion and conclusion

In Jehane Noujaim’s (2004) documentary film the Control Room, a senior producer of Al Jazeera, Samir Khader, says that the television channel was trying to give a wake-up call to its audience during the Iraq War. In an interview in the documentary, Khader responds to a question about biased and sympathetic coverage of the Iraqi War by Al Jazeera. The fact is that not only Al Jazeera but also all mainstream media of the world strive to provide some sort of wake-up calls to their audiences. Accordingly, it is a tough job for those media to impartially cover news about any event. This impartiality means that the media try to put certain attributes in the events and thus intentionally characterize those events to influence the people in line with the objectives of the media. One of the ways in which this is achieved is through framing news reports.

This study looked at the framing of news about the liberation war of Bangladesh in The New York Times and The Times (London) during 1971. The tones and sources of news in both newspapers were also examined to obtain a comprehensive overview of the framing in the newspapers. In this process, this study also examined framing theory in looking at the coverage of conflicts and wars in the media. Generally, it is expected that the media would focus more on violence and human interest in war coverage than on any other aspect in news reporting. However, this study shows that both The New York Times and The Times (London) covered the war mostly with military-conflict frame (34.0%) and prognostic frame (30.5%). Scholars (e.g. Jahan, 1995; Mamoon, 2002) say that the liberation war in Bangladesh received attention from the international media for genocide and violence committed by the Pakistani army in Bangladesh. Millions of people were displaced and took shelter in refugee camps in India during the war. Consequently, it was expected that the newspapers would focus more on the suffering of the people and violence.

However, this study establishes that the newspapers disregarded the violence of war and human-interest frame in the news, and emphasized on the military-conflict and prognostic frames. Table 1 shows that human-interest frame (16.8%) and violence of war frame (9.8%) featured as the third and fourth prominent frames in both newspapers. There might be several reasons for the newspapers to pay more attention to the military-conflict and prognostic frames. First, The New York Times and The Times (London) may have considered the war as an international issue inasmuch as neither the United States nor Great Britain was directly involved in the war, and thus they focused more on a broader discussion of the involvement of big-world powers. Second, as newspapers outside of Bangladesh, The New York Times and The Times (London) did not put much emphasis on suffering of the people and violence in reporting the news about the war. The New York Times and The Times (London) also ignored some human-interest events about the war outside their bases in the United States and United Kingdom. However, both newspapers published human-interest stories on issues about the war on other pages except the first. As earlier argued, the first page in a typical newspaper is where stories considered to be crucial or important by the editors are published. By relegating most human interest and violence of war stories about the war in Bangladesh to the inside pages of their newspapers, it can be inferred that the editors might not have considered those stories sensitive or important enough to merit more attention than they got.

Third, the reporters of the newspapers did not get enough opportunities to talk with people in Bangladesh, so they failed to get first-hand experience and information to focus on human suffering. Table 3 shows that both newspapers used 75.8 percent official sources in their news. The content analysis shows that journalists of The New York Times and The Times (London) often reported news from outside Bangladesh from such places as Calcutta, Delhi, Washington, and New York. Hence, it might also be possible that because depended by and large on the official sources, they focused more on military-conflict frame and prognostic frame. It should also be noted that a scan of news published in other pages of the newspapers showed that the journalists of The New York Times and The Times (London) used unofficial sources like the Bengali refugees. By using unofficial sources, the newspapers published news stories on the plight of the people. Since this study is about news published on the front pages, it might be possible to marshal enough evidence that the journalists actually talked with people and used unofficial sources. Furthermore, it might be possible that even though the United States and United Kingdom were not directly involved in the war, the tones of the news published on the front pages of the newspapers were in line with the stance of the governments of their respective countries.

In the United States, the Nixon administration had good relations with the Pakistani government in the cold war era, and Pakistan was politically and militarily supported by the United States during the liberation war of Bangladesh. As India and the Soviet Union got active in this issue and offered military and economic support to the Bangladesh government in exile, the United States offered full support to the Pakistani government to counter the Indo-Soviet alliance. The US government took a stand against the liberation war of Bangladesh. To form an alliance to counter the Soviet Union, the United States patronized China and Pakistan, and thus became a strategic ally of both countries. So, it is pertinent that although the war was an initiative for the independence of Bangladesh, it ultimately also became a war of power game of international politics. Kissinger (1979: 853) says that ‘We had, moreover, every incentive to maintain Pakistan’s goodwill. It was our crucial link to Peking; and Pakistan was one of China’s closest allies’. During the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, the British government faced a dilemma. At the beginning of the war, the British government tried to advocate a political solution. However, the position of the British government later changed as the war raged on. In Britain, the conservative government was in power and the Members of Parliament (MPs), ministers, and leaders of the conservative party put pressure on the Pakistani government to stop the genocide in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Leaders of the opposition Labour party also came forward to put pressure on the government to do something about the plight of the Bengalis. Wheeler (2000) highlights the role of the members of the Security Council regarding the liberation war of Bangladesh and also mentions the proactive role of Britain. The excessive reliance on government sources showed some trends of journalism practice regarding the coverage of foreign news/conflict events. These Western media depended on the government resources in covering foreign events in the age of the Cold War.

Therefore, it might be argued that these Western media became a part of the propaganda of their respective governments in many instances during the cold war. Even though the situation has changed with the expansion of information communication technologies, the Western media still try to echo the voices of their respective governments in covering foreign issues and conflicts. Moreover, scholars (e.g. Chomsky, 2002; Zelizer, 1993) found that this has become a worldwide trend that most of the media echo the voices of their respective governments during any conflict time or covering foreign news. For example, Ismail and Berkowitz (2009) mention that both The New York Times and the China Daily echoed the voices of their respective governments regarding ‘war on terror’ irrespective of the press systems in the two countries. Arab journalists found that the media in the Arab countries did not objectively report the news on issues related to 9/11 (Pintak and Ginges, 2008). Hackett (1985) analyzes 2300 news items from two Canadian television stations and mentions that the political elites and high government officials were mostly quoted as sources of the news and general people were ignored. Almagor (2000) says that the French media in Quebec were sympathetic toward the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) and did not consider the organization as a terrorist group. Aday et al. (2005) mention that the Fox News and CNN framed the events related to Iraq War as a victory against the Saddam regime and ignored the news about the battle in Iraq. By examining two cases (Watergate and McCarthyism), Zelizer (1993) argues that the American journalists interpreted the events in a shared meaning, and their identities in the community of journalists led them in the process of news treatment for those events. Sometimes the blend of professional and community identities becomes determinants for the journalists to report any event (Zelizer, 1993). Chomsky (2002) says that the US media reported the war on terror issue without questioning the concepts of the administrations: from Reagan to Bush.

The New York Times and The Times (London) also published more news with neutral tones than positive and negative tones. Table 2 shows that The New York Times and The Times (London) published 50.5 percent news with a neutral tone. Some scholars (Biswas, 1984; Novak, 1993) state that the United States treated the war as a theater for showing its supremacy to the world. The Conservative Party in United Kingdom was concerned about the possible involvement of the nuclear powers in this war and increasing international political polarization. In summary, it is clear that the newspapers that published news about the liberation war of Bangladesh mostly focused on military-conflict frame and prognostic frame. The involvement of big world powers became a major issue to the newspapers in publishing news about the war. Consequently, the sufferings of people and violence of the war did not get much attention. Like the position of the US and the UK governments, the newspapers considered the war as a part of global conflict and international political polarization. In this way, the newspapers echoed the voices of their respective governments and neutral tones featured as most prominent tones in the news. In other words, the independence movement of the people of Bangladesh was not a concern to The New York Times and The Times (London).

The results of this study are significant. First, a search of all available sources did not find any study on the framing of the liberation war of Bangladesh in the US and UK media. This study fills that vacuum. It should also be stated that little research has been conducted on the role of the international media in the liberation war of Bangladesh. This study is not only the first research on the framing of the international print media about the war but also the first methodical research in the area. Therefore, this study will open up the ways of understanding the role of the international print media, especially in the United States and United Kingdom, about foreign wars. This study will contribute to framing literature and to an understanding of international conflicts in the Western newspapers. Specifically, the study uses the typology of framing of war developed by Dimitrova and Stromback (2005) and tested these typologies to examine another international conflict. The results of this study also reestablished the excessive reliance of The New York Times and The Times (London) on military-conflict frame ignoring violence of war frame in covering the liberation war of Bangladesh. By doing so, the newspaper ‘texts constrains audience interpretations’, and ‘may engender different interpretations for the national audience’, (Dimitrova and Stromback, 2005: 413). In this way, The New York Times and The Times (London) portrayed ‘partial aspects of reality’ (which is the core argument of framing theory) about the liberation war of Bangladesh. Finally, this study sheds light on how the Western media cover foreign news/conflict events.

Nevertheless, this study has some limitations. First, it would be worthwhile to analyze all news published in the newspapers to get an overall idea about the framing of the war news in general. Second, further research should compare news published in newspapers with different ideologies and policies in different countries. It will also be possible to compare coverage by media of countries directly and indirectly involved in the war, such as Pakistan, India, and China. In future, a study will also be possible to examine how the newspapers of financial character such as Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal covered the war. A future study should examine the editorials of The New York Times and The Times (London) to look at the framing of the war in the newspapers. However, these limitations do not overturn the essence of this study.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Mohammad D Hossain is a PhD candidate in mass communication and media arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). He is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. He also served as chairman of the department until coming to the United States to pursue his PhD. His teaching and research areas revolve around new/social media, political communication, international communication, and media ethics. He has published several articles, and his recent publications include an article in Computers in Human Behavior titled ‘Online Maintenance of Life Domains: Uses of Social Network Sites during Graduate Education among the U.S. and International Students’.

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