Investigating the News Coverage of Martyr Soleimani's Funeral in the Media For and Against the Resistance Front

The martyrdom of General Qasem Soleimani and the participation of a very large number of people in his funeral procession, as a military commander, was a unique and significant event that like many major news events in the world, was covered by the global media with different political orientation and affiliation. The aim of this study was to compare the news coverage of Martyr Soleimani's funeral by the media in favor and against the Resistance Front. The research method was quantitative content analysis and the data collection tool, was a reverse questionnaire. The statistical population of the study are all the news related to the funeral ceremony of General Qasem Soleimani from Saturday, January 5 to January 10, 2017. The news of this event was covered by both pro and anti- Resistance Front media such as Al- Alam (Arabic), Al- Mayadeen (Arabic) Al-Manar (Arabic)and Press TV (English) with a total 158 news items, as pro Resistance and Al-Arabia and Al- Horriyah, both Arabic and BBC and CNN, as English and anti- Resistance media with a total news story of 128 about the said funeral service. Total counting was carried out in relations to this research work. The results of testing of the hypotheses showed that there was a significant difference between the news coverage of this event among the media for and against the Resistance Front, so that the media in favor of the Resistance Front, significantly paid more attention to this event, and their orientation, by using persuasive and publicity headlines about the positive characteristics of Qasem Soleimani, has been quite evident. The media opposed to the Resistance Front in their news making process, have used more soft news and variety of formats in comparison to the supportive media of the Resistance Front. In anti-resistance media, news elements are more prominent in the lead section of the news story than pro-resistance media; but in the pro-resistance media, the number of news values ​​used in the news story were more prominent than in the opposing media. However, although there is a meaningful difference between the two media groups for and against the Resistance Front, but concerning the use of Iranian sources in news writing, there are similarities in provided statistics provided.