Covering News on Subsidy Reform Plan in Iran A case study of News on Channel One and News Network (IRINN)

Subsidy Reform Plan, also known in Iran as “Economic Surgery”, needed conclusive ground preparation, coordination and cooperation between people and the executives. Since the adoption of the plan, IRIB has undertaken the responsibility of informing and educating the public on the plan and assumed the task of announcing any possible deviations from rules and its specified objectives in the course of implementation of the plan. In the present article, all news stories related to the Subsidy Reform Plan (totally 354 news stories) within the second half of the year 1389 (Iranian calendar) in two separate news edition, i.e. News Network (1p.m.) and Channel One (2p.m.) were studied using Content Analysis. Research question focused on the manner and extent of covering issues related to Subsidy Reform Plan and indicators related to it. The findings indicate that there is a significant correlation between news editions of the two examined channels and the manner of covering news stories related to Subsidy Reform Plan, the approach adopted to disseminate news and nature and extent of covering the plan’s indicators. Furthermore, the news stories covering the plan were mostly event-centered, persuasive, informative and uncritical.