Comparison of Reflection of News about Islamic Countries and the World in International Television Networks: Analysis of Content of Press TV, Nile International,Aljazeera English, Russia Today, BBC World News and CNN International

The present research, which aims at examining the coverage of news about Islamic countries and the world in TV networks, is conducted by applying the agenda setting theory (social deviation salience) presented by Shoemaker and Cohenusing content analysis method. The statistical population is the prime-time evening news programs of the above mentioned TV channels observed for six months. The sample is selected via systematic sampling. The statistical tests which are used include Chi Square, Spearman’s correlation coefficient and coefficient of determining regression. The findings of this research show that the news broadcast in Northern countries have a high share in determining the trend of international news, which have mainly broadcast negative news about Islamic countries. On the other hand, the results about salience of news items indicate that though the value of the news (social deviation and salience) have a role in making news items important, they rarely become the reason for salience of news items. In fact, what journalists think is valuable as news,will not necessarily be broadcast.