Content area

Full Text

Headnote

Abstract

Iraq war was one of the most important armed conflicts in 21st century which led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom ,caused death of hundreds of thousands civilians and militaries and cost trillion of dollars to the global economy. The present study have focused on the media reflections in war time and aims to examine how Tony Blair, the British prime minister is represented in The Guardian newspaper during Iraq invasion and content analysis is the research method that is used in this regard. The Guardian news stories which examined in this research, were about the role and the policies of Tony Blair in 2003 Iraq invasion from the start of the war until his resignation of UK primer ship in 2007. The findings of the study revealed some facts about the way that the Guardian newspaper represented Blair's involvement in Iraq; firstly the dominance of the news value of prominence and the news element of who showed that The Guardian news stories have focused on Blair's role and his policies in Iraq war and also all the remarkable events and individuals that were involved in this war. Secondly, the researcher observed the negative adjectives were dominant in The Guardian news stories about Blair and he has been portrayed negatively to the public opinion by this paper, in fact as a war criminal.

Keywords: Tony Blair; Iraq war; Content analysis; The Guardian newspaper; News; Media

Received: June 14, 2017; Accepted: October 30, 2017; Published: November 07, 2017

Introduction

After the 11 September terrorist attacks to the twin towers of the world trade center in the United States which was led by al-Qaida terrorist group "war against the terrorism" became the main goal of the this country in the Middle East and the Iraq invasion was based on this ideology. The Iraq war was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom against Iraqi government and toppled Saddam Hussein government in 2003. The rational of the start of this war was the belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and it was a serious threat to global peace and security.

The United Kingdom intervention to Iraq was during Tony Blair premiership. He entered his...

Show less