An Analysis of Objective Journalism in BBC Persian; a Case Study of 50-days War in Gaza

This research paper attempts to discover how BBC Persian news channel did its framing style during the 50-days war between Gaza and Israel. The objective of this analysis is to examine whether objective journalism exists in BBC Persian channel. This argument is especially important to take on due to the long-standing contention that exists in the critical region of the Middle East. The 50-days war in Gaza that happened in 2014 is one of the noticeable wars in recent years, one that required professional an objective journalism to have got involved, or did it. This question needs to be addressed here. I order to do so, a content analysis was employed that we considered would enable us to describe BBC channel's messages objectively. The research unit of analysis includes the most important daily news program of BBC Persian channel that was launched from July 3 until August 27 of 2014 during which the 50-day war occurred. Rather than sampling, we used complete enumeration of the material broadcasted during above period so to increase the credibility of the results. Some of the findings indicate that BBC Persian channel justified Israel's invasions of Gaza while depicting Hamas's attacks not in the same fashion. This line of journalism occurred while the channel supported the idea of negotiation under any condition and refused the resistance activities. During this process, the channel also tried to preserve its audience’s trust. While pretending to be pro-peace talks, BBC tried to infuse the idea that there is a gap between Hamas and Gaza people. It also tried to depict a powerful image from Israeli army. The paper concludes that it is understandable to consider BBC Persian as broadcasting corporation that does not reflect the criteria of an objective journalism and rather has a noticeable bias and fails to follow the principles of objective journalism in its narrative style.