The Image of Friends and Foes in 15 Iranian Newspapers: A Semiotic Analysis of Death Photos of Saddam Hussein, Benazir Bhutto and Osama Bin Laden

This study attempts to assess the visual function of Iranian newspapers concerning three major incidents in the Middle East in recent years: deaths of Saddam Hussein, Benazir Bhutto and Osama bin Laden. This study seeks to answer the following questions: are images of friends and foes similarly represented in photos of political news in newspapers? How do newspapers manage to demonstrate their political standpoint towards different individuals through photographs? And does the political stance of a newspaper affect its position towards different individuals? To answer these questions, this research uses photographs of deaths of Saddam Hussein, Benazir Bhutto and Osama Bin Laden published in the following 15 Iranian national newspapers: Kayhan, Ettelaat, Hamshahri, Jam-e-Jam, Iran, Jomhouri Eslami, Resalat, Abrar, Siasat Rooz, Farhang Ashti, Etemaad, Shargh, Aftab Yazd, Hambastegi and Mardomsalari. The assessment is done by implementing semiotics techniques drawn from Roland Barthes’s notions on image semiotics, as well as Media Representation Theory by Stuart Hall and Denis McQuail’s notions on bias in addition to semiotic interpretation and analysis of the mentioned photographs. The results from this study indicate that newspapers studied in this research represent the photographs of friends and foes differently. In addition, these national newspapers held a friendly stance towards Bhutto and a hostile stance towards Saddam, while their position towards Bin Laden was generally vague and two- sided.