Abstract

Over the last several years, the issue of Iran’s development of nuclear power has caused significant stress among Western democracies. Israel, in particular, has perceived this as an imminent threat to its existence. Iran’s nuclear development has led to severe sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries that have severely crippled Iran’s economy. The effect of these sanctions prompted the Iranian government to start negotiations with the P5+1 to broker a deal that would see the economic sanctions removed in exchange for putting a stop to its nuclear development plan. Iran had cut political and economic relations with the United States since the 1979 Islamic revolution, so these nuclear deal negotiations were the first face-to face negotiations with the United States in over three decades. In order to discover how the nuclear deal was presented by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) and the New York Times to their readers, this thesis undertakes a textual and framing analysis of the news coverage during the month of July 2015. It concludes that despite the negotiations that reached a signed deal, the IRNA framed the United States as an “enemy” and the New York Times framed Iran as an “enemy.” This thesis also analyzed the political structure of both countries in relationship to journalistic norms practiced in each country, looking particularly at the notion of objectivity, or fairness and balance.