STEREOTYPES OF THE MIDDLE EASTERN IN THE U.S. MEDIA COVERAGE

In the United States, one of the most important ethnic groups comes from the Middle East. They have been portrayed by the Western media, including movies, news coverage, theatre, and cartoons. It seems that cross-cultural communication is difficult between the United States and the Middle East due to cultural issues. They are framed as ‘terrorist,’ ‘barbaric,’ and ‘enemy of the world. They have been portrayed as “primitive,” “ignorant,” “poor,” and “criminal.” In the case of the Asian, there have also been some bad stereotypes in the Western countries. However, as it is said before, because Western culture and Eastern culture does not know enough each other, they have negative stereotypes about themselves. Moreover, differences among religions and value systems have a significant impact on the image of the Middle Eastern women in the public opinion over here. Because in general, the American public often has very little knowledge of the Middle East, the terms of ‘uprising conflict,’ ‘coups,’ and ‘terrorist activities’ have not been understood clearly by them. Therefore, the media and newsmakers affect American.Most of American gets information from television, television news, movies, advertisement, and cartoon have given intentional image about some races such as the Middle Eastern, Asian, or African. In this point, it can be useful to describe how these visual images influence people’s opinions In this project, it will be studied the image of Middle Eastern people in the United States, by analyzing the photographs and images of the two important newspapers of U.S, which are called the Washington Post, and the New York Times. It will be tried to highlight that the Middle Eastern people have been portrayed negatively by the U.S media coverage. Indeed, this paper examines newspaper coverage of Middle Eastern during two mounts in 2009