Media Bias in the News About the Russian Su-24 Fighter Plan Shot Down on the Border Between Turkey and Syria

On November 24th, a Russian Su-24 fighter plane was shot down near the border between Turkey and Syria by Turkey for violating their airspace. Russia has contested whether this was true, and different countries with different biases have reported on the event differently.

The Russian Moscow Times released a surprisingly short report on the event. They said that Turkey had shot down the plane for violating airspace, but made it clear that the Russian Defense Ministry had said this was not true. The Moscow Times maintains that claim that the plane was still within the Syrian border when it was attacked. They also said that the plain was shot from the ground with a missile.

British BBC News had something different to say. BBC produced a much more in-depth report on the incident, and provided both points of view from Turkey and Russia. The writer explained Russia’s conviction that the plane had never gone outside the Syrian border, but went on to detail the circumstances surrounding the attack. They said that two Turkish F-16 jets had shot down the plane after giving ten warnings that the pilot had violated Turkish airspace and needed to correct this. They also add the detail that the plane had been “unidentified” and that Russia had been warned recently to stop bombing civilian villages in Turkey near the area where the plane was shot down. The article also notes that there are “conflicting reports” on whether the Russian plane was shot from the ground or from another plane in the air, further showing both sides of the story. This article is also interesting in that it makes predictions about what may happen in the future surrounding this incident, saying things like “questions will also be asked about the readiness of the Turks to open fire” and “expect diplomatic fireworks.”

In the United States, the reporting on this event was very dramatic. The Boston Globe covered it, and their first sentence said that “Two big powers…clashed with each other.” The rest of the article continues this feeling, mostly focusing on the conflict and tension created by the incident between the two countries. It described the conflict that Turkey has had with Russia over the Syrian president Assad, and explained that neither country wanted to go to war, so there would probably not be an escalation.

These three articles clearly demonstrated the different biases that each country has. The Russian article was adamant that the country was not at fault in the incident, because it did not want its military to look bad. The British article showed both sides of the conflict so as to seem unbiased, but still showed a little more support for Turkey, its NATO ally. The United States tried not to show any bias, but also focused on the drama created by the incident, because that is what audience of the article would be interested in reading about.

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