Osama Bin Laden Comparison

WESTERN MEDIA

Time.com story
Inside the Osama bin Laden Strike: How America Got Its Man:
Even the title hints at American Pride. Time magazine has built a strong reputation as being having well-reported and mostly unbiased reports. However, how can an American magazine be completely impartial when its country just killed the man responsible for thousands of innocent deaths on its soil a decade earlier?

Bin Laden's compound where U.S forces found and killed the leader of Al Qaida on May 1, 2011, almost a full decade after the attacks on the World Trade Center. 

The story doesn't ask questions like 'Why the hell did it take ten years to find this guy?' It simply told how "we got him."

In just a thousand words, Time described how we approached bin Laden's hideout and how we infiltrated it and killed him. The story of how America killed its most wanted war criminal and it was able to do it in a thousand words? Maybe our attention spans are short.



eOnline- "Bin Laden's death causes detour for royal honeymoon"

E Entertainment's coverage of  bin Laden's death took the angle of how it would affect the royal wedding celebrations. I guess there are some people around the world that are more concerned about how public enemy #1 will interfere with the wedding arrangements of spoiled couple #1. Isn't that the kind of attitude that caused this asshole to fly a pair of 747s into our buildings in the first place?

As bin Laden's body set out to see, entertainment publications like E Entertainment reported about how bin Laden's death might interfere with the royal wedding proceedings. 

NON-WESTERN
Sudan Tribune  story
According to the Sudan Tribune, South Sudan welcomed the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Right off the bat there is a clear difference between Sudan's story and the stories conducted by the Western media. Even though Bin Laden is universally considered to be an enemy of the West, the western media hasn't reported his death as cause for celebration. Instead, the media is at the very least attempting to sound impartial and sticking to the facts. This leaves out the exception of clear opinion pieces.

Bin laden posing for one of his many press shots. During his reign, bin Laden was continually putting out videos of himself in which he addressed western nations. 

Al Ja-Zeera

Al Jazeera's coverage of the killing of Osama Bin Laden's death could be considered to be fairly in line with the west. They used terms like "the world's most wanted man" to describe the architect of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Another similarity between Al Jazeera and western media is their use of multimedia. The story was very light on the amount of writing. Instead, it relied heavily on a 24 minute video in which President Obama is seen announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden.

The Korea Herald-Al Qaida Appoints Acting Leader 


When the news broke that the terrorist organization Al Qaida had appointed its acting leader, Korea was not left out of the coverage. They had the story on the front page of their world news section as soon as the word hit social media networks around the globe.

The report is written in very clear English and was being reported on from London. This leads me to believe that although the publication isn't western, that the information comes from western reporters. Why would Korea do this? Perhaps because their papers don't have enough resources to send reporters abroad.

A second story in the Herald, this one being about the debate on whether or not the media should show pictures of Bin Laden, was also reported by western media. The story was written in New York by a reporter for Reuters. Are more and more papers around the world being incorporated to the large, international media companies?

A shot of bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, just miles from Pakistan's most prestigious military training compound. The photo is presumed to be taken on the day of bin Laden's death. 

Former CIA agent said Osama Bin Laden was already dead (Cuba)
A former CIA agent told the Cuban media that Osama Bin Laden was actually already dead and the U.S was lying about killing him. The report, from a news website called Cuban Debate, is just one of several editorial stories. The website is all in Cuban and is made up of several controversial stories. They are all written in a very news-like tone but are hardly impartial stories. The writing style is designed to spark debate among its readers.



Additional Sources:

http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/jewish_techs/hasidic_newspaper_photoshops_hillary_clinton_iconic_photo

Video: Obama announces death of Osama Bin Laden

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/05/02/world/asia/100000000799358/obama-announces-death-of-osama-bin-laden.html