COVID 19-The Foreign Virus: Media Bias, Ideology and Dominance in Chinese and American Newspaper Articles

This contrastive study examines media bias, media ideologies and dominance in two newspaper articles that are published by the American Washington Post newspaper and the Chinese People’s Daily newspaper on COVID 19. The study reveals that media bias is practiced through gatekeeping bias, coverage bias and statement bias. Ideology bias is practiced through the selection of topics to cover and the tone for reporting on these topics. Dominance is practiced through the foregrounding and backgrounding of information and ideas. This contrastive study also reveals that the topics that are foregrounded by the American newspaper are backgrounded or filtered by the Chinese newspaper and the topics that are backgrounded by the American newspaper are foregrounded by the Chinese newspaper. This paper also reveals that foregrounding is not necessarily carried out explicitly; it can also be carried implicitly by foregrounding the opposite. The paper suggests that proper reading of media texts requires critical discourse analysis in terms of interpretation and contextual awareness in terms of knowledge. This is the case as the intended meaning of media texts is communicated between the lines.