Based On The Reports Related To Jamal Khashoggi Incident Reported By The U.S.Mainstream Media

For a long time,U.S.journalism is proud of its mature professional norms and constitutional freedom of the press and freedom of speech and even becomes the benchmark of journalism around the world.At the same time,media critics never stop questioning and criticizing the independence of the U.S.media and the relationship between media and government.According to the indexing hypothesis,U.S.media organizations rely heavily on the U.S.government in terms of topic selection,opinion discussion and source adoption.In October 2018,Jamal Khashoggi,a famous Saudi dissident and a columnist working for Washington Post,disappeared at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul,Turkey,which immediately attracted widespread attention from the international society.The relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S have a long history,and the two countries have deep cooperation in many fields.The U.S.mainstream media organizations report the whole process of this incident,as well as its impact on the U.S.-Saudi relations,the U.S.foreign policymaking,and even regional conflicts,such as the Yemen War.Some researchers believe that "post-truth" is gradually influencing on the national and international consciousness,particularly in the recent years: the president,while launching large-scale political propaganda,tries to suppress the influence of mainstream media on public opinion;elites and enterprises compete for the dominant power over media organizations;the media organizations are still expected to be able to act as the "watchdog" of a democratic society to play a role in all forces and build an effective and diverse public consensus,while it has to maintain its authority in current affairs reportages under the doubts come from president and public.This paper focuses on how media reports the truth and facts to the public in such a trend.Based on the mainstream media's reports on Jamal Khashoggi incident,and the indexing hypothesis,this paper discusses the media-government relation in the U.S.from the perspective of media independence.This paper conducts content analysis to analyze the articles about Jamal Khashoggi(including news,editorials,op-ed,etc.)published by the three U.S.mainstream newspapers,including New York Times,Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.The results show that in the reports about Jamal Khashoggi incident,the U.S.mainstream newspapers do prefer to adopt the sources of government agencies.While it shows relatively strong independence in topic selection and opinion presentation,and this independence may be related to the social identity between media organization and the subjects of the reports.Throughout the mainstream media reports in the year aftermath the incident,the U.S.media constructed a relatively independent public discussion,showing a dynamic,non-linear symbiosis and confrontation relationship in the interaction with the government,which might be related to the background of the times,situational factors,reporting methods and the identity of the subject involved.