Iranian Nuclear Issue

The stories that have been selected for analysis are articles in the CNN and BBC concerning the attendance of Iran’s president of the General Assembly meeting of 2012. These articles cover the story of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presence in this year’s United Nations General Assembly. President Ahmadinejad, unlike in previous years, presented a more moderate approach towards the West when it came to the issue of Iran’s attempt to develop nuclear weapons. He stated that the governments of the West were setting double standards for other countries such as Iran when it came to the development of nuclear power, while they themselves had some of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world. The story further covers President Ahmadinejad’s comments on the powerlessness of the United Nations Security Council when it comes to deal with matters of inequality among the nations of the world due to the fact that it is dominated by few very powerful nations which put their interests first before the interests of the whole world. The President then touched on Israel and the injustices it has brought about through its occupation of Palestine stating that the Security Council should be reformed so that such injustices could be better handled.

When reading the story as presented on the CNN website, one will immediately note that this article is not well balanced. Instead, it is biased towards what may be considered to be the beliefs of the Western government about Iran. Despite the fact that the title of the article is about President Ahmadinejad and his attendance of the General Assembly Meeting, this story is given very little space in the article and instead, more attention is given to what Western leaders said about Iran’s nuclear issue and the fact that they were not going to rule out military action against this country. After this, the story moves on to something completely different, discussing what other world leaders had to say about their own local and regional problems and their need for the support of the United Nations. One would say that the BBC article is more balanced, since the headline of the article is about President Ahmadinejad, and because the whole story is dedicated to the speech he gave to the General Assembly and the responses of some Western leaders towards it. The speech is dealt with in greater detail when compared to the way it was in the CNN story, often making direct quotes of what he said as well as giving out a tone of his wanting the matter of Iran’s nuclear issue to be settled peacefully. The story in the BBC article deals completely with the topic of the headline and does not digress to other stories.

The BBC article can be considered to be a better source of information than the one of CNN mainly due to the fact that it does not show any kind of bias. The BBC article has remained objective throughout its story, providing a balanced assessment of the situation at hand and leaving it to the reader to decide for themselves what to believe to be true.