The Framing and Partisan Bias:

Abstract

In August 2024, Bangladesh witnessed an unprecedented event of a forceful fall of 15 years long reigning political power led by Sheikh Hasina, as a consequence to the massive student movement. Shortly after, a wave of discussion and news coverage surfaced from the media India and Bangladesh regarding the fall of the government and the prime minister’s asylum in India. Several news was alleged to be in favour of the fallen party by the netizens. This study will investigate the framing and partisan bias in the reports on the student movement of Bangladesh in 2024, by an Indian news channel, Republic Bangla. The previous papers on bias and framing studied the tone of news delivery, selection of the contents, highlighting specific story or party in order to prove the presence of framing and bias in a news content. Accordingly, a content analysis was performed to count the number of stories, statements, accusations or praise, in order to determine how the channel is being supportive or critical towards the stakeholders of the movement, which also determines the bias. Following this, the type of contents was analysed in order to find any framing or propaganda the channel is frequently working on. Lastly, a comparative study was done in accordance with other sources, to find out the political leanings and ideology. The findings confirm the presence of framing and bias as well as the political leanings of the channel. These findings suggest that the media was indeed biassed about the student movement. The findings and procedures can be implied for further research in the field.